Gogar


City of Edinburgh

A location and former village in W Edinburgh, Gogar lies between Ingliston and Maybury, 5 miles (8 km) west of the city centre. The Gogar Burn flows through the area, while the A8 road connects Gogar Roundabout with Gogarburn Junction and Gogarstone Road. There was a thriving village here in Mediaeval times that was said, at one time, to have 300 residents. By the 19th C. it had declined to just seven families and its school closed. Sir Robert Liston (1742 - 1836), who lived at Millburn Tower, bought the village in 1832 and pulled down the disused houses. He erected a mill but many of his intended improvements were never executed. A few residents and a smithy remained into the 20th C., although the smithy was moved to allow road improvements in 1927 and the building finally demolished in the early 21st C. Gogar Parish Church was first recorded in 1240, under Holyrood Abbey, and the Parson of Gogar swore fealty to King Edward I of England in 1269. The church was rebuilt 1890-91 incorporating an older fragment, fell from use in the 1970s but the building remains as a furniture workshop.

The Edinburgh Tram Depot was completed next to Gogar Roundabout in 2011 and there is a tram stop at Gogarburn, close to the former church.

Castle Gogar dates from 1625 and was built on the site of an earlier fortification which dates from c.1300. Gogarburn House dates from 1811, was extensively modified in 1893 and became a hospital for the mentally handicapped in 1924, which closed in 1999. Most of the hospital buildings were demolished and the massive Royal Bank of Scotland Headquarters opened here in 2005. Now B-listed, Gogarburn House remains as a staff club within the complex. The Gogar Stone stands in a field to the west of Gogar Mount, a B-listed mansion built in 1817 for David Wardlaw, the founder of the Scottish Widows' Fund Life Assurance Society.

On 27th August 1650, a skirmish took place at Gogar between the armies of Oliver Cromwell and David Leslie, whose forces had camped in the area around Gogar Kirk. The marshy ground prevented a full engagement and the two sides were reduced to firing cannon at each other, inflicting minor casualties.

Gogar Loch was a shallow post-glacial lake which stretched eastwards towards Corstorphine. This gradually silted up, becoming a marsh by the late Mediaeval period, and was finally drained during the 17th and 18th centuries.


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