Nether Bow Plaque

A small brass plaque marks the cobblestones here, tracing the outline of a gate that once divided Edinburgh from the independent burgh of Canongate. This was the Netherbow Port. For centuries, it served as the city’s defensive boundary and its main eastern entrance. In sixteen fifty, Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers marched through this portal to occupy the capital. By seventeen sixty-four, city leaders decided the structure obstructed traffic and dismantled the gate entirely, leaving only these stones to mark its former presence.