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Publication Account
Date 1951
Event ID 1096764
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1096764
131. The Assembly Rooms, George Street.
Maitland records (1) that the practice of holding assemblies, or subscription dances, began in Edinburgh about 1710. From then until 1746 the assemblies were carried on as a private enterprise for profit, but in the latter year two Edinburgh merchants took the business over, formed a committee to manage it, and applied the profits to charity. For the ensuing year the assemblies were continued in the original premises, a house in the West Bow which had been built in 1602 by Peter Somerville, a merchant (2) ; then other quarters, described by Maitland (3) as "a spacious Edifice with handsome and convenient Apartments" were secured in New Assembly Close, on the S. side of the High Street below St. Giles' Church. Ten years later they were removed to Bell's Wynd (4). Topham, in his Letters from Edinburgh (5), gives some interesting particulars of the assemblies held in the years 1774 and 1775, which may be compared with the details given by Arnot (6) a decade later. Arnot also mentions that new premises were required on account of the inconvenience of the existing arrangements, and these were soon obtained. Creech notes (7) that by 1786 the old Assembly Rooms had been taken over by the City guard and that there were then "three new elegant assembly rooms at Edinburgh besides one at Leith"; but although the assemblies had multiplied, he says that the contributions to charity were exiguous. Of the three assembly rooms in Edinburgh, one catered for the Old Town, though whether this was situated in Bell's Wynd as stated by Wilson (supra) or elsewhere is uncertain; the second, built at No. 15 Buccleuch Place about 1784, served the district of George Square; while the third, projected for the New Town, was still in course of construction, in George Street, in 1786. But as Creech points out (8), by 1790 public dances were giving way to private entertainments - for which the spacious residences of the New Town were admirably suited - and in point of fact a considerable time elapsed before the assembly rooms of the New Town became popular.
This building still stands on the S. side of George Street. Its ashlar front is restrained and dignified, having a rusticated basement and a pilastered superstructure surmounted by an entablature; in the centre is a tetrastyle portico with a pediment above and three archways below. From the outset there has been a shop on either side of the portico. The apsidal structure within the colonnade, and the two low wings situated one at each end of the front, are later additions.
In the original arrangement there was a ballroom9 2 ft. long by 42 ft. wide, a tea-room 50 ft. by 36 ft. and a "grand saloon" 38 ft. by 44 ft. in addition to smaller apartments. "The inside may be pronounced to be elegance itself" says a visitor of 1818 (9). In that year the money collected, after deducting the expenses of lighting, music and refreshments, was applied to the Charity Workhouse and the Royal Infirmary. In 1843 the original building was extended in the Music Hall as far S. as Rose Street.
RCAHMS 1951, visited c.1941
(1) History, p. 187. (2) Wilson, Memorials, ii, pp.23,118. (3) Loc. cit. (4) Wilson, op. cit., p. 23. 5 pp. 346-54. (6) History, p. 382. (7) Letters in Stat. Acct.,1792, vi, p. 618. (8) Ibid., p. 619. (9) The New Picture of Edinburgh, p. 185.
