STORY OF A STREET
Albany Street – named after the duke of Albany – was built between 1801 and 1819 as part of the second phase of the development of Edinburgh’s New Town; a suburb created to the north of the medieval old town to ease overcrowding. Like other New Town streets, the properties were designed as ‘country houses in the town’, intended for the landed gentry and professionals. When built, the houses cost around £1,700 (£1.6 million at today’s labour value). One of the earliest residents, James Balfour, a solicitor, who had just moved into number 13 in 1808 with his new wife, Anne Mackintosh, described their move: ‘I have found the carpet laid in the dining-room, it looks most beautiful; the bed was also put up, and is extremely grand!’ Friends were invited to a house-warming: ‘I had Mr. Gloag, Ferguson, and Gilbert Bertram dining with me; they were most unmerciful in the wine way – they had no less than seven bottles’.
SNAPSHOT OF A STREET
In 1820, the street housed 25 lawyers, three doctors, five widows living off independent wealth, six army or naval officers, three landowners, one minister, one architect and two professors. Some, such as the advocate, William Erskine (later Lord Kinneder), who lived at number 11, also owned country estates. As it had been Erskine who had encouraged Sir Walter Scott to publish for the first time, the great writer described him as
