![\"\"](\"http:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/IMG_3363.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOvercrowding in Edinburgh during the 17th century was in part due to the streets tightly packed at right angles to the Royal Mile. This was a ridge that linked the castle with Holyrood.<\/p>\n
These side streets were steep and led down to the river below.<\/p>\n
Mary King’s Close was a typical street with vaults either side of the Close and little or no natural daylight.<\/p>\n
As we were guided by our aptly dressed guide called Agnes, a maid from the 15th Century,<\/p>\n This is a unique visitor attraction that lasts for an hour, runs like clockwork and shouldn’t be missed if you’re visiting Edinburgh.<\/p>\n At the end of the tour although you can’t take photos yourself there is an opportunity to buy a photo showing you standing in the actual street where at 7am and 10pm\u00a0maids like Agnes would shout “Gardyloo!” as the human waste would be thrown into this very street!<\/p>\n If you’d like to visit then I suggest you book via their website here<\/a> Save<\/span>Save<\/span><\/p>\n Save<\/span>Save<\/span><\/p>\n Save<\/span>Save<\/span><\/p>\n Save<\/span>Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Edinburgh is a wonderful city that thrives with historical buildings, a castle once the home to Mary Queen of Scott’s and a city built over streets from the 16th Century. In fact, they made a tourist attraction out of one such street called Mary King’s Close. Overcrowding in Edinburgh during the 17th century was in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3867,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[41,46,436,437],"tags":[144,440,472,441],"class_list":["post-3847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-attractions","category-countries","category-edinburgh","category-scotland","tag-attractions","tag-edinburgh","tag-real-mary-kings-close","tag-scotland"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Screenshot-2018-08-19-19.08.32.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7ZU0a-103","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3847"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3938,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3847\/revisions\/3938"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>we discovered how people lived, how they disposed of human waste down the close and how eventually many died from the Black Plague.<\/p>\n
\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n
![\n<\/a>](\"http:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Screenshot-2018-08-19-19.08.32.png\"){kind=link}