• the new town The area to the north of the old town, between the Castle and the Firth of Forth,
    was developed during the eighteenth century and rapidly became the center of the vital
    cultural and intellectual life of the "Scottish Enlightenment." When Percy Bysshe
    Shelley and his first wife Harriet eloped to Edinburgh at the end of August 1811,
    they took lodgings in George Street in New Town.