A Brief History of Drummond St
Yesterday we finally got around to paying the Surgeon's Hall Museums a visit. Despite being our closest museum, it's normally only open just for a few hours on weekdays, so the weekend opening this Easter was our first chance to pay the museum a visit. It's a fascinating place which will warrant many more visits - it's a shame it's one of the few museums in the city that charges its visitors, but still it's a good local indoor attraction for visitors.
We learnt so much from the museum about both the history of Edinburgh, and our new home - Drummond St. Prior to moving here I'd always thought of Drummond St as being sinister - a dark back-street off the central, drunk-littered South Bridge, but soon realised it's really a beautiful historic central location. The Northern side of the street runs exactly along the old city walls, what remains of them, and the streets are all cobble-stoned in true Edinburgh fashion. Next door to our flat is the beautiful university geography department building, one of many beautiful old university buildings scattered amongst the city (including, of course, the Royal Observatory) - see the photo. Not only was the first Surgeon's Hall on Drummond St (where the first public autopsies were performed when Edinburgh was the world centre for medicine), but we also discovered that prior to 1879, at the site were the geography building is now, lied the old Royal Infirmary where Arthur Conan Doyle served under Dr Joseph Bell, both the inventor of modern forensic pathology and the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. I guess the fact that the steps outside the flat are called Infirmary Steps is something of a give away! All that remains of the old Royal Infirmary are its gates as shown in the photograph.
Oh, and there's plenty of gruesome human remains and conditions to ogle over, including a pocket book covered by the skin of William Burke! It's quite incredible to think that in the 19th Century Burke & Hare would have been selling their murder victim's corpses to Dr Robert Knox on our very street!
We learnt so much from the museum about both the history of Edinburgh, and our new home - Drummond St. Prior to moving here I'd always thought of Drummond St as being sinister - a dark back-street off the central, drunk-littered South Bridge, but soon realised it's really a beautiful historic central location. The Northern side of the street runs exactly along the old city walls, what remains of them, and the streets are all cobble-stoned in true Edinburgh fashion. Next door to our flat is the beautiful university geography department building, one of many beautiful old university buildings scattered amongst the city (including, of course, the Royal Observatory) - see the photo. Not only was the first Surgeon's Hall on Drummond St (where the first public autopsies were performed when Edinburgh was the world centre for medicine), but we also discovered that prior to 1879, at the site were the geography building is now, lied the old Royal Infirmary where Arthur Conan Doyle served under Dr Joseph Bell, both the inventor of modern forensic pathology and the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. I guess the fact that the steps outside the flat are called Infirmary Steps is something of a give away! All that remains of the old Royal Infirmary are its gates as shown in the photograph.
Oh, and there's plenty of gruesome human remains and conditions to ogle over, including a pocket book covered by the skin of William Burke! It's quite incredible to think that in the 19th Century Burke & Hare would have been selling their murder victim's corpses to Dr Robert Knox on our very street!