authority, writing in 1805, mentions that ‘‘in Joppa which was solely occupied by colliers, above thirty houses have been deserted or suffered to fall-into ruins within the space of the last four years.”* A corresponding depopulation took place in Easter Duddingston : about 300 colliers and bearers, it is said, being at the same time thrown out of employment.
What Joppa lost as 8 mining village was soon afterwards more than made up by its rise as a watering-place. The oM miners houses were taken down or remodelled or improved. Instead of the thatch, they were roofed with tiles and in some cases, slate ; and by the erection of Mount Pleasant a better class of residenters was introduced,
Easter Duddingston had no such alternative to offer. Deserted by the colliers, it fell back to its primitive condition as an agricultural village, with its smithy, its joiner’s shop, its public-house, its little school, and its two or three old mansion houses. Until thirty-five years ago the smithy and joiner’s shop stood in s large square on the north side of the road, which has been since entirely swept away ; its site now forms part of the fine garden attached to the picturesque mansion of Duddingston Lodge, lately occupied by Mr Charles Jenner, but now transformed into a first-class Hydropathic establishment.
The village is now made up of only some ten or twelve cottages, with several larger residences, but it has neither public-house, smithy or joiner’s shop, school or chapel. _In its latter days it has settled down to & condition of respectable retirement, undisturbed by anything but a passing funeral to the adjoining cemetery, or the scream of a locomotive on its way to and from the capitals of England and Scotland. But there seems to be every probability that in a few years the ancient village of Easter Duddingston may be so surrounded with new streets and crescents, as to be altogether absorbed in the rapidly extending area of Portobello.
We have already referred to the condition of the salters in the neighbouring salt pans of Joppa in former times. The condition of the colliers was somewhat similar, and in every sense of the word as deplorable ; and before we dismiss this part of our subject, we may briefly refer to it as happily a feature of the social life of the past, for ever gone.
