Tag Archives: Holyrood Park

The Queen’s/King’s Park: Part 2

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When I was growing up, my Scottish grandfather, whose real name was Alexander McKay, had a series of lame jokes he would often repeat at certain times and places – what we might refer to now as ‘dad jokes’ (or ‘grandad jokes’). For example, if we were upstairs on the number 1 double decker bus going into Edinburgh – and we always travelled on the top deck for the views – we could see over the wall into the cemetery at Dalry. That’s the dead centre of town he would quip, a statement I never found funny on two accounts. Firstly, as a solemn little girl I didn’t think we should be making fun of the dead; and secondly, it was clear to me that this graveyard was not actually in the centre of town at all.

Grandad liked graveyards though, and I feel sure that this joke was one he used to better effect at Greyfriars Kirkyard. Not only is it actually in the centre of Edinburgh’s Old Town, but it’s also famous for the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, erected outside the entrance to commemorate the loyal dog that is said to have refused to leave the grave of his master for many years. Now the statue is always crowded by tourists rubbing its shiny nose (said to bring good luck) and taking endless photographs, but fifty years ago Edinburgh’s Old Town still looked dark and gloomy, and Bobby seemed sad and alone on his pedestal. I remember then feeling quite upset by the story of that little terrier and trying to imagine what kind of a life Bobby would have had in such a bleak place.

When Grandad himself died a few years later – much too young, in retrospect – there was no grave for him. Just an entry in a memorial book and ashes in the rose garden at Warrington Crematorium. I’ve only ever once been to view the spot, and that was when it was the turn of my grandmother’s cremation two decades later. Unlike in the case of my grandmother, I did not attend my Grandad’s funeral, even though I was already a teenager by then. All I remember was being taken to the zoo, along with my sister and our visiting English cousin, and then my father bringing us children back to my grandmother’s house for tea and cakes. There I met a sea of unrecognisable elderly relatives who were mainly distracted by the bright red curly hair and strange accent of my cousin, leaving me mostly in peace to wonder whether it had been disrespectful to go to the zoo on such a day and why the guests were not all in floods of tears.

But Grandad’s ‘mysterious illness’ had started several years earlier, not long after that trip to see the statue of Greyfriars Bobby. We had gone on a rare outing to Holyrood Park. I’m not sure now whether the plan had been to climb Arthur Seat or just to meander on the many paths that go through the area and have a picnic – as my grandparents would have done in their courting days, fifty years previously – but I do remember we’d not got too far up the hill behind the Palace before my grandfather took ‘a turn’ and then collapsed on the grass. At the time I didn’t understand what was going on, and at first thought he was just larking about, until my grandmother’s agitation and the fact that a taxi was called for to take us straight home, made me soon realise it was serious. There were strangers, too, that day who aided and comforted us and I have the feeling my sister and myself were in matching summer dresses, as if it were a more formal occasion. 

Paths Behind Holyrood Palace

The same Grandad never returned to us after that time. Maybe that was why I never wanted to go back to Holyrood Park until long afterwards when I lived in the Canongate and the memory of that frightening event had almost been forgotten. Then I could no longer easily recall the arrival of the blacker-than-black cab and shrinking back from the life-size doll that had replaced Grandad, and which was carefully helped into the back of the taxi.

Why is Holyrood? Grandad used to say in the time before his fall. I don’t know Grandad, why is Holly rude? we would say in return. Because it looks up Arthur’s Seat! This was a most un-Grandad like joke, and the first time I heard it I remember feeling almost shocked that my religious, non-swearing, tee-totalling grandfather could even think of such a thing. The joke’s impact was also lessened by the fact that the first time I heard it I did not understand what ‘seat’ meant in this context. Like many of Grandad’s rather lame jokes, which my mother had also heard growing up, it wasn’t really designed for the very young, missing the mark either linguistically or culturally. 

