My great-grandfather, Johnathan (John) Angus Barclay, was born to John and Jane Barclay (Angus) and on 19 July 1841 at 31 Lady Lawson’s Wynd, Edinburgh.
Lady Lawson’s Wynd sat next to the Lauriston Place cattle market, between West Port and Lauriston Place. For centuries, horse and cattle markets took place there every week, from 1477 until 1911. Part of the area was cleared in 1900 to build the Fire Station, and the rest was removed in 1907 to make room for the Edinburgh College of Art.
In 1851, when he was ten, the family still lived at Lauriston Wynd, but he is missing from the 1861 census. By the time he married Henrietta Johnstone on November 6, 1868, he worked as a cabinetmaker and lived at 6 Viewforth Park. The area has changed a lot over the past 160 years. That street is gone now and is part of Dundee Street, just across from Fountain Park. I know the area well because I went to Boroughmuir High School on Viewforth and lived for many years in Thistle Place, just across the Union Canal.
By the age of forty, Johnathan and Henrietta had four children: John, Clementina, Jane, and Jessie. They were living with Henrietta’s father, Oliver Johnstone, at 20 New Baker’s Land in the Canonmills area. That’s where their second son, Johnathan Angus Barclay, and my grandmother, Henrietta Barclay, were born. Sadly, just a year after my grandmother was born, Johnathan died at the Royal Infirmary from heart disease.
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