The thread about the Seventh Day of Christmas; Sven Swans a Swanstoning
This thread was originally written and published in December 2019. It has been edited and corrected as applicable for this post.
This post in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas is preceded by a thread about the Guse Dub.
On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; Sven Swans a Swanstoning. I refer of course to Swanston, in the far south of the modern limits of the city, beyond even the Bypass. A veritably ancient name, one which is probably as old as Edinburgh itself, and even today distinctly rural in character.
The farmstead of (Easter) Swanston in 1914, an illustration from “The Hills of Home” by Lauchlan McLean Watt
The name is first recorded in 1214 and unfortunately doesn’t actually have anything to do with swans. It is of Norse origin, from the given name Sveinn (modern, Sven). Sveinnstun meaning a farmstead belonging to a man called Sven. This puts the probable origin 1 or 2 centuries before the written record in the 10th or 11th centuries. It is recorded as part of the medieval barony of Redhall, which occupied much of the land between the northern slopes of the Pentland Hills and the back of the rising ground south of Edinburgh.
Looking south to Swanston, with the Pentland Hills rising above. The T-shaped plantation was at least 100 years old by this point. A 1955 photograph by J. Wilson Paterson. © Edinburgh City Libraries
As a farm, Swanston was part of the feu of Templelands; ground granted by the Knights Templar in the 12th or 13th century to Thomas, Lord Binning, a nobleman based in East Lothian. In the 15th century the farm was sub-fued (the feu, or primary plot of land held for the Crown by the laird, was split and granted to two subordinate (or vassal) lairds. These became the separate holdings of Easter and Wester Swanston, with the Swanston Burn forming the boundary, before being reunited in the late 17th century under the Trotters of Mortonhall. And so it was for the next 4 centuries, with not a lot changing; the road beyond Swanston leads nowhere but to the hills and the city was hardly visible 4 miles away beyond the rising ground of the Braid Hills to the north, with its southern boundary a full 2½ miles away in the middle of the 19th century.
The settlement was dominated by the principal farmhouse, formerly Wester Swanston, with the collection of thatched cottages that housed most of the population being on the locus of Easter Swanston.
While Swanston for most of its existence has been fundamentally detached from the metropolis within whose boundary it sits, in the middle of the 18th century it became linked to it when the City gained an Act of Parliament that allowed it to extract drinking water from the springs in its vicinity. A cistern house and three filter beds – gravel and sand filled reservoirs to settle any sediment and silt out of the water – were built south of the village and it was connected to the city by wooden pipes.
Swanston cistern house. Photograph © Fiona Coutts via British Listed Buildings
A house was added by the City in 1761 for the use of the water engineer and officials, and in 1830 this would be modernised and expanded into the villa of Swanston Cottage. Gargoyles and tracery added to an extension at this time are reputed to have been removed from St. Giles Cathedral by the architect William Burn when he “modernised” the ancient church in a manner befitting the style of the time. The cottage garnered a reputation as being something of a “municipal pleasure house“, where City officials would come to make merry. From 1867-1880, the family of Robert Louis Stevenson rented the cottage in the summer as a holiday house. The teenage Robert spent much time here, including walking to and from the city, and refereed to the place as “a stilly hamlet that vies with any earthly paradise“. Robert’s nurse, Alison Cummingham (“Cummy”), was the sister of the resident waterman, and lived with him in his cottage from 1880 to 1893. Her initials are on the lintel above the door of that house.
Swanston Cottage in 1889. © Edinburgh City Libraries
On his walks from the family home in Edinburgh’s New Town or from the University to Swanston, the young Robert would pass the water house of the Comiston Springs, which also provided the city with clean drinking water, and where the four springs were named after animals. Coincidentally, one of these was a swan, the Swan Spring emerges in the water house through a pipe crowned with a cast lead swan.
Inside the cistern house. The swan is on the left. On its right are the hare, the fox and the Peeswee (Lapwing) © Scottish Water
The name of Swanston has been applied to housing built between the 1930s and 1970s to the north of the City Bypass in the district of Fairmilehead. By the middle of the 20th century, these ancient farmhouses of the village were verging on unfit for habitation. They still had floors of compressed earth; their roofs were still thatched with reeds from the Tay (the only such lowland houses in Scotland); running water had only arrived in 1934 and they were without electricity until 1949. The City bought the cottages in 1956 and restored them, for which they earned a Scottish Civic Trust award in 1964. They were leased them out as council housing. Most were purchased under “Right to Buy” legislation, but one survives under municipal ownership and is probably Scotland’s only thatched council house.
