Heriot Row

Heriot Row is a long, straight terrace of uniform Georgian townhouses characterized by their polished ashlar stonework and repeated black iron railings. Robert Louis Stevenson lived at number eight during the eighteen eighties. He spent much of his childhood confined to the house by poor health, watching the lamplighter perform his rounds from the nursery window. Stevenson later wrote about that specific worker, imagining him as a solitary figure moving through the dark, fog-laden streets of late nineteenth century Edinburgh.