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Black plaque № 51555

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St John's Land. This fine example of an 18th Century Edinburgh tenement was erected by the Earls of Hopetoun who also built Hopetoun House. It remained in residential use until Moray House acquired the building in 1956 and installed classrooms, staff studies and a fully equipped proscenium theatre. Tobias Smollet the novelist stayed with his sister in a flat which is now part of the theatre stage. It was here in 1766 that he wrote his last novel, 'Humphry Clinker' in which tenement life is fully described. The building was originally six storeys high but today only five storeys are above ground. It takes its name from the adjoining St John's Masonic Lodge. James Boswell was once President of the Lodge and Robert Burns attended its meeting during his visit to Edinburgh in 1787-88.

Inscription drawn from imported open data, awaiting original TributeLegacy editorial.

Source: Open Plaques. Geographic data via OpenStreetMap.

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Data sources

Location records are drawn from open, licence-clean datasets, kept here with attribution and gratitude to the people who maintain them.

  • Open Plaques, dedicated to the public domain (CC0). See openplaques.org.
  • Wikidata, available under the CC0 1.0 Universal dedication.
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.
  • Historic England, National Heritage List for England, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. War memorial records are drawn from open community datasets (OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, NHLE) — never from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is excluded.

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