2.30 : The Strange tale of European Edinburgh (Hyde) and British Edinburgh (Jekyll)': The real significance of Edinburgh's old town - Charles Mckean
How the evolution of Edinburgh has been misunderstood, and rather than being a juxtaposition of two towns of different age (old and new towns) it is in reality the juxtaposition of towns of two fundamentally different cultures (European and British).'
The old and the new towns of Edinburgh are a misnomer. The majority of buildings in the'Old Town' are more recent than the majority of buildings in the 'new'.
Yet the two towns are utterly distinct. Up on the rock is a typical European town (with one major exception) - of the kind you can seen in France, Spain, Germany, Denmark or Poland: the form, the spaces are the same. But NOT in England.
On the plain, they started to build British Edinburgh in 1767, rejecting their european origins, and preferring 'houses after the English manner,' with private squares, socially segregated streets and no place to riot in. So Edinburgh built the most English of English towns. Very modern. They then regarded the old town as the repository of primitiveness and savagery.
It is the origin of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde...
