One of the most distinctive buildings in Edinburgh’s  Royal Mile is the Canongate Tolbooth which was built in 1591 and formerly the hub of the area.  Canongate used to be a separate burgh from Edinburgh lying nearer to Holyrood Palace than Edinburgh Castle and the tolbooth served as meeting place for the town council, courthouse and jail.  Below the conical spire the tower has two small turrets called bartizans with ornamental gun holes giving an impression of battlements on either side of the clock dated 1884.  Today the tolbooth houses the interesting People’s Story Museum which is about the lives of the ordinary people and the conditions under which they lived during the last 300 years.