A village inside the city on the Water of Leith, with a Sunday market, a colony of workers' cottages and no coach parties.
Stockbridge sits in the valley of the Water of Leith just north-west of the New Town, and it was a village before Edinburgh reached it. It kept the scale — low buildings, a main street, a bridge — and the result is somewhere that feels like a small town twelve minutes’ walk from Princes Street.
Henry Raeburn, the portrait painter, owned much of the land and developed Ann Street, named for his wife, which is generally reckoned the prettiest street in Edinburgh: Georgian houses with front gardens, which almost no New Town street has.
The Colonies
Eleven parallel terraces of workers’ housing built from 1861 by the Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company, a body founded by stonemasons after a strike, to provide decent homes for artisans. Each block has flats on two levels reached by external stairs, so every dwelling has its own front door.
They were a genuine social experiment and they worked; they are now sought after and expensive, which is its own commentary. Look for the carved panels on the end gables showing masons’ tools.
The market
Stockbridge Market runs on Sundays in Jubilee Gardens by the river — food, crafts, cheese, street food, about forty stalls. It is small, it is pleasant, and it is where the neighbourhood goes.
The Water of Leith
The walkway runs through the middle of Stockbridge and is the best urban river walk in Scotland. Upstream it reaches Dean Village in ten minutes — a former milling hamlet in a gorge, with the Well Court’s red-tiled roofs, and the most photographed corner of Edinburgh after Victoria Street.
Above it, Thomas Telford’s Dean Bridge of 1831 crosses 32 metres up.
Continue and you reach the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, with Charles Jencks’ Landform earthwork on the lawn and Antony Gormley figures standing in the river itself.
Downstream, the walkway reaches the Botanics and eventually Leith.
Eating and shopping
Independent: butchers, fishmongers, cheesemongers, two good bookshops, charity shops that are noticeably better than average because of the district they serve. Scran & Scallie, Tom Kitchin’s gastropub, is here.
Practicalities
Fifteen minutes downhill on foot from Princes Street, and a genuine climb back up. Buses 24, 29 and 42 run frequently.
