The Edinburgh Vaults

The Edinburgh Vaults are a series of chambers built into the arches of South Bridge, constructed in 1788 to span the Cowgate valley in Edinburgh’s Old Town. One hundred and twenty vaults were built beneath the bridge’s nineteen arches.

Construction and Decline

The vaults were originally intended for commercial use: workshops, taverns, and storage. But the bridge was poorly waterproofed. Within a decade, the vaults began to flood. Businesses moved out. By the early nineteenth century, the spaces had become shelter for Edinburgh’s poorest residents, then for criminal operations, and finally for the dead.

Burke and Hare

In 1828, William Burke and William Hare operated in the streets directly above the vaults, murdering at least sixteen people and selling their bodies to the anatomist Robert Knox for dissection. The vaults themselves were not the murder sites, but they were part of the same neighborhood, a warren of closes and underground passages where a person could disappear without official notice.

Rediscovery

The vaults were sealed in the mid-nineteenth century and forgotten. When a former rugby player named Norrie Rowan broke through a wall in the 1980s while renovating his bar, he found the chambers still intact, filled with artifacts from two centuries of underground life: broken pottery, animal bones, oyster shells, and, in at least one chamber, a ritual circle of unknown origin. The vaults are now open for guided tours.