The long history of Edinburgh Castle

Nestled high above the city of Edinburgh is the very reason there is a city there at all. It is the Castle. As the city has grown and developed over the years, as a marketplace for wool in the mediaeval period, a ship building and manufacturing centre in the Industrial revolution, to the tech and innovation business centre it is today, including Web Design Edinburgh based companies like Design Hero as an example, the castle has seen it all.

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It started out life as some kind of Iron age settlement. Although we can’t be sure of its use back then, we can make certain assumptions based on the evidence. Given the huge numbers of Wolves and Bears at the time, the human inhabitants would have needed somewhere high to defend and protect themselves and their livestock.

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The name of the place stems from a tale of direct translation. It is written that the castle was “byggyd” (built or burgh) by Ebrawce, a notable king of the Britons. This gave us the name Edinburgh meaning “built by Ebrawce”. However, the histories, written by Geoffery of Monmouth, also mentions that he had forty children from twenty wives, so we should be a little sceptical. It might mean Castle of the Maidens as well.

Regardless of its origins, being a high and rocky place meant that its continuation as the castle went on through the centuries. It was the scene of many ownership changes during the Scottish wars of independence and was almost levelled by cannon fire in the late 16th Century.