Whitehorse Close, Edinburgh

This morning my friend, Eric and I went exploring the closes of the High Street in Edinburgh. He was looking for a particular shop front to photograph as he had previously seen an striking image of it. Initially he thought it might be a tattoo parlour but it turned out to be the shop front for the Edinburgh Ghost Tours !

Our first port of call though was a close right at the bottom of the High Street, Whitehorse Close. It has a particularly emotional resonance for me as for two weeks, at the start of my relationship with my current wife, we lived there.

"Whitehorse Close", is an enclosed courtyard off the Canongate at the foot of the Royal Mile at the eastern end of the Old Town of Edinburgh, Scotland. It was formerly known as "Ord's Close", after Laurence Ord, the putative builder of the 17th-century inn at its northern end.

The origin of the name is obscure. The location has been traditionally associated with a royal mews from the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, the name being said to derive from the fact that her favourite white palfrey was stabled there, near the main entrance to the royal palace. It is more likely, however, that the name derives from the "White Horse Inn" which occupied the northern end of the courtyard from at least the 17th century. It has been suggested that the inn sign may have been one of many at the time displaying the White Horse of Hanover.

The inn was the departure point for the stagecoaches that ran between Edinburgh, Newcastle and London in the 18th century. Five arches on the Calton Road side of the building (previously known as the North Back of the Canongate) indicate the former existence of an undercroft which contained the inn's stables, smithy and coach houses.

The building bears the date 1632, but this is believed to have been carved when it was restored in the 1930s, the tablet being altered from displaying the more implausible date of 1532. In his Views of Edinburgh, published around 1820, the English engraver James Storer gave the date as 1683, which is more in keeping with the late 17th-century architectural style of the buildings. The dilapidated close was bought by Dr. John Barbour and his sister in 1889, and the inn, with its distinctive forestairs, and the surrounding courtyard buildings were converted into fifteen dwellings for the working class. They were last restored by Frank Mears & Partners between 1961 and 1964.

At the time we stayed their temporarily the buildings had been acquired by Edinburgh City Council and were used as executive style council housing. Much of the close is now privately owned.