But Grandad told us, too, that Arthur’s Seat was both a lion and an extinct volcano. And that Holyrood actually meant holy cross and was the place where the Queen stayed when she visited Scotland, as well as the scene of many hundreds of years of bloody Scottish history. So now when I think of Grandad and Holyrood Park, it’s not that day when I sat upon a lump of rock at the side of the path with my little sister and the comforting strangers, but the time we were ‘guests of honour’ at the palace after hours. And all this was because Grandad had once been a magic man who’d brought light to places where there was once darkness, and who’d reportedly carried out secret war work while working as an electrician for the surreal-sounding Ministry of Works.

My Grandfather (far left) with Work Colleagues, c1940

On that afternoon we met one of Grandad’s old colleagues at the side door of the Palace (the tradesmen’s entrance) and were taken through each of the rooms in turn, allowed to romp free while Grandad chatted to his friend. I remember pretending the palace belonged to us – which it did that day when it was closed to the public – and feeling quite grown-up at the fact that I knew better than to expect to meet the Queen. That absurd notion had been disabused when we’d gone to Buckingham Palace a couple of years previously. Not only was I disappointed that we were unable to take tea with Her Majesty, but we weren’t even able to get beyond the main gates! My father’s pleasure at being back in London and seeing the changing of the guards again, encouraged him to quote the first lines of the A.A. Milne poem They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace, Christopher Robin went down with Alice a book he remembered from his own pre-Blitz childhood. But his excitement was not infectious, such was my disappointment in the fact that we were left to stare at an ugly, un-palace like building with hundreds of other people. No wonder Queen Victoria had reputedly never liked it, I thought to myself, years later.

But Holyrood at least resembled a fairy tale palace from the outside, if a little austere and Scottish, and while the ropes strung up against the treasures in the rooms might have been off-putting to the general public, I seem to remember (although I could be wrong here!) that while alone in the palace we were able to slip under them as long as we did not touch the artefacts as well as visiting rooms the public never got to see. After that afternoon, my grandfather became elevated in my mind from the humble electrician whose byzantine underfloor wiring in our own house made my father swear in frustration, to someone entangled with royalty and secrets and the blood of David Rizzio.

Grandad, thank you for giving me one of the best days of my childhood!

The Incidental Genealogist, November 2022

The Queen’s/King’s Park: Part 1

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When I was growing up, our small market town possessed one old-fashioned department store which dated from the final years of Queen Victoria. The shop had always been known as Hourstons but at some time in the seventies it changed its name to Arnotts. However, everyone of a certain age continued to call it Hourstons. Many years later it reverted back to its original name, a change which confused a new generation of shoppers who’d grown up only knowing the store as Arnotts. This was confounded by the fact that some of the original Hourston-callers (who might have been able to quickly adapt to the new/old name) had eventually ceased to have such worldly cares as shopping. By then, calling the shop Arnotts marked someone out as being of a certain age, rather than the reverse.

And so it was for the British population last month, as we moved seamlessly from a queen to a king, while wondering about the names and faces and pronouns that would have to change on our money, stamps and passports, amongst other things. My mother remembered that same change seventy years ago when she was fourteen and in her final year at school. It was an era when most people under fifty had only known a series of kings, although the older generation still had fond memories of ‘the Old Queen’. Even by the time I was old enough to become aware of the whole business of monarchy, there were still plenty of elderly people around who had lived through the last years of Victoria’s reign, albeit mostly as children. Much like the presence of First World war veterans pottering on their allotments while silently carrying their war stories, this did not seem out of the ordinary.

Yet, only last month, as I was discussing my Scottish family’s connection to Holyrood Park, my mother confused me by calling it The King’s Park (the park’s other name when she was growing up). It was only later when I questioned her about the anomaly, as I was sure it was actually The Queen’s Park, that I discovered that the name changed along with the monarch. Thus, for my great-grandmother (b1874) it was possibly always The Queen’s Park (after Victoria); and, in a parallel with today, I can imagine how the name might have lived on while everyone had to adjust to the idea of an elderly king with very few people having any memory of the last time a male monarch was on the throne

I wonder how long it will take for the new name to slip easily of the tongue now? However, just like the previous time Holyrood Park took on the alternative appellation, it will possibly remain as The King’s Park long enough for everyone to eventually become used to the title, even if the idea of calling the park after a monarch does seem an outdated one. For those of us born in a less deferential age, Holyrood Park has always been the more commonly used term, in any case.

