by escotregen » Tue Feb 22, 2005 1:53 pm
kokotheclown this is a facinating wee question. I don't know if the following might throw light on The Bend, but it's something I picked up from somewhere. Maybe The Bend is to do with the tenement adaptation design or the fact that a village was settled there on a hillside? The extract is a description of the High Street going north after the George Street intersection:
"The north-eastern corner of the junction of High Street and George Street/Duke Street is overlooked by the five-storey City Improvement Trust tenements .... Learning from visits to Paris, to see the work of Baron Haussmann, the trustees were very successful in adapting the traditional tenement house style to rehouse many thousands of people. High Street now curves round and climbs quite steeply through a canyon of tenements up to Rottenrow which is met on the left. This spot was originally known as the Bell o' the Brae and a village developed here in medieval times. Tradition has it that around 1297, during the Scottish Wars of Independence, William Wallace's forces attacked and defeated a force of English soldiers here, with Wallace personally dispatching Earl Percy, the English Governor."