Gladstone's Land

We stumbled on to a real find this weekend, I guess Shaiwal and I have been complacent in our tourist activities since the false pride of having seen everything was slowly creeping into us. In Royal Mile which is the most popular tourist destination, we found a place called the Gladstone’s land. Tucked in between many a tourist gift shop it was easy to overlook.

Gladstone’s land is a five storeyed building of which the first two have been retained as a 17th century and 18th century furnished apartment model open to tourists. The other storey’s have been retained as apartments which are even today let out to tourists by the trust. The basement used to be a pub which is now a volunteer resting room.

It was originally owned by a person called Thomas Gladstone, hence the name. It is a typical example of how people used to live 400 years ago, how their homes were, what used to be their past time and how they would have lived on a daily basis. What is most enjoyable however, are the volunteers of the National Trust of Scotland under which the property is. The volunteers have immense pride in their work and it just shows. They tirelessly and enthusiastically repeat anecdotes on the rooms, previous owners and history.

There was a 1500’s map of Edinburgh city as it was then, while Shaiwal and I studied it, the volunteer, an elderly lady, mentioned how in those days Royal mile was considered a posh area but then over times the neighbourhood changed and later on it was considered a slum tenement but now again times have changed and Royal Mile is once again a posh locality. “Life goes through a full circle,” she said at the end with a wealth of experience backed in that voice so from her mouth it sounded absolutely right.

The furniture shown there was something i really appreciated, there was beauty, use and imagination in every piece. Remember our old sewing machines which was part of a table and you had to peddle to get it going. Remember how after using the sewing machine you could tilt it into the table so that you could then use the flat surface. A simple thing really but what a thorough use it gave, well i saw many such articles here including a dining table which would fold and could be used as a stand instead.

There are 6 rooms open for public display and in each room; room cards are available in different languages explaining the history and use of each article within the room and the room itself. A step back into time, that’s how it felt and mind you I gave a silent prayer of thanks that I was now in a time with so many comforts, yes but more than that in a time with not as much discrimination or slavery or brutal society accepted torture as in those days.

There was a room depicting how a typical tailor’s room then used to be and there was on the room card there given an explanation of how if a tailor were caught trying to steal cloth or make more money by taking measurements which were inaccurate then the tailor’s ear was taken off in public as a punishment!! By the way in those days the measurement was taken using a wooden rod which is shown on the table in the picture.

The servant quarters was just a portion of the kitchen wall from which you could pull down a bed to sleep on. Plague was ever imminent and so the kitchen and food seemed to be infested with mice in those days. Chamber pots were used for a person to unload their body waste and the chamber pot was kept till the evening and then cleaned out. Many a time the people just opened their windows and threw the contents of the chamber pot right on to the streets. As a result in those days, fashion was that, ladies used to have a protective layer sewed on at the end of their gowns so that the cloth wouldn’t be dirtied while they walked the streets. Yuck!

Well all in all it was a lovely place to visit and nice slice of history to see.