Dance The Nether Bow has vanished 4907

After the battle of Flodden on 9 September, 1513, a stunning defeat that left James IV and the flower of Scottish knighthood dead upon the field, it was deemed that the old King’s Wall, built by James II in 1450, was not sufficient to protect the expanding city.

A tax of £5, an enormous amount in the 16th century, was levied on each inhabitant of the city and work began on what was to become known as the Flodden Wall. When it was finished, the wall was twenty feet high in some places and three feet thick, with numerous stout gates and towers. It defined the city’s boundaries and ran southeast from the Castle rock, across the end of the Grassmarket, cut below the land where Heriot’s Hospital would be built in the next century, around Greyfriar’s Church, then ran east, then north to cross the eastern end of the Cowgate to the Netherbow at the point where the High Street and the Canongate meet. The wall then turned west again and ended at the Nor’ Loch which protected the city north. It was punctuated by various ports or defendable gateways: the West Port at the end of the Grassmarket below the Castle rock; the Bristo Port near Greyfriars’; the Potterrow Port near the present Old College; the Cowgate Port; the Netherbow Port; and the New Port at the eastern end of the Nor’ Loch.

The finest of the gates, the Netherbow Port, was the portal through which kings and queens entered the city from Holyrood. In anticipation of the return to Edinburgh of James VI, then also James I of England, the Town Council ordered the repair and beautification of the Netherbow Port in 1607. When the king actually did return ten years later, James’ portrait and royal arms were ordered to be erected on the Netherbow Port. Charles I, however, made his official entry into the city of Edinburgh in 1633 through the West Port below the Castle, but Charles’ great-grandson, Prince Charles Edward, entered through the Netherbow Port, an entry gained without bloodshed on 17 September, 1745, when Donald Cameron of Lochiel and a small party of men stormed through the gates that had been opened to allow the coach of the city deputies treating with the prince to pass through.

In 1764 the Netherbow Port was demolished.