West End, Edinburgh


The West End of Edinburgh, Scotland, forms a large part of the city centre. The West End boasts many of the city's arts venues, such as the Usher Hall, the Filmhouse, the Royal Lyceum and the Traverse Theatre. The Village hosts art festivals and crafts fairs.
The northern half of the West End lies in Edinburgh's World Heritage Site, of which it makes up a fair proportion. As can be inferred by its inclusion in this, this area of the city contains many buildings of great architectural beauty, primarily long rows and crescents of Georgian terraced houses.

Background

In 1615 John Byres the city Treasurer built a new house called Coates Hall to the west of the city. The house had a truly huge estate, stretching to St Cuthbert's Church.
Around 1800 the estate was bought by William Walker who began developing the east section of the estate, adjacent to the then newly built New Town. This included William Street and Walker Street, named after himself. He also developed Melville Street, Atholl Crescent and Coates Crescent.
Walker left the land north and south of his home as garden ground and it remained such until the 1870s. The estate was inherited by his two spinster daughters: Mary and Barbara Walker. They began to sell off the western section of the estate for development around 1860. Devout Episcopalians they gifted their own garden and fully underwrote the entire cost of building an Epicopalian Cathedral as a centrepiece for the whole West End. This begun in 1873 and opened in 1879 and was named St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral. The Walker's funds did not cover the cost of all three spires. The two front spires were not added until 1917.
Although built as a residential district, for most of the 20th century buildings were predominantly in office use.
Retail uses are concentrated on Shandwick Place, West Maitland Street and Queensferry Street where the area abuts the Moray Estate. William Street is the only street which has a continual commercial ground floor of 19th century character.

Transport

Rail

station is in the West End.

Tram

The island tram stop at Coates Crescent on Shandwick Place was named West End - Princes Street prior to opening at the request of local traders. As this stop sits on a switching point, it can act as an eastern terminus when Princes Street is closed to traffic. The Princess Street suffix was dropped in 2019 with the stop becoming West End.c

Buses

The Shandwick Place/ Maitland Street corridor is well-served by Lothian Buses and other operators with destinations outwith Edinburgh.
All buses eastwards go to Princes Street, where there are easy links to the Lothian Road corridor. Westward routes split at Haymarket: either to the Gorgie/Dalry district or westwards to Roseburn, Murrayfield and Corstorphine.