The Pleasance (street)

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The Pleasance is a street just outside the Old Town of Edinburgh, Scotland, a remnant of the Flodden Wall flanking the west side of the street between Drummond Street and the Cowgate.^[1] Historically, the street was one of the main routes into Edinburgh from the south, meeting St Mary's Wynd (now St Mary's Street) at St Mary's Wynd Port, one of the gateways of the town walls. The name derives from the Scots plesance, meaning a park or garden. It first appears in 1507 as the name of a nearby house, and was later transferred to the street and then the suburb which was part of the regality of the Canongate.^[2] The derivation of the name from a nunnery of St Mary of Placentia, often mentioned in histories of Edinburgh, is an invention by William Maitland in his 1753 History of Edinburgh.^[3]

The street is largely residential - mainly 19th century tenements and 20th century flats - although the University of Edinburgh owns property in the area, including a large new [2017] university student flats complex on St Leonard's Street, the southerly extension of the Pleasance, on a site formerly occupied by a Homebase home improvements and gardening store. In addition, although the Pleasance along with St Leonard's Street is a quieter area than the nearby main commercial centres and streets of the Southside there are several restaurants, pubs, a few shops, lawyers' offices, churches, and the modern St Leonard's police station. After years of planning blight from the 1960s and 1970s in which redevelopment of the formerly rather run-down area was hampered after the abandonment of bizarre plans to build a major road comparable to a motorway, from the late 20th century onwards the area benefited from a gradual renaissance.