July 2-Xuan Nguyen

Both in and outside of class, we have studied and have been exposed to many different facets of the Scottish culture spanning anywhere from historical facts to the modern day way of life. Today, we visited Gladstone’s Land, a tenement house built in the 15th century and has been preserved/renovated to present day. Gladstone’s Land is located on the Royal Mile (road between the Holyrood House or the queen’s palace and the Edinburgh Castle). It was built by a wealthy merchant named Thomas Gladstone.

The building has 6 floors of flats and was used as living quarters for the wealthy in what is called the Old Town. Edinburgh’s city center is divided into two main halves, the Old Town and the New Town. When the Old Town became too populated and living space was a critical issue, the New Town was built to expand Edinburgh and to provide better accommodations for the people. Walking through the tenement house we could see various parts of the flats used for different purposes. The rooms were small and heavily decorated with wooden furniture and other hand crafted goods. I found it interesting that many of the cabinets used for storage had secret compartments in them. The wood work on the bed frames was extremely intricate and elaborate.

We learned what gardy-loo meant. The tenants disposed of fecal and other bodily waste matter by throwing it out the window and they would say gardy-loo to warn people in the streets to move out of the way. During this time, diseases were rampant. Rats helped to spread the plague and living conditions were needless to say unsanitary.

Many of the tenants had live-in servants. The servants often had family and also stayed in the flats, but their living quarters were in the kitchen. Entire families would have to sleep on the kitchen floor next to the cooking area. Another interesting fact is that, those with more money lived in the bottom floors and the ones with less money lived on the top floors. Thomas Gladstone lived in this building as well, and it was known that he moved from the lower floors to the top ones. Rumor has it that he lost a significant amount of money as a result of losing a ship during a trade and had to cut down on living cost. Once the New Town was built, most of the wealthy folk moved away from the Old Town to the New Town. Tenement houses such as Gladstone’s Land in the Old Town were leased out to the commoners.

Overall, I enjoyed learning the interesting facts, but I totally got shafted. Two reasons, one- I guessed the number farthest away from Dr. Long’s number so I didn’t get to pick which excursion I blogged on. It seems to happen like this for me in most of Dr. Long’s classes. I must learn how to become better at guessing numbers. While others talked about castles, parliament and cathedrals I get to talk about an old apartment. Second reason, Gladstone’s Land is interesting but definitely not comparable to any of the other excursions.