Scottish Storytelling Centre

Storytelling as a freestanding contemporary artform woven into the rich literary history of Edinburgh’s Old Town. Its location at the Netherbow Port, incorporating the iconic, historic John Knox House and re-presenting the long-demolished Port’s historic bell, supports storytelling’s status as “gateway” art, while the project’s urban weave of Court, Close and Garden recovers the mediaeval townscape of Edinburgh whose creative and social interaction sparked its writers, artists and thinkers.

The Story of the Gateway Site

This site, combining the historic John Knox House with the adjacent former Netherbow Centre, marks the historic, mediaeval main gateway into Edinburgh. The original gateway’s width contrasted with the narrow closes which protected other entries into Edinburgh and was frequently breached by invading English armies.

A commercial development in the 1470s, achieved by Act of Parliament, improved civic defences by narrowing this approach with a new set of (foreland) tenements, financed and enlivened by the high-value, commercial bustle of a shopping parade (the “luckenbooths”), and slapped across the fronts of the existing townhouses.

After the Battle of Flodden in 1513 the City Wall moved east to protect this new street, named the Netherbow. The major reconstruction of what is now known as “John Knox House” was carried out by James Mossman – the Royal goldsmith – around 1556, the building largely assuming its present form. 

The gateway, the Netherbow Port, was rebuilt many times, with its great bell being hung in 1621, before being demolished in 1764.

Workshop Abstract

1. A Gate

Following the Act of Union the Netherbow Port was demolished as an impediment to trade, and further traffic considerations caused the Victorians to build Improvement Act tenements back from the historic street-edge.

The Murray Knox Church, celebrating John Knox’s place as Church titan, came and went, to be replaced, in the 1970s, by the Netherbow Arts Centre, which the new Scottish Storytelling Centre builds upon, both physically and in its programme. The rebuilding uses the sense of urban compression and arrival to recover the idea of “Gateway” as historic event, and as metaphor and tale.

The 1621 City Bell is re-presented in a new Outlook tower, combined with forestair entry and complementary to the Renaissance vigour of John Knox House. Tower and entry look from the location of the old gate east down the Royal Mile, over the new Parliament and out to Aberlady Bay: the bell, the gate and the place all wound-about with tales of the City and connections to and from it.

3. A Hearth

Storytelling is, for us, intimacy, warmth and connection. The wee painting is an emblem that the Storytelling

Theatre re-presents: the bank of seats wide and shallow, with aisles to either side so that a Storyteller faces people not corridor; entry from the back so the audience is joined and not disrupted; acoustics tuned to the unamplified voice (the Storyteller can whisper as well as shout); and the theatre lined and boarded dark and warm, but with a (shuttered) window onto the garden outside.