The eastern route into Stockbridge is marked by the local landmark,
St Stephen's Church. This stands at the north end of St Vincent Street, its tower visible from the first New Town on the higher slope to the south. Originally intended to stand in the centre of Circus Place, it was redesigned and squeezed into its current restricted site on ground which falls sharply at the southern edge of the
Silvermills area. It was designed by the architect
William Playfair in 1827. It is unusual for its main church being raised by a storey, accessed by a tall but relatively narrow flight of steps at its frontage. Its clock pendulum is the longest in Europe. It is now a theatre and performance venue. The church stands at the eastern end of St Stephen Street, a curving Georgian street of inhabited basement flats with ground floors accommodating a series of antique shops, bars and offices. A small spur on its north side, St Stephen Place, leads to the old Stockbridge Market, of which the original entrance archway still stands. Opposite St Stephen's is
St Vincent's Episcopal Church. Parallel to St Stephen Street, to the south, lies Circus Lane, a mews lane, integrating both old and new buildings. Circus Lane was once used as a service street to keep coaches and horses. The main road through Stockbridge is
Raeburn Place, a street of mixed character, with numerous small shops at ground-floor level. The link from this street to the New Town is via Deanhaugh Street and North West Circus Place. Saunders Street, south of the bridge, was built in 1974 as part of a
slum clearance programme. The medical centre to its east is part of the same scheme. Gloucester Lane marks the line of the medieval road from the village to
St Cuthbert's Church at the west end of
Princes Street. One building close to the Stockbridge end, predates the New Town. It is a merchant's house built about 1790 from the stones of demolished buildings in the Old Town and was the birthplace of the painter
David Roberts, who worked as a scene painter at Edinburgh's Theatre Royal and later London's Covent Garden. Leslie Place, dating from the late Victorian period, joins the village to the western sections of the New Town: St Bernards Crescent; Carlton Street; Danube Street, Ann Street and Dean Terrace. To the north of this is a less formal area of narrower streets: Dean Street; Cheyne Street; Raeburn Street and Dean Park Street. The north-eastern route out of the area, towards
Leith, runs along Hamilton Place. Dean Bank spurs off this road, running alongside the Water of Leith. Hamilton Place holds both the
local library (1898) and primary school (1874). Saxe Coburg Street, a small Georgian cul-de-sac just to the north, leads to the small and bow-ended square of Saxe Coburg Place. This formal space was never completed due to ground level problems and Glenogle Baths (1898) To the north, St Bernard's Row leads out past another little Georgian cul-de-sac, Malta Terrace, to
Inverleith and the Botanic Gardens.
The Colonies Between Glenogle Road and the
Water of Leith are twelve parallel streets, collectively known as the "Stockbridge Colonies", built between 1861 and 1911 by the
Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company to provide low-cost housing for the
artisan class. The streets are named after the company's founders, including geologist and writer
Hugh Miller (1802–56). The
colony houses are now coveted properties, due partly to their location near the
Royal Botanic Garden and
Inverleith Park, and ease of access to the city centre.
St Bernard's Well This
mineral water well is on the south bank of the Water of Leith, on an estate once known as St Bernard's. Just below a footpath is St Bernard's Well (); a small well-house was originally built in 1760. The waters of the well were held in high repute for their medicinal qualities, and the nobility and gentry took summer quarters in the valley to drink deep draughts of the water and take the country air. In 1788
Lord Gardenstone, a wealthy
Court of Session law lord, who thought he had benefited from the mineral spring, commissioned
Alexander Nasmyth to design a new pump room and ornate structure over. The builder John Wilson began work in 1789. It is in the shape of a circular Greek
temple supported by ten tall
Doric order columns, based on Sibyl's Temple at Tivoli. The original statue (made of
Coade Stone) was all but unrecognisable by 1820 and the temple stood for 50 years with no statue. In 1884 the lands (including the well) were purchased by the Edinburgh publisher William Nelson, who commissioned the current statue of
Hygieia from
David Watson Stevenson and presented the improved well to the city as a landmark.
St Bernard's F.C., a once successful Scottish team but now defunct were named after the famous well and played in Stockbridge. The mosaic interior is by
Thomas Bonnar. The superiority of much of the St Bernard's estate was purchased in the 1790s by Sir Henry Raeburn, who almost immediately began selling it off by
feu charters, although he continued to live in St. Bernard's House until his death in 1823. (The house was demolished in 1826 to make way for the east side of Carlton Street.) In the opening years of the 19th century George Lauder of Inverleith Mains also acquired parts of these lands as evidenced by a charter whereby "Henry Raeburn, as retoured heir to Sir Henry Raeburn, Knight, Portrait Painter, Edinburgh, his father, was seised on the 19 March 1824 in a piece of ground for the purpose of making a communication by a stone bridge across the Water of Leith from the New Street called Atholl Street, now India Place, to the grounds of St Bernards, parish of St Cuthberts, which piece of ground had previously been sold by George Lauder residing at Inverleith Mains, to the said (deceased) Sir Henry Raeburn on 28 June 1823". Doubtless it was thought that this new bridge (built the following year by James Milne, and today known as St. Bernard's Bridge) would assist in making those so far undeveloped parts of Stockbridge, and the Raeburn lands, attractive to developers. George Lauder, the great-grandfather of Sir
Harry Lauder, had also purchased St. Bernard's Well and surrounding land in April 1812 from Francis Garden Campbell of Troup & Glenlyon. His eldest surviving son is described in the
Edinburgh Annual Post Office Directories as "William Lauder of St.Bernards Well, farmer" until his death in nearby Saunders Street in 1858. He was buried in
Dean Cemetery. In 1884 St. Bernard's Well was purchased and presented to his fellow Edinburgh townsmen by the publisher William Nelson, after it had been restored and redecorated by
Thomas Bonnar, with a new statue of
Hygieia, carved by
David Watson Stevenson. Dean Terrace and Ann Street today overlook the valley and Well. The well closed to the public in the 1940s, but was restored in 2013 and is now maintained by the City of Edinburgh Council and open to the public for three hours on occasional Sundays during April to September.
Notable buildings Madame Doubtfire lived and ran a shop in Stockbridge. It was a run-down second-hand clothes shop which occupied for many years a basement area in South East Circus Place, now Frame Creative, a design agency, and the Doubtfire Gallery. The name "Madame Doubtfire" remained in large, bold, faded-gold letters on the ageing shop
fascia for many years after the lady's death (in 1979 aged 92). The novelist
Anne Fine lived in the area at the time and was, apparently, fascinated by the name. She is remembered as a local legend, and was also a good friend of Madame Doubtfire. == Governance ==