The Steps Where Edinburgh Mourned a King

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Most visitors to Edinburgh walk past the Vennel without stopping. They are heading uphill from the Grassmarket, eyes fixed on the castle above, not noticing the flight of stone steps to their right. That is a mistake. The Vennel holds one of the most significant pieces of surviving medieval history in Scotland — and almost no one talks about it.

What Is the Vennel?

A vennel is a Scottish word for a narrow lane or close. Edinburgh’s Vennel is a stepped lane that runs uphill from the Grassmarket towards Lauriston Place, cutting through the old town on the south side of the castle. The steps are old. The walls on either side are older.

On the right as you climb sits a section of the Flodden Wall — one of the last remaining pieces of Edinburgh’s medieval defensive perimeter. It is not restored, not rebuilt, not reconstructed. It is the same stone laid in 1513, and it is still standing.

The Battle That Changed Edinburgh

To understand the wall, you have to understand Flodden.

On the 9th of September 1513, a Scottish army led by King James IV met an English force at Flodden Field in Northumberland. It was one of the largest battles ever fought between Scotland and England. The Scots had advantages on paper — better ground, more men, a king leading from the front. They lost catastrophically.

King James IV was killed in the fighting. He was the last British monarch to die in battle. Alongside him fell somewhere between 9,000 and 12,000 Scottish soldiers — killed in a single afternoon. Among the dead were the Earl of Argyll, the Archbishop of St Andrews, the Bishop of the Isles, and the heads of dozens of noble families across Scotland. The country lost an entire generation of its leadership in a matter of hours.

The news reached Edinburgh quickly. The city was in a state of panic. English forces were in Northumberland, the king was dead, and the road to the capital lay open.

A Wall Built in Grief

Edinburgh’s town council responded without delay. Within weeks of Flodden, they began building a new defensive wall around the city. Construction continued through the 1520s and into the 1530s. The wall ran for nearly a mile and a half, enclosing the south and east sides of the town. On the north, the city already had the Nor Loch — a large artificial body of water that served as a natural barrier. The wall protected the rest.

It was built fast, using whatever stone and labour the city could gather. The speed shows in parts of the construction. But what Edinburgh built in haste has lasted five hundred years.

The Vennel is one of the places where you can still see the original construction clearly. The stonework is rough in places, repaired in others, but recognisably medieval. The English invasion that prompted the wall never came. But the wall remained, and it kept standing through centuries of building, demolition, fire, and urban development.

How to Visit the Vennel

The Vennel is easy to find and free to visit. From the Grassmarket, walk to the western end and look for the stone steps heading uphill. There is no entrance fee, no ticket booth, no tour guide waiting at the bottom. You simply climb.

The steps themselves are uneven and can be slippery in wet weather — which in Edinburgh is a significant portion of the year. Wear sensible footwear. The climb is short, under three minutes, but fairly steep.

At the top, the view opens up towards Edinburgh Castle. It is one of the best unobstructed viewpoints in the city, and because it sits slightly off the main tourist routes, it is usually far quieter than the esplanade or the Royal Mile lookouts.

You can run your hand along the Flodden Wall as you climb. The stone is cold even in summer. The texture changes where it has been repaired over the centuries — newer sections smoother, older ones rougher. Near the top, you can see where the medieval construction ends and later brickwork begins, the seam between eras visible in the wall itself.

The Context Most Visitors Miss

Edinburgh is full of history that gets walked past without comment. The Vennel is one of those places.

The Grassmarket below the Vennel has its own layered past — it was Edinburgh’s main site of public execution until the 18th century, and it was at the centre of the Porteous Riots in 1736, when a city mob broke a condemned man from the Tolbooth jail and hanged the city guard captain in the street. The area around Greyfriars Kirk, just east of the Vennel, is where the National Covenant was signed in 1638, a document that helped set off the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

The Flodden Wall sits in the middle of all of this. It was built at a moment of national trauma and outlasted the crisis that created it by several centuries. The wall is not a ruin. It is not a reproduction. It is the thing itself.

Most people who climb the Vennel are thinking about the view. The wall beside them was built because a king died and his city was afraid. That is worth knowing before you put your hand on the stone.

What Remains of the Flodden Wall

The Vennel section is not the only surviving piece. Other sections of the Flodden Wall remain visible around Edinburgh’s old town — near the Pleasance, incorporated into later buildings, or clearly signed along the wall’s original route. Some are easy to spot. Others take a bit of looking.

The City of Edinburgh Council maintains historical records on the wall’s route. A self-guided walk covering the full line of the old fortification is possible, though it requires navigating through residential streets and car parks in places where later development has broken the visible line.

The Vennel section is the most accessible and the most complete stretch. It is also the most visually striking — partly because of the angle of the approach and the height of the steps, and partly because the view at the top gives you a direct sightline to the castle the wall was originally built to protect.

Practical Information

The Vennel is open at all times and free to visit. The nearest bus stops are on Lothian Road or Lauriston Place. Parking in the Grassmarket area is limited and often busy.

The view from the top is best on clear days, but the wall is worth seeing in any weather. Overcast skies can make the stonework look particularly dramatic — which seems appropriate given what it was built for.

Allow 20 to 30 minutes for the steps and the wall, more if you want to explore the Grassmarket below or continue up to Greyfriars. There are several cafés and pubs in the Grassmarket if you want a stop before or after.

Edinburgh is full of sights that pull larger crowds than the Vennel. Few of them carry as much direct, physical history as these steps. The wall is not behind glass. It is not behind a barrier. You can touch it. You can read the stonework with your own hands.

That is rarer than it sounds.

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