[Gazetteer of Scotland Contents]
MORNINGSIDE, a village and quoad sacra parish in the quoadcivilia parish of St. Cuthbert’s, Edinburghshire. The village is pleasantly situated on a southward slope, on the road leading from Edinburgh to Biggar, Peebles, and Dumfries; 1¼ mile south of Port-Hopetoun, and 2¼ miles distant from the Tron-church, Edinburgh. Between it and the metropolis lie Boroughmuirhead and Burntsfield-Links. The village is an agreeable and worthy environ of Edinburgh, and forms a summer-resort of the citizens; and it so competes with Inveresk the fame of being the Montpellier of the east of Scotland, as to allure invalids to its precincts for the benefit of its dry and salubrious air. Here stands the City and County Lunatic asylum of Edinburgh, originally a capacious edifice, and subsequently enlarged from designs by Mr. Burn, so as to receive 230 inmates. It is finely situated in the midst of a policy of about 50 acres in extent. The quoad sacra parish-church, erected in 1837 from a design by Mr. Henderson, is a small but neat edifice. An interesting object is a large school, which was one of the earliest to win the fame of reform from the dry and mechanical methods of a bygone period. All around the village, mansions and villas so thickly occur as almost to jostle one another in strife for sufficient pleasure-ground, – Greenhill, Merchiston-castle, New Merchiston, Burntsfield-house, Craig-house, Hermitage of Braid, St. Margaret’s convent, Falcon-hall, Canaan-bank, Canaan-grove, Canaan-lodge, Woodburn, Woodville, East Morningside, Whitehouse, and several others.