Edinburgh, Pleasance, Quaker Meeting Hall

Headland Archaeology Ltd was commissioned to carry out a desk-based assessment and walkover survey of land along the western side of Viewcraig Gardens, and lying directly behind the Pleasance Sports and Exercise Centre and Sports Union of the University of Edinburgh, which occupy two former 19th Century breweries. Map evidence suggests that whilst most of this area was scarped during the construction of the Dumbiedykes housing estate in the 1960s/1970s, some level areas directly behind the former breweries may be undisturbed. Archaeological remains relating either to the breweries, or to earlier post-medieval settlement/cultivation around the extra-mural suburb of Pleasance, may, therefore, survive.

Headland Archaeology 2005

Headland archaeology undertook archaeological monitoring of

internal alterations and extension to the Pleasance Theatre Building

including the construction of disabled access and photographic

survey of the Quaker Meeting House at 42–76 Pleasance, Edinburgh.

Information from Aisling Fitzpatrick and Matt Ginnever (Headland Archaeology) April 2017. OASIS ID: headland1-276540

A photographic survey of the Quaker meeting house was undertaken following the removal of a wooden or plywood floors. The structure consisted of a rectangular stone brick building with a roughcast exterior and plain interior room. The original layout of the structure appeared to have been a single large room, with 3 pairs of arched windows on the eastern and western elevations. A fireplace was located centrally on the southern wall, a small cupboard or niche on the eastern wall and the original entrance door in the western wall. Large fragments of render survived on the walls, although it is unclear if this was original or not. Extensive later alterations were evident; the arched tops of the southernmost window in the eastern wall and the two windows in the southern wall, had been squared off, also with roughcast stone. A line of holes for a raised floor level could be seen cutting halfway across the windows, particularly in the southern half of the structure, possible the result of a later addition of a partial mezzanine floor. The southern window on the western wall had been bricked up at some stage, and two additional doors had been punched through the southern wall, one of which had then also been bricked up. At the north-eastern corner of the building, the arched window had been converted into a door, and evidence of the remnants of a staircase could be seen as a shadow on the eastern wall interior. Removal of the floorboards of the building revealed concrete floor supports of modern origin, with brick, concrete and breeze block supporting joists for the timbers. There was no evidence of earlier flooring.

Information from Aisling Fitzpatrick and Matt Ginnever (Headland Archaeology) April 2017. OASIS ID: headland1-276540