2009
NT2573 : Advocate's Close, High Street
taken 16 years ago, near to Edinburgh, Scotland
Advocate's Close, High Street
The close is named after its most distinguished former occupant, Sir James Stewart, Lord Advocate from 1692 to 1713, whose house stood at its foot. The lower half of the close disappeared with the creation of Cockburn Street.
"You peep under an arch, you descend stairs that look as if they would land you in a cellar, you turn to the back-window of a grimy tenement in a lane:- and behold! you are face-to-face with distant and bright prospects. You turn a corner, and there is the sun going down into the Highland hills. You look down an alley, and see ships tacking for the Baltic." -- Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes, 1879
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"I walked off very gravely though much intoxicated. Ranged through the streets till, having run hard down the Advocate's Close, which is very steep, I found myself on a sudden bouncing down an almost perpendicular stone stair. I could not stop, but when I came to the bottom of it, fell with a good deal of violence, which sobered me much." -- James Boswell, journal entry 1774
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