The thatched cottages of Easter Swanson in 1955, the year before the Corporation of Edinburgh bought them to restore them. A photograph by J. Wilson Paterson. © Edinburgh City Libraries
In 1927, a woman by the name of Margaret Carswell took a lease of land from Swanston Farm to create a 9-hole ladies’ golf course, having found it impossible to gain access to any of the city’s many other golf courses. Men were later admitted (by popular consent of the membership) and it was expanded to a full 18 holes. It is the only visitor attraction of the “village”, which boasts no public facilities, having lost its school in the 1930s.
The Edinburgh and Leith-themed Twelve Days of Christmas continues with a post about The Maiden Castle.
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These threads © 2017-2025, Andy Arthur
#Christmas #December31 #Fairmilehead #Pentlands #RobertLouisStevenson #Stevensons #Suburbs #Swanston #Toponymy #Water #Written2019
An explanation of what the terms Feu, Feud, Feus and Feuing mean, in the context of land tenure in Scotland
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The thread about the Sixth Day of Christmas; the geese of the Guse Dub
This thread was originally written and published in December 2019.
This post in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas is preceded by a thread about “Fiveways” and Goldenacre.
On the six day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; the Guse Dub (a laying).
The Guse Dub reproduction historic place name sign CC-by-NC Leo Reynolds
Guse is the old Scots word for a Goose, and the Dub refers to a pond and spring where geese or ducks were once kept. Guse Dub is the common old Scots term for a farm or village duck pond. If you are interested in golf, you may know it as a the name of the 14th hole of the Prestwick course, which at one time was alongside an old pond.
But in the context of Edinburgh, this place name has long been applied to a little gushet* of the Southside, where the Crosscauseway meets Causewayside (* = Gushet is the Scots term for a triangular portion of land). The dub itself, described as “rather an unsavoury pond” was sold by the city in 1681 to one John Gairns, who built a house hear called Gairnshall and is first directly referred to in 1698 when the then proprietor of the house and land wanted to be freed from his feudal obligation of watching and warding (i.e. enforcing the law) of the district. The pond itself was recognised as a health hazard and drained around 1715 (in connection with the draining of the nearby Boroughloch for the same reasons)and turned into gardens. It originally drained naturally east, towards St. Leonards, and then down through Holyrood Park towards the Canongate, where it joined the East Foul Burn.
Kincaid’s town plan of 1784, showing the location of the Guse Dub in the triangle of land at the western end of Crosscauseway, where it meets Causewayside, now Buccleuch Street. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
A house of this name once stood here, on 2 acres of ground, which was also known as the Yardhall. In 1786, an avert in the Caledonian Mercury lists a shop and house for sale in this area, described as being “on part of the lands of Goosedub and Yardhall, lying on the east side of the street, leading from Bristo Street and Chapel of Ease to the Sciennes”. In 1788, there is an insurance record for Peter Stewart, described as a baker in the “Goose Dub, near Edinburgh“. From 1805, William Brown, blacksmith, is listed as resident here in the city’s postal directory. He is joined in 1809 by James Reid, a grocer. In 1815, a Mr McCrea, resident in the Goose Dub, subscribed one pound to the city’s Waterloo Patriotic Fund. Brown is still listed under Goose Dub in 1822, at which point the place name disappears from the directories.
Looking towards the Guse Dub, an 1830 sketch by Walter Geikie. © Edinburgh City Libraries
Walter Scott refers to thethe place in his Waverley Novels, where a Scot in London attempts to argue that Edinburgh is indeed a riverine city:
“The Thames!” exclaimed Richie, in a tone of ineffable contempt- “God bless your honour’s judgement, we have at Edinburgh the Water-of-Leith and the Nor-loch!”
“And the Pow-Burn, and the Quarry-holes, and the Guse-dub, fause loon!” answered Master George, speaking Scotch with such a strong and natural emphasis.The Fortunes of Nigel, 1822, p. 43
Since the pond was drained, the Guse Dub has been a bit of a neglected wedge of open space that can’t seem to find a purpose. For many years it was the site of a drinking fountain and horse trough, but since the city turned itself over to motorcars it has been little more than a forlorn tarmac island-cum-carpark. The Causey Development Trust have been trying for a long time to improve this situation, they’ve more on their project and the history of the Guse Dub here;
The Guse Dub in 1912, a photograph by J. C. McKenzie of the Edinburgh Photographic Society. A horse drinks from the trough in its centre. © Edinburgh City Libraries
It is probable that Scott’s decision to list it that kept the place name in the popular imagination after this, and left a well known record of it that was rehabilitated in more recent times when the traditional place name signs were put around the city.
The Edinburgh and Leith Twelve Days of Christmas thread continues with a post about Swanston and the Swan Spring.
[em]If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi.[/em] Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.
These threads © 2017-2025, Andy Arthur
#Causewayside #Causey #Christmas #December30 #Southside #Toponymy #Water #Written2019
Short, factual stories on Edinburgh, Leith & (sometimes) Scottish local history.
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