Bringing the Chesneys Home to Memory | The search for the final residents of Mary King’s Close

For years, visitors wandering through the preserved streets of The Real Mary King’s Close have met the story of the Chesneys: the final family who lived and worked beneath the Royal Mile before the Close fell silent. Their workshop. Their home. Their reluctant departure in 1902 after the City Chambers served a compulsory purchase notice.

Yet one piece of their story had faded into obscurity. Where had Andrew and Margaret Chesney, the last residents of Mary King’s Close, been laid to rest?

This year, three researchers took on the challenge: our team members Ashleigh More and Adam Armstrong, supported by Robbie MacRae, a former member of The Real Mary King’s Close team whose passion for Edinburgh’s past remains boundless. What began as a simple archival inquiry soon evolved into a journey across records, maps and forgotten burial lists, bringing the final chapter of the Chesneys’ story back into the light.

A discovery in Morningside

Their combined work eventually led them to Morningside Cemetery. There, in the quiet old registers, they found what had long been missing: the resting place of Andrew and Margaret Chesney.

Andrew, son to David and Janet Chesney, died on 3 October 1906 aged seventy four. He had followed his father into the family trade, working as part of Chesney