Lady Stair's Close

The lintel above the entrance to Lady Stair's Close bears the date sixteen twenty-two and the initials of its first residents, Sir William Gray and his wife. This narrow, stone-walled alleyway squeezes between the high buildings of the Royal Mile, opening into a small courtyard that once hosted the city's social elite. Elizabeth, Dowager Countess of Stair, moved here in the early eighteenth century, and her presence gave the passage the name it carries today. It remains a rare surviving example of an Edinburgh close.