Princes Street Gardens is a public park in the centre of
Edinburgh,
Scotland, in the shadow of
Edinburgh Castle. The Gardens were created in two phases in the 1770s and 1820s following the long draining of the
Nor Loch and building of the
New Town, beginning in the 1760s. The
loch, situated on the north side of the town, was originally an artificial creation forming part of its medieval defences and made expansion northwards difficult. The water was habitually polluted from
sewage draining downhill from the
Old Town. In 1846 the railway was built in the valley to connect the Edinburgh-Glasgow line at
Haymarket with the new northern terminus of the
North British line from
Berwick-upon-Tweed at
Waverley Station.