Abbey Precinct Wall, Canmore Street

This is an easy one to walk past if you don’t know it’s there. On Canmore Street, north-east of the Abbey Church, Historic Environment Scotland schedules about 15 metres of substantial rubble walling, thought to be part of the north wall of the abbey precinct. It’s a short, solid stretch rather than a monument with a doorway, but it belongs to the boundary of one of Scotland’s most significant medieval religious houses.

The abbey precinct once took in a much larger area than the church and palace you visit today. The Nether Yett, the south gateway fragment off Moodie Street, is another rare upstanding piece of that circuit; this wall is the northern counterpart on the official record. The scheduling, added in 2001, covers the wall and its immediate environs, about 15 metres long and a metre across.

You can see it from the street; there are no opening hours, and it isn’t a staffed site. Treat it as a scheduled monument: look, and leave the masonry alone. It’s a reminder, when you’re walking between the Abbey and the rest of the town, that the monastic precinct was a walled world of its own.