Qualla: The Meadows, Edinburgh

The Meadows, Edinburgh: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Benjamin Brock, CC BY-SA 3.0. On Christmas Day 1875, two football teams played their first ever match against each other on what had recently been a marshy stretch south of Edinburgh. The Heart of Midlothian beat Hibernian. They were both new clubs in a young sport, and they would go on to become the city's two pre-eminent sides; their derby is still one of the oldest rivalries in football. The match was played here because The Meadows, as the park is called, was where Edinburgh's earliest football took place. Before that it was a loch. Before that it was a marsh. Before that, presumably, no one walked here at all.

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Image: Benjamin Brock | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Meadows, Edinburgh: The South Loch

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Benjamin Brock, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Meadows began as a body of water known as the burgh loch, or later the South Loch. It covered 63 acres bounded by Hope Park Terrace to the east, Brougham Street to the west, and the site of what would become the Old Royal Infirmary to the north. Water drained westwards throug...

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Image: Benjamin Brock | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Meadows, Edinburgh: Whalebones and an Exhibition

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sandy Gemmill, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1886 the city allowed an exception to the 1827 Act of Parliament that protected the Meadows from being built upon: a temporary glass pavilion went up for the International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art. It covered a high percentage of the park for that summer. A reli...

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Image: Sandy Gemmill | CC BY-SA 2.0

The Meadows, Edinburgh: The First Derby

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cruon, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the 1870s, before football was the international sport it is now, fledgling Edinburgh clubs used The Meadows as their grounds. Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian were both new. They were small. They played teams of all kinds on the open ground. On 25 December 1875 they met for ...

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Image: Cruon | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Meadows, Edinburgh: Wartime Allotments and the Defeated Flyover

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Webb, CC BY-SA 2.0. During the Second World War, more than 500 allotments were distributed across the Meadows as part of the Victory Garden programme to grow food. They lasted into the 1960s. The park's flat openness has always been useful. In the late 1960s, planners proposed a flyover, a trunk roa...

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Image: Richard Webb | CC BY-SA 2.0

The Meadows, Edinburgh: The Elms

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ulmusenthu65, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Meadows is best known among botanists for its mature elms, although Dutch elm disease has thinned their ranks across decades. The fungal blight, spread by bark beetles, swept through northern European elms from the 1960s onward and killed most of them. The survivors here are ...

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Image: Ulmusenthu65 | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Meadows, Edinburgh: Festivals and Marches

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Festival Fringe Society, CC BY-SA 3.0. Each March, nearly a thousand runners take part in the Meadows Marathon, a charity half-marathon and 5K (with a full marathon added in 2013). The Meadows Festival has run on the first weekend in June since the mid-1970s, with a hiatus from 2005 to 2008. The Meadows is one of the ...

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Image: Festival Fringe Society | CC BY-SA 3.0