Kay's Bar - A beautiful pub with a dirty past

An old liquor shop which survived slum clearances.

© Imran Rahman-Jones

What’s it about?

It’s a bright November Sunday afternoon as I write this. I’ve turned off from the grand New Town real estate – some of the most expensive in the city – and dipped between some low rise mews houses into the welcoming Kay’s Bar.

The tiny pub packs a lot into a small space. There’s pretty much one long bench around half the front room with five or six small round tables and stools sitting in front of it. The openness means couples from different tables are getting to know each other and discussing what they’ve been up to this weekend. The mates sitting on the bar stools have turned around the face into the room and join the conversation. The mix of accents suggest this is a combination of tourists and locals.

There are four good casks on – Camra award-winning, no less – along with plenty of whisky, bar snacks including homemade rolls and sandwiches. I’ve gone for the malt of the moment for £4, found the only free table left tucked into the small back room, just past the open fire. The guys on the table next to me - brothers, I think - have taken a few of the hardbacks off the shelf and started leafing through them.

Dusty bottles line the high shelves. I can see labels for Bordeaux red wine, Bombay Sapphire gin and a scrumpy called Cripple Cock. Framed labels of Napoleon Cognac, Le Duc brandy and Chateau Batailley Grand Cru. Just along from them are assorted memorabilia including ceramic beer jugs.

The trinkets give a clue to the building's previous incarnation. While it looks like this place has been here for centuries, it’s only been a pub for fifty years or so. Before that, it was a liquor shop. John Kay & Sons, set in an old coach house, traded for for around 150 years. And while this is now one of the poshest quarters of the city, its history is far less salubrious.

There’s a reason the grandiose townhouses give way to low-rise buildings in this part of town. There were originally tenement buildings here, built for workers in the later phases of the New Town development of the 1800s. But overcrowding and a lack of basic sanitation in the proceeding century degraded the quality of life, causing scenes reminiscent of the Old Town tenements at their disorderly worst. Just a stone’s throw from the elaborate Royal Circus and Heriot Row were open sewers, in what came to be designated a slum.

It took a long time for authorities to do anything. When Labour leader Harold Wilson visited in the mid-60s, he apparently commented that it was some of the worst housing he had ever seen. By the late 60s, work was underway to demolish the slums. Jamaica Street was mostly bulldozed, but somehow the strip with John Kay’s booze shop survived (black and white photos on the walls of Kay’s Bar show the old Jamaica Street before the demolition). New housing was built around it around the same time it was turned into the pub we have today.

As the sun sets, I exit through the side door and wander through the squat mews houses. I turn a corner and I’m back among the art galleries, vintage shops and antique stores of the New Town. They happily sell a more sanitary – and sanitised – version of the city’s past.

The chaser

The street names around here give away one of the ways Edinburgh got so rich in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: Jamaica Street, India Street and India Place are obvious nods to British colonies, while Dundas Street is just a couple of minutes’ walk away.

Where is it?

• 39 Jamaica St, Edinburgh, EH3 6HF

Open every day from 11am.

Where next?

For comparably cozy and welcoming vibes – as well as a similarly red interior – head up St Vincent Street to The Cumberland Bar, which also does great beer.