Flodden Wall Virtual Tour

You can preview one of the three Flodden Wall virtual tours

in  this CD-ROM here.  You can also buy it here and           

gain access to much much more than is shown in the preview.

The Flodden Wall is one of Edinburgh’s historic forgotten    secrets and it is revealed in full in this comprehensive virtual    tour.

Many of Edinburgh’s thousands of visitors each year don’t realize that a wall existed (and still exists) around the  medieval old town.  In fac, Edinburgh had three historic walls although only the latter two, the Flodden Wall and Telfer Wall, remain.  Many of the venues for the famous  Edinburgh International Festival and the Festival Fringe are within the boundaries of the Flodden Wall and in this tour you will get to go on an interactive virtual tour around the route of the wall.

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Edinburgh Castle

 Our tour starts at the world famous Edinburgh 

 Castle, surely our town’s most famous and awe-

 inspiring landmark.  Our first location is the castle

 Esplanade – home to the famous Military Tattoo

 but we’re soon off down the steep slopes on our

 way to the Grassmarket as we follow the path of

 the Flodden Wall down to Granny's Green and

 the  Grassmarket.  We cross over past the site of

 the West Port and up the Vennel. 

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West Port - Burke and Hare

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The West Port is synonymous with the seedier side of Edinburgh’s history and is probably best known as the haunt of the famous bodysnatchers Burke and Hare…who never actually bothered to go to the effort of actually ‘snatching’ a body and instead cut the middle man out, so to speak! They murdered their victims and delivered their fresh corpses to the anatomist Dr Robert Knox.   The West Port itself was one of the gates, or 'ports'  in the Flodden Wall.  This CD-ROM will take you around all of these ports. 

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          The Vennel (from the Castle)                           The West Port

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The Vennel contains some of the best preserved remains of the Flodden Wall and gives us a chance to learn about how and why the wall was built.  All of these are covered in much more detail in the CD-ROM but we can content ourselves here with the knowledge that the wall was too little, too late and not very effective at keeping much out!  Very soon we come to a junction of the Flodden Wall and Telfer Wall - this virtual tour lets you explore both and follow your progress with some archive maps.

We visit the historic, and supposedly haunted, Greyfriars Kirkyard and explore a few more clues to the route of the wall.  Greyfiars Kirkyard, home to the faithful ‘Greyfriars Bobby’, positively oozes historic atmosphere and contains at least 150,000 of Old Edinburgh’s residents!  People buried here have some fascinating stories in their own right and these, and much much more, are covered in our ‘Virtual Greyfriars’ CD-ROM.   The Flodden Wall tour is a unique tool to find out about Old Edinburgh and life in the capital during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

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The Flodden Wall then continues along to the Pleasance and on our way there we get a chance to find out more about the murder of Henry, Lord Darnley – husband to Mary, Queen of Scots…our tour passes over the place where, quite possibly, his body was found after an explosion in the house in which he was staying.

One of the best preserved stretches of the wall indicates the route until we come to the Cowgate – now home to many of Edinburgh’s most popular pubs and clubs but once a grand residential area before turning into slums.

We finish up with the pretty Netherbow Port, sadly no longer there but well documented, John Knox’s House and the site of the old Nor’ Loch.

The Flodden Wall : A Virtual Visit takes you round these locations in three distinct virtual tours.  Historic information is linked with archive images and maps to bring Old Edinburgh back to life.