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The Real Mary King's Close, Edinburgh

Underground tours in Edinburgh.

I’d been really looking forward to trying out one of the underground tours but didn’t know what to expect when the wise-cracking tour guide turned up in an old-fashioned dress.  She proceeded to take the mick for the next hour as we trudged 60 feet down into the forgotten streets of Edinburgh’s past. It was fascinating to see how far down below street level the passages led, but I couldn’t help prickling at constantly being called “me dears”.

The old closes of “The Real Mary King’s Close” lie beneath what is now Warriston Close and the Town Hall. The ancient closes used to run down at  right angles from the High Street right down to the Noor Loch – which was later drained and built on, forming Prince’s Street gardens and Waverley Station. These closes were fortified with vaults before being built over. The rooms we went through dated back to the 1400′s.

The tour did dispel one myth that I had read in the Timeout guide to Edinburgh – that the Burgh council had bricked up the inhabitants in the close and left them to die of plague before sending in butchers to dismember the bodies. This was patently untrue. The truth was a law preventing contact between healthy and unhealthy – 12 feet the distance people should keep from one another. They also kept the doors of unwell households shut for six weeks once the plague had been found. Doctor George Rae would be the only person allowed into a plague household – and if the plague victims didn’t have a hard enough time, the guy trying to help them was dressed in head to foot black leather and wore a mask with a beak full of herbs. This was to protect him against “miasma” – or bad air – but helpfully it also stopped the plague carrying fleas from getting to him. They did send in the cleaners after most people had dies as well. They would light fires in the middle of the rooms to smoke out the bad air.

There were two types of plague; pneumonic and bubonic. Pneumonic you either survived or died, bubonic could be treated by cutting out the pus-filled boils and cauterising the wounds – without any anaesthetic.

Edinburgh's Mary King's Close

There are plenty of ghost stories to accompany the tour, with one room containing a shrine to “Annie” – supposedly a poltergeist spoken to by a medium in the early 1990′s. The plague victim was allegedly locked in a room by her parents and left to die by her parents’ before coming back to haunt the former house to look for her doll. People have left loads of toys to placate the spirit giving the room a really tacky and slightly unnerving edge. So many people must have bought a second £10 tour to go back and leave those dolls and soft animals. The other ghost story consisted of us all sitting in the dark and listening to a recording while our guide banged some stuff on the floor. My friend jumped in fear but I just rolled my eyes.

Not to be boring or anything, but I was more interested in the history of the place rather than the suggestion that some of the men might have boils on their groin from the plague. We also got left in the room and told that we were being quarantined for six weeks. This bit I couldn’t really understand as there weren’t any children in our party. Amazingly, though, some of the other adults on the tour seemed to think these jokes were just hilarious. Meanwhile, I would have just liked to have mooched round with a more historically minded guide and a lot less theatre.

The best bit was at the end – where you could see all the way up the close and peer in a workshop which was utilised as recently as the 1930′s. This made me realise that there must be a much more straightforward entrance through the iron gate/ fire exit at the bottom. No need to descend from the high street then. Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t mind hearing the ghost stories and it was amazing to see all the rooms and staircases forming a warren below the city. I just didn’t being drawn into the role-play exercise. £10 is too much to pay for being whisked around the close by an underpaid actor – try one of the other tours to avoid disappointment.