01/09/2026
Did you know...
Tenements were far more than a series of similar-looking flats.
The word tenement can make Edinburgh housing sound like a single architectural type, but historically it described a much broader arrangement. A typical tenement could contain several independent households, shops or workshops at ground level, and sometimes quite different standards of accommodation within the same building.
Historic Environment Scotland notes that wealthy families could occupy spacious flats with drawing rooms and servants' accommodation, while poorer residents might live in a single “room and kitchen”.
The architecture therefore encoded social differences vertically and horizontally. A grand stone façade could conceal remarkably different domestic lives behind it.