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Edinburgh Live
Edinburgh Live
World
David McLean

The Edinburgh Wetherspoon pub named after a wicked moment in the city's history

Edinburgh's publicans have long conjured up colourful names to hang above the door of their watering holes, but it's not often you see a pub named after a gruesome murder and haunting.

The White Lady in St John's Road, Corstorphine, is a Wetherspoon's establishment and one of the busiest pub and hotels in the area.

As a company, Wetherspoon has a long-standing tradition of picking names for their pubs with a bit of heritage - but this one has our blood running cold.

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Centuries ago, the road to Corstorphine Castle was lined by an avenue of sycamore trees which had been planted in the mid-1400s.

In 1679, it was under one of these trees, the last in the row, that James, Lord Forrester, was murdered by his own sword by a woman named Lady Christian Hamilton Nimmo.

Forrester was a local laird and a well-known philanderer who had been seeing a number of women, including Lady Nimmo.

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One August night, Forrester and Nimmo had agreed to meet at their usual spot at the old dovecot, but when Lady Nimmo arrived there was no sign of the laird.

After learning that Forrester had been carousing in one of the nearby hostelries, the Lady Nimmo sent one of her servants to bring him to the sycamore tree by the dovecot.

When he arrived, a blinding drunk Forrester launched into a foul-mouthed rant at Lady Nimmo, which he would very quickly regret. It was then that an incensed Lady Nimmo grabbed the laird's sword and killed him on that very spot under the tree.

Lady Nimmo was apprehended and later beheaded by the authorities. From that day on, it was said that the ghost of a lady all dressed in white and clutching a bloody sword haunted the scene of the grisly crime.

For centuries afterwards, the story endured - as did the tree, until it collapsed during a storm in the winter of 1998. The stump of the famous tree can still seen to this day just a few feet away from the historic Corstorphine Dovecot.

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