Many old houses are also preserved, and in High Street their overhanging upper stories, supported on pillars, form a covered way for foot-passengers.
John Knox's house at the east end of High Street is kept in excellent repair, and contains several articles of furniture that belonged to the reformer.
These tall tenements on both sides of what is now High Street and Canongate are still a prominent characteristic of the Old Town.
Matters were not bettered by the Act of Union signed in a cellar in High Street in 1707, amidst the execrations of the people, and it was not till the hopes of the Jacobites were blasted at Culloden (1746) that the townsfolk began to accept the inevitable.
Poor and squalid streets are found, in close proximity to the wealthiest localities, between Marylebone Road and St John's Wood Road, and about High Street in the south, the .site of the original village.