Arthur’s Seat, Holyrood Park, Edinburgh

This summer, I spent a happy afternoon in Holyrood Park (I cannot call it anything else), climbing Arthur Seat and exploring the ruins of the late medieval St. Anthony’s Chapel, built close to an underground spring. The royal park was once the hunting ground of monarchs and would have been a welcome view to those living in the crowded tenements which abutted the space, as well as a source of fresh air and a recreational space for the residents. These cheek-by-jowl tenements had sprung up in the 19th century to house the workers of the many surrounding factories and breweries, including my grandmother’s family. The Neilsons rented a top storey tenement with their own indoor toilet and a small functional balcony which overlooked the park (see A Tenement with a View), so lived in relative comfort, despite their lack of indoor space.

Catherine Neilson, Dumbiedykes Balcony, Edinburgh, c 1910

This photograph of my great-grandmother on the balcony of the Neilson’s tenement in the Dumbiedykes is one that I only came across recently, hidden at the back of the cupboard in an album belonging to my great-uncle Adam which had somehow become separated from the rest of the photograph boxes (see Messy Boxes). Too late to be included in my original post about the tenement balcony, it has found the ideal niche in this month’s story. And while it might not be of the same quality as the later photographs taken on the balcony (between 1930 and 1945), this informal image of a much younger great-grandmother is a rare find. It was probably taken when she was in her mid-thirties and had finally become used to a king on the throne, after having known only a queen for almost the first three decades of her life.

Adam and Margaret Neilson, Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, c1925

Another spontaneous photograph I treasure is of a great-great uncle and aunt in Holyrood Park in the days when people still dressed up to walk and picnic there on a Sunday. It’s one of the only pictures we possess of my great-grandfather’s older brother, Adam, and his wife Margaret. Adam Neilson was a blacksmith by trade – like his namesake father – and had grown up locally with his brother Robert (my great grandfather) and their five other siblings. Their parents had come to the city from the Borders region after their marriage, and like many new immigrants from the countryside had settled in the Dumbiedykes, near to the industrial centre. Adjoining steps near the bottom of the ladder of the seven Neilson children, the brothers appear to have remained close all their lives and no doubt would have sometimes met up on Sunday outings to the park in fine weather.

On the way to Arthur’s Seat, Holyrood Park, Edinburgh

As I walked up Arthur’s Seat on that dull August day this summer, welcome glimpses of sunlight lighting up the gorse bushes which scattered the hillside, I was aware that my Edinburgh ancestors had been ‘taking the air’ in Holyrood Park for the last 150 years and I was simply following this tradition. A piece of ‘wildness’ in the city that has changed little over the centuries, the park is described on its website as such: Holyrood Park is a rare example of unimproved grassland. Effectively unchanged since its enclosure as a Royal Park in the 16th century, it is rich in plant species and also provides a home to a variety of important invertebrate, amphibian, mammal and bird species. To find such a wildlife haven in the heart of a capital city is remarkable.

It is perhaps no coincidence that my grandmother’s family all lived well into their eighties and nineties. In comparison to my London ancestors (many of whom died young of bronchitis or tuberculosis) they seemed to be less afflicted by respiratory diseases. While ‘good genes’ are obviously important in determining longevity, proximity to such a large area of ‘wilderness’ must have played a role in keeping the Neilsons disease-free, as well as helping to promote a healthy lifestyle.

When my great-grandmother died in 1968 at the age of 94, the family were told that she had just reached the end of her natural life. Like the late Queen, her cause of death was put down to ‘old age’. And she had also simply wound down after a lifetime of being busy.

To be continued in Part 2 next month.

The Incidental Genealogist, October 2022