Scottish Architecture. (croft)

6. Croft-An-Righ, Abbeyhill, Holyrood.

In Edinburgh, there is a small area adjacent to Holyrood Palace referred to on street signs as Croft-an-Righ. On the face of it, this would seem to simply be a slightly anglicised version of Gaelic Croit an Rìgh ‘˜the King’s croft’. This would seem appropriate given the royal location, indeed, it is referred to as such in a 19th-century Gaelic book. The name as it appears now however is misleading; in 1781 it is on record as Croft Angry. Several other places with such a name exist in Scotland, including two in Fife. These are Scots names containing croft with an element angry; this is of uncertain meaning as it seems only to have survived in place-names; it is related to German anger ‘(small) meadow’. Possibly it means a ‘fenced grazing in the croft or arable infield’ or perhaps more simply ‘grassland’.