In October 2021, a certain celebrity chef opened a high-end chain restaurant in Edinburgh called “Bread Street”. Confusingly, it’s on St. Andrew Square, and nowhere near Edinburgh’s Bread Street.

The real Bread Street is on the other side of the city centre, between the West Port and Fountainbridge. But why was it called Bread Street? Let’s see if we can find out more. But first let’s understand some of the history of the street and the area… The West Port was the old western gateway to the city of Edinburgh and lends its name to the current road here, the principal route into the city from the west and southwest before the middle of the 18th century. On either side of the road lay the small burgh of Wester Portsburgh – no prizes for guessing how it got its name! This settlement was an partially independent jurisdiction which grew up right outside the city walls.

Looking at a map of the early 19th century we can see the “Three Great Roads” into the city; from Falkirk, Stirling and Linlithgow in yellow, known as Orchardfield; from Lanark, Glasgow and Mid Calder in Green, Fountainbridge; and from Penicuik, Peebles and Biggar in Blue, Cowfeeder Row. In Orange is the high street of Portsburgh and in pink is the West Port itself, where the gate once stood.

It is Orchardfield that would become Bread Street, but not until 1824, when it begins to be mentioned in newspapers. The old name is one of some antiquity, recorded as far back as a charter of King David I in 1120 where it is referred to as the King’s Garden. It’s a fairly simple etymology, when taken with the nearby King’s Barns, these were Royal orchards and market gardens for Edinburgh Castle, and barns for the storage of produce. A map of 1784 by Alexander Kincaid shows that the although there were a buildings lining these roads at the end of the 18th century, the areas was still largely pastoral in character, covered in orchards, fields and market gardens. Ainslie’s map of 1804, as seen above, again shows much of the land remains undeveloped. But by now the city is beginning to creep more visibly westwards along the roads..

The town plans from 1804 to 1831 show a range of development proposals for this area. This latter map, by John Wood, shows that Bread Street has now acquired its name and a blocks of new tenements have been completed (in grey shading) along Lothian Road and the south side of Bread Street, and further blocks are planned (red shading). This plan would never be fully realised; the buildings along Lothian Road were completed, the space for “Brunswick Place” was left, but the public square never really materialised, and only the block between Grindlay Street, Bread Street and Lothian Road would be completed, and to a different and less formal layout.

By the time of the first detailed Ordnance Survey town plan, in 1849, Bread Street is formed more or less as it is to this day, although to its eastern end it is called Orchardfield Street – so we can suppose that whatever Bread Street is named for is centred around its western end. Note too that the individual blocks of Lothian Road still have their earlier names, the part here being Downie Place; the Road referred to the whole length, a common Edinburgh practice.

But why Bread Street? Well, there is perhaps a clue in the name of the confluence of the “Three Great Roads” at Portsburgh, an area known traditionally as the Main Point; or to a different sort of person (invariably a tourist) as the pubic triangle (on account of the triangular portion of land, aptly called a gushet in Scots, and the sort of entertainment offered at the bars on the corers of the street here).

You see, in the very olden days, Main was the name given to the best bread (that’s Main, not Plain breid!). This is from the French Paindemain, which in Scots became Maine.

It is … ordanit that na baxter baik na mayne breid to sell fra hine furthwart, saiffing allenarly at Witsounday

(English – It is ordained that no baker bakes any main bread to sell from henceforth, except only at Whitsunday)

Edinburgh Burgh Records, 1443

Was this an area where bread was once baked? It’s a nice idea – although we have no specific record that this is the case. It would not have been where the city of Edinburgh baked its bread, given it was outside the city walls and therefore the restrictions of its trades incorporations. The area name is recorded in a post-office directory of 1775, and by the end of the 18th century a baker was established here and apparently too a “bread society”. It may be all to convenient however, as I think by this time the word main for the best bread had fallen out of favour for the best part of a century and had been replaced by the concepts of plain and fancy bread to distinguish between cheaper and more expensive loafs.

Whether or not the bread theory holds any weight, it should be noted that the Main Point was the name of the building, not a reference to it being at the point of the two gushets (Gushet. n. Scots. “A triangular piece of land, esp. one lying between two adjacent properties“) formed by Bread Street, East Fountainbridge and Cowfeeder Row. This spot was long the location of a toll house known as the Tupenny Custom. This toll has nothing to do with the local placename of Tollcross. It also has nothing to do with even a cross or a cross roads. It’s an 18th century corruption of the much older name Tollcors, a Brythonic toponym meaning a boggy hollow. It’s written as Tolcors in the 15th century and Towcroce and Tolcroce in the 16th.

Anyway even if it is fanciful that Bread Street and the Main Point are named after baking, it’s somewhat appropriate, as much of the block on the south side of Bread Street would from the late 19th century onwards, and well into the 20th, be acquired by and rebuilt for the St. Cuthbert’s Cooperative Society as a showpiece department store.

Fountainbridge is the spiritual home of the St. Cuthbert’s, named for the parish to the west of the city in which it was founded. Its original store was here, and later its administrative offices, its main bakery, its dairy, its transport department and its workshops. The litmus test of a real Edinburgher of a certain generation is to mention St. Cuthberts; if their eyes glaze over and they drift off into pleasant reminiscences for at least a few hours about getting taken there for school shoes and can still tell you their Divvy number, then you know they are the real deal. (Leithers went to Leith Provident Co-op of course.)

I’m afraid I can’t find many decent photos of Bread Street and St. Cuthberts that have appropriate permission to share, but there are loads on Scran, here (top tip, use your library card option in logon and see them all in high res) or some on Canmore, here. And the seemingly endless collection on Flickr of Mike Ashworth has this lovely promotional cover with a coloured illustration of the store (before the 1930s additions)

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