An Evening Inside an Edinburgh Townhouse in the 17th Century | Before the Plague | History for Sleep

In the deep of a Scottish winter in 1644, the old town of Edinburgh was unlike any city in the land. Its narrow ridge of rock, hemmed in by a frozen loch to the north and the town wall to the south, had forced the city to build upward, storey upon storey, into some of the tallest stone houses in the world. This is an evening spent inside one of those tall lands, climbing the dark turnpike stair to a merchant's home where the fire is lit, supper is cooking, and the shutters are barred against the cold. We move slowly through the house, from the booth at the street below to the box-bed under the rafters, learning how Edinburgh families lived in this crowded, close, and extraordinary vertical city. Faint on the edge of the winter air, though, is a rumour from the harbour at Leith. A word half-heard in the close. A sickness spoken of in some far burgh. The plague has not yet come. But tonight, in the warmth of the fire, it is almost possible to forget it is coming at all.