Why Marchmont Is Edinburgh’s Most Desirable Postcode

Marchmont was built almost entirely in the 1870s to 1900s as Edinburgh expanded southward to house the Victorian middle class. The tenement blocks are four and five stories of red and cream sandstone, with curved bay windows, decorative stonework and stair entrances with tiled floors that have survived a hundred and fifty years of Edinburgh rain. The flats inside are large by Scottish standards – high ceilings, original cornicing, fireplaces that still work. The street plan is generous, the trees are mature and the whole area looks like a film set for Victorian urban Scotland, which it is, in the sense that it is the actual thing rather than a recreation.

The Links is a stretch of common ground between Marchmont and Bruntsfield – used for short-hole golf (some of the oldest links golf in the world), dog walking, frisbee, picnics and the general outdoor life of a neighbourhood that has good outdoor provision. In summer it is the back garden of half of south Edinburgh. In winter it is where you walk the dog when the weather makes you want credit for having gone outside.

Marchmont Road and Roseneath Street have a density of independent cafes that the neighbourhood makes feel inevitable rather than effortful. Bibi’s Bakery, Kilimanjaro Coffee, The Coffee Apothecary – the quality is high and the clientele is exactly what you would expect from an area that combines young professionals, academics and old Edinburgh money in fairly close proximity. Saturday morning in a Marchmont cafe is a particular Edinburgh experience.

Marchmont is expensive. The average flat sale price is well above the Edinburgh average and has not corrected meaningfully in twenty years. Demand consistently outstrips supply because the neighbourhood has everything that Edinburgh buyers want – space, character, location, community, proximity to green space and the city centre simultaneously. You pay for it and then you stop minding that you paid for it.