Note 47 — STORY OF THE COUNTESS OF STAIR.

Lady Stair’s Close was originally a cul de sac. When the Mound was begun a thoroughfare was cut through the garden, making the close the principal communication between the Lawnmarket and Hanover Street, then the western extremity of the New Town. The name it first bore was ‘Lady Gray’s Close,’ after the wife of the builder of the house, and that of Lady Stair’s Close was given to it (The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. iii.) early in the eighteenth century, when the house passed into the possession of the first Lady Stair, a granddaughter of Sir William Gray of Pittendrum. Lord Rosebery, who represents a branch of the Primroses (other than that to which the second viscount, mentioned below, belonged), restored the house and presented it to the city in 1907.