The Small (and Free) Museums of Edinburgh

The wooden floorboards squeak and creak beneath my feet as I walk round the centuries-old building, dipping my head as I pass through doorways that extend little higher than my chin. There are enormous fireplaces, recesses in the walls, thick and antiquated wooden doors, and more grandfather clocks than I can recall seeing in one place. 

Among the many items which catch my eye here in the Museum of Edinburgh is a three hundred year old black sedan chair. (Imagine a sort of upright box with windows on three sides, a couple of long, horizontal poles, and enough room for one seated passenger.) This forerunner of the taxi ‘protected fine clothes and shoes from the filth underfoot’, and was carried round by highlanders. Looking at the one in front of me, I can’t help thinking you’d have needed the strength of a horse to lug someone around the city in it.

I also learn some fascinating historical tidbits. The Cowgate, for instance, which now serves as ground zero for rowdy hen and stag parties from out of town, as well as locals eager to get blind drunk, was once ‘the most fashionable street in Edinburgh’. And people used to chuck the foul contents of their chamber pots out the window at ten in the evening (actually, I knew that already).

          I like The Writers' Museum – or rather the bit about Robert Louis Stevenson – very much, on account of the monochrome pictures that hang upon its walls. These show the exotic and vanished world explored by the Edinburgh native on his travels. 

          You can see the gaunt writer himself in quite a few: lounging on a verandah with the Hawaiian king, for instance, or sitting up in a camp bed in Honolulu, his tanned face notable for a flowing moustache. He has sheet music on his legs and a woodwind instrument called the flageolet in his hands. Other photos are impersonal, but still evoke the romance of the Pacific, like the image of the wide bay and tropical trees of Apia, capital of Samoa, where Stevenson made his home. 

          Incredibly, in ten years in Edinburgh I had never noticed the Museum of Childhood hiding in plain sight among the tourist traps of the High Street. The collections here are genuinely interesting, even for adults. I spotted a small globe of the world from around 1900, and gave myself a headache trying to figure out which countries have disappeared over the past century. 

There are splendid doll’s houses, one with a thatched roof, another in Tudor style with gables, green shutters and casement windows. Other cabinets have a more serious theme. One is devoted to children’s jobs, and tells numerous sad tales. Back in the 1840s almost half the workers in Midlothian’s mines were kids, while others worked as so-called ‘climbing boys’. Their task was to scale narrow chimney stacks and get rid of the soot, a ‘cruel’ practice that was outlawed in 1850. 

One display is even potentially controversial, at least for those who take pleasure in being offended. Upstairs, among a sea of dolls, are a number of very un-politically correct golliwogs, with crazy brown hair and faces as black as night. You have to pity the poor parent who is called upon to explain what these are meant to depict to an inquisitive child. 

The least appealing of Edinburgh's small museums is The People’s Story. Still, the ground floor, which takes the visitor back to seventeenth and eighteenth century Edinburgh, is diverting. It was a time when ‘cawdies’ (errand boys) roamed the streets, beggars were thrown out beyond the city walls and a grand total of thirty three men had the right to vote in elections. 

          The floor and walls are blackened with what is presumably meant to be soot, and there’s a pleasant smell of burning wood (or was I imagining it?). A looped recording of street noises – the clip clop of horses, a dog barking and someone singing – plays in the background. There’s even a mock-up of a prison cell, with a hay floor and graffiti like ‘Trust in the Lord’ scrawled on the walls. 

The upstairs displays, which take the story up to the present day, are unfortunately pretty dull. Still, if the history of trade unions, socialism and co-operatives is your thing, this may be the place for you. 

Rankings:

1.    The Writers' Museum

2.    Museum of Edinburgh

3.    Museum of Childhood

4.    The People’s Story