History of St Bernard’s Crescent and Garden

Up until the early 19th Century the area of Stockbridge was surrounded by farm land, and merely consisted of a hamlet that had a couple of flour mills and a small tanning industry. There were also two grand estate houses, Deanhaugh and St. Bernard’s, whose kitchen gardens encompassed the area where St. Bernard’s Crescent now stands. These two houses were closely linked with Sir Henry Raeburn, as himself and his family lived in them between the 1780s and the 1840s.

Although Raeburn is rightly famed as an artist of exquisite portraits, a little-known fact is that he is the man most associated to the creation of St. Bernard’s Crescent and other streets close by. Whilst he made good money with his portraits, the bankruptcy of his son’s business in 1808 caused Raeburn to try and diversify income so that his son could earn a living. An enthusiastic amateur architect and gardener, Raeburn hit upon the idea of building houses and streets in the fashionable Neo-Classical style that had proved so popular in the New Town.

After Raeburn had overseen the creation of Raeburn Place, Dean Street and Ann Street in the 1810s, he commissioned his architect James Milne to create some more streets. Originally it was to have been built in the same style as nearby Ann Street, but a conversation with his friend and fellow artist David Wilkie changed his mind. Wilkie inspected the potential site and, admiring the beautiful garden full of elm trees, he said that Raeburn should build “a deep crescent in the purest style of Grecian architecture”. Raeburn wholeheartedly agreed with him, and this would be the birth of St. Bernard’s Crescent.

The garden full of elms that Wilkie had admired so much were to become an integral part of life in St. Bernard’s Crescent. Locals called the elms “Raeburn’s elms” and the garden became a greatly cherished amenity. Whilst the last of “Raeburn’s elms” succumbed to Dutch Elms disease in the 1980s, St. Bernard’s Crescent Garden is still full of beautiful ash trees planted in Raeburn’s lifetime, and there is still local pride in maintaining its upkeep so that more generations can appreciate them.