Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh, Scotland

Princes Street Gardens was created by draining Edinburgh’s largest loch, the Nor Loch. Nor Loch, which was first a marshland on the north side of Edinburgh had initially been used as a natural Medieval defence along with Edinburgh Castle. With the north and west parts of the town protected, Edinburgh only needed a fortification on the east and south side of the city. From the Middle Ages until the nineteenth century, it is believed that the Nor Loch was where “witch ducking” would take place (this was a way of discovering if a suspect was guilty of witchcraft), an ideal place to make dead bodies disappear, where water waste was thrown out and some historians believe that despite this many citizens would even go to the Loch for fresh water.