The Canongate: Tolbooth and Kirk

Once you passed through the old town gate, you left Edinburgh. This street was the Canongate, a separate burgh created in the 12th century by David I for the canons of Holyrood Abbey – hence its name, 'the canons' way'. It wasn't merged into Edinburgh until 1856.

1Council, court and jail

The building with the clock is the Canongate Tolbooth, built in 1591. Under one roof the burgh council met, cases were tried and prisoners were locked up. The projecting clock is a 19th-century addition. Today it houses a museum about the everyday lives of the city's ordinary people, and there's been a tavern on its ground floor since 1820.

2A church by royal command

The church with the curved gable, the Canongate Kirk, was built between 1688 and 1691. Local people had always worshipped in Holyrood Abbey, but James VII decided to turn that church into a chapel for the Order of the Thistle, and had to build them another. The stag with a cross between its antlers, at the top of the gable, is the emblem of Holyrood.

In its kirkyard lie Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, and the poet Robert Fergusson, whose headstone Robert Burns paid for in 1787.

3What to look out for

• The Tolbooth clock, hanging over the street on an iron bracket.
• The stag and cross crowning the church gable.
• The statue of Robert Fergusson, striding along the pavement in front of the church.