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Has anyone seen the Edinburgh Vaults?

I would like to visit the Edinburgh Vaults during my next trip to Scotland. Is it worth while to see or is there something better?

Public Comments

1. Try Mary King's Close. Although Mary King's Close may be considered apart from the Edinburgh Vaults, it was once the shopping street in Edinburgh. Beneath the Royal Mile and the City Chambers lie a few closes, narrow streets packed with tenement buildings, originally seven stories high. In 1753 the council decided to build the Royal Exchange (the City Chambers), knocking down the top houses and using the lower buildings as the foundations. ... Mary King herself ran a market stall selling fine lace amongst other things. There was also a saw maker's business that did very well, running for 150 years. There was even an urban cow shed, where cows were stored (in terrible conditions) before being taken to Fleshmarket Close to be slaughtered. You can stand in it today - it still smells. ... Most of Mary King's Close is still intact. ... It runs from the High Street, and before Cockburn Street was built it ran all the way to Market Street. The close was opened to the public in 2003. Mary King's Close was officially declared one of the world's most haunted places. Mary King moved here with her four children in 1629 after her husband died. Her living room is recreated with items listed in her actual will ... One of the most important - and saddest - among a multitude of rooms that witnessed much sadness is one in which eight-year-old Annie died of the plague in 1645. A Japanese psychic, visiting in 1992 ... claimed to feel a tug at her leg. Annie, in rags with long dirty hair, was standing by the window, crying because she had lost her family, her dog and her doll. The psychic brought Annie a doll to comfort her - and people from around the world have been leaving trinkets and toys ever since. One of the most unsettling experiences I have ever had was in the Edinburgh vaults on our latest trip to Scotland. Being guests of the Scottish Tourist Board certainly opened the doors to many things we would not have experienced otherwise, but what we saw in the vaults was especially unique. There are several tour companies that invite you to meet the ghosts and ghouls of the night in both Edinburgh and Glasgow. We joined Mercat Tours in Edinburgh and our guide, Fran, for a walking tour of the Royal Mile and the vaults by night. In addition to seeing such historic sites as the Heart of Midlothian, a heart shaped configuration of stones in the sidewalk near Mercat Cross; we also saw the marker for John Knox's grave. In themselves, maybe not all that was interesting, except that one does not walk on the Heart of Midlothian. Bad luck you ask? No. Everyone spits on it. Good luck? No. They are spitting on the condemned man who sat in a cell in the old jail on the same site hundreds of years ago. Oh, and John Knox's grave is marked by a small pinkish rectangular stone on the ground. It is easily seen by night, but harder to find during the day. Why? Because a car is usually parked on it. The graveyard was paved over and is actually in lot #44 behind St. Giles Cathedral. The height of the night was our tour of the vaults. In the 16th Century, the Cowgate area was a very fashionable place just outside the city gates. Today it is a forlorn underpass as the South Bridge, built in the 1780s, towers over it. At the time the bridge was built, the land under it was excavated for several floors of rooms and underground chambers, virtually forgotten until recently. The vaults contained families of 7-10 people in rooms the size of a small bedroom with no ventilation or windows and a fireplace that provided some form of heat. The vaults were lighted with fish oil lamps, which combined with stale waste from garbage and chamber pots which were emptied into the streets after the 10pm curfew each night, must had made the area barely habitable. Apparently merchants flocked to be there. Shops contained the businesses of cobblers and watchmakers and acted as storage for wine and other products, which were guarded by underground caretakers. Norrie Rowan bought the site in Niddry Street in 1995 and started the excavations of the vaults. The entrance was through a door on Niddry Street and after unlocking the creaky thing with a large skeleton key, our guide took us down several flights of stone stairs into a dimly lit hallway. The rooms, numbering some 20 that have currently been excavated, were dank, dark and damp. The area had been filled in about 100 years ago as disease flourished and as it became more and more wet. You could still see the trickling of water from the ceilings in areas. What a job it must have been to dig it all out. An even bigger job to fill in the rooms or collapse ceilings 100 years ago. Our guide, Fran, was a wonderful storyteller. She explained life in the rooms, what business had taken place and what articles were found after the excavation started. She also noted several spirits were frequently reported by visitors.
2. I have been to the Edinburgh Vaults and to Mary King's Close, both before they were opened to the public. They are both very interesting and show clearly the reality of Edinburgh Old town living in the past. Mary King's Close, I found to be more interesting, because it was never filled in, it was just covered over by new buildings, so it was exactly as it was centuries ago. The Arches of the South bridge, once used as workshops and living space were filled in leaving just one arch visible over the Cowgate. If you are interesting in ghosts, this is the place to visit as many visitors have experienced unusual happenings although St Marys Close is rumoured to be haunted as well.