The Meadows

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This article describes the park in Edinburgh. For the place in Florida see The Meadows, Florida. For the concert venue see The Meadows (concert venue).

View across the Meadows

The Meadows is a large public park in Edinburgh, Scotland, just to the south of the city centre. It consists mostly of open grassland crossed by tree-lined paths, but is also home to children's playgrounds, a croquet club and tennis courts. In the summer, it is one of the host venues for the Edinburgh Festival, such as the annual Fringe Sunday. Being one of the few flat stretches of open land in the central area of the city, it is occasionally host to public protests and rallies, including the 225,000-strong Make Poverty History march on July 2, 2005. Circuses frequently visit the meadows too.

It is bordered by the University of Edinburgh's George Square campus and the old Edinburgh Royal Infirmary complex to the north, and Marchmont to the south. To the south-west it becomes Bruntsfield Links where there is a public golf course. Its location makes it a popular route for travelling between the city centre and Marchmont, and because of safety concerns, in 2006 the City Council announced plans to improve the lighting and policing at night.

[edit] History

The Meadows was originally a loch: the "Burgh Loch" or "South Loch". The loch boundaries today would be approximately, to the east, Hope Park Terrace, to the west, where Melville Drive becomes Brougham Street, to the south, Melville Drive, and to the North the site of the Old Royal Infirmary, a total of 63 acres. The loch drained from east to west, where the burn known as the Loch-rin was sluiced to prevent the water from draining out. It is from this burn that the Lochrin street names in Tollcross derive. Until Edinburgh's first piped water supply from Comiston arrived in 1621, the loch provided much of the Town's drinking water.

It was partially drained in the mid-17th century and for a time named Straiton's Loch or Straiton's Park after the burgess who tried to improve the area. In the early 18th century Sir Thomas Hope (c1681–1771), an agricultural improver and politician, ordered more drainage work, making the marshy land into a park with a path round the edge, hedges, trees and a small canal. The central tree-lined path known as Middle Meadow Walk followed, and for several decades maps labelled this area as 'The Meadows or Hope Park'. It is the traditional practice ground of the Royal Company of Archers whose meeting-place is nearby.

Though animals were grazed there and notable Edinburgh citizens are known to have walked there, there was no full right of public access until the middle of the 19th century when new paths were gradually added criss-crossing the park. An exception to city council rules against building on the land was allowed for the large glass pavilion of the 1886 International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art. The whale jawbones now forming an arch over the Meadows path called Jawbone Walk had originally decorated one of the exhibition's displays.

The second world war brought more than 500 allotments to the east end of the Meadows as part of the effort to make the nation more self-sufficient in food. By 1950 many local residents wanted the area re-turfed, but it was 1966 before the last signs of vegetable cultivation were removed.

In the late 1960s, plans to complete a "flyover" over the Meadows for a trunk road were defeated.

One of the first games between Heart of Midlothian Football Club and Hibernian Football Club was played here, during the 19th century, according to a plaque near the whalebone arch.

The Meadows now play home to the training of ECA Football Club the official football team of Edinburgh College of Art.