Edinburgh, Colinton Road, Napier University, Merchiston Castle — Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

Merchiston Castle stands inside Napier University on Colinton Road, a fifteenth-century tower house reduced to a college backdrop. It was a school in the nineteenth century before becoming a university setting in the twentieth, layering young lives over older stone. The castle no longer belongs to one family or one city chamber. It belongs to everyone who walks past it, remembers it, or imagines the people who first climbed its stairs.

Scotland's National Record of the Historic Environment records Edinburgh, Colinton Road, Napier University, Merchiston Castle as College (20th Century), School (19th Century), Tower House (15th Century). The official map says its point is accurate as follows: NGR given to the nearest 1m. The record does not by itself mean that the public may enter the place.

Merchiston Castle was built in the 15th century and later held by the Crichton and then the Napier families, notable Scottish landowners and military figures. It is remembered as the ancestral home of John Napier, the mathematician who invented logarithms, and now forms part of Napier University, preserving its historical and academic significance.

The historic-place record does not grant public access. Check current conditions and ownership before entering land or a building.