Passageways leading to the underground streets are uneven and the earthen floors unpaved.
by JOLEEN LUNJEW
A subterranean labyrinth of streets lies beneath Edinburgh�s famous Royal Mile, preserving with it the secrets of a forgotten past . . . until now that is.
Walking along the cobbled streets of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland, one would never imagine that a whole city exists underground, where people once lived, worked and died.
The buried city is shrouded in legend, many of which tell of plague victims being left to starve and die and of headless ghosts roaming the forsaken streets. I was intrigued. Really intrigued.
�You mean to say that I am walking above an entire city? A city buried beneath a city?� I asked Anand Ram, a friend who has lived in Edinburgh for eight years now. �Yes,� he said.
�The Scottish people lived in deplorable, over-crowded conditions in a maze of narrow closes or streets in the 17th century. There was no sanitation at the time and people were living in their own filth. Waste was thrown onto the streets for it to trickle down to the lake where the Waverly Train Station is now. Diseases spread easily, and you can imagine the stench.
�Because of the limited space, buildings grew upwards, up to eight storeys, with the wealthy close to the top, above all the filth, and the poor at the bottom in the midst of it.
�As the years went by, the rich decided that it was time they distanced themselves from the poverty, and so in 1753, the authorities decided to cover this part of town by cropping the high-storey buildings to make way for a new building, what you know as the City Chambers today.
Danger lurks around every corner.
�The poor continued to live partially underground beneath this monstrous building. Slowly they were evicted by the Town Council, who bought up properties to extend the City Chambers, burying the city below. The last recorded resident was Andrew Chesney, a saw-maker who left the tenement in 1902.
�One part of the city, Mary King�s Close, was rediscovered, restored and opened to the public in April 2003. You can visit the place to see how it was like back then. It�s quite interesting.�
It certainly sounded like it was worth a visit.
At the information centre, I was informed that a company was contracted to reconstruct the close through a detailed archaeological study and based on research on documents and town records. What they have rebuilt is a network of four closes below the Royal Mile containing the remains of original townhouses and rooms dating back to the 1500s, all preserved in an authentic environment.
This place provides an amazing insight into life in Edinburgh between the 16th and 19th centuries.
The one-hour tour is conducted by costumed characters who tell visitors stories of everyday life here in those days. As the characters are based on people who once lived here and the stories told are real-life events gleaned from Scottish archives, there is a real resonance to them.
My guide�s character was Jonet Nimmo, the youngest daughter of Mary King. Dressed in 17th century fashion, frilly dress, bonnet and all, �Nimmo� began by telling us a little bit about herself and her mother. Then she led us down a dark stairway to the eerie streets below.
Gifts left to appease Annie�s spirit.
THE REAL MARY KING�S CLOSE
The uneven passageways and earthen floors were narrow and dark, with only tiny oil lamps illuminating the darkness. Dim lighting was indeed all that they had back in those days and it was easy in the gloom to conjure up creepy images of dangerous characters lurking around the corners.
The air was dank and stifling, not good for those with asthma, and the place is not disabled-friendly. You couldn�t get down here in a wheelchair.
Nimmo brought us from room to room, each of which she brought to life with stories of its inhabitants. As she told us about their lives, the people became real to us. It was like we were transported back in time.
It was fascinating to learn how the butchers, bakers, blacksmiths and other merchants conducted their day-to-day activities and the trials and tribulations each had to face. Besides the realistic lighting, there was also smell. A sour animal odour wafted through the still air as we approached a room, which we realised was a cow shed. We should have guessed it with our noses.
As Nimmo explained the use of the shed, a frightening, sorrowful wail pierced the air. Nimmo sighed at this and said another victim had fallen to the dreaded plague.
A cut-away model of the closes in the mid-17th century, a view of the buildings from the outside and today�s City Chambers (in white outline) above the buried closes.
Confused, we followed Nimmo to the next room where a strange scene unfolded. In that gloomy room, a chilling figure in a bird-like mask and a heavy leather cloak was tending to a bedridden young boy who was covered with sores and boils. Another woman, presumably the boy�s mother, lay sick in another bed, her skin covered in black patches. On the floor was a wrapped body.
This was supposedly the home of John Craig, a grave-digger who had already succumbed to the plague. The body was his, awaiting collection from the �foul clengers�, the clean-up crew during the plague which immobilised Edinburgh and claimed more than half the city�s population.
Deeply disturbed, we left the room to enter the supposedly haunted home of legal agent Thomas Coltheart. Here we were treated to a re-enactment of a ghostly scene complete with smoke, light and dreadful ghoulish groans. Ghost stories abound in this subterranean city.
In 1992, Aiko Gibo, a visiting Japanese psychic, visited a room where she said she felt a lot of pain and unhappiness. She claimed that a little girl named Annie was clutching her trouser leg, asking tearfully why her mummy left her.
Gibo brought a doll to comfort Annie and said that as long as the doll remained, the room would never again be disturbed by her spirit. Ever since then, people from all over the world have been bringing Annie dolls, toys and children�s books, most of which are donated to the Sick Kid�s Friends� Foundation at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh.
One part of the room is always colder than the rest, and this is said to indicate the presence of Annie�s spirit. But being a sceptic, I thought it could very well be just what it was � a cold draft.
Although Edinburgh has many other attractions rich in history, these serpentine passageways and the people who lived here are what have left the most impression on me. I emerged from the dark underground an hour after going in, thankful for the simple life I had above ground, with its beautiful sunshine and fresh air.
The Real Mary King�s Close is open daily with tours departing every 20 minutes. Admission is �9.50 (RM60) for adults. Visit
www.realmarykingsclose.com for details.
Source
The Black Plague
The story of Mary King�s Close is closely related to the terrible plague that swept through Edinburgh in 1645, being the hardest hit area of the city.
Believed to be the Bubonic plague, the pandemic killed more than half the city�s population.
Victims displayed flu-like symptoms, followed by buboes, or pus-filled lymph nodes, which ruptured and killed the patient through septicaemia and mucus-filled boils. Death was slow and painful, though not inevitable.
Those who contracted the pneumonic form of the plague died quickly as the disease attacked the lungs and turned the body �black� from haemorrhaging, hence the term the �black death�.
Doctors wore herb-filled, beak-like masks to protect themselves from airborne infection and leather cloaks to protect themselves from flea bites, but many died all the same, as did Edinburgh�s first official plague doctor, Jon Paulitius.
During the outbreak, businesses came to a standstill, with the town council fully engaged in organising care for the sick, disinfecting the affected houses and preventing citizens from leaving town. Despite the popular myth, victims were not walled up in the closes and left to starve. They were instead quarantined in various places with a small white flag hung from the windows as a warning.
Food and drinks were delivered to those with the white flags until they recovered or died, whichever came first, and plague doctors would visit the victims to drain the buboes.
After a death in a home, �foul clengers� who wore grey tunics marked with the cross of St Andrew, Scotland�s patron saint, would visit the home and cleanse it. Cleansing was done by burning goods, bedding, clothing and even the roof thatch. Many were left homeless because of this.
The worst was over by the autumn of 1646, but not before the outbreak had killed a substantial part of the Scottish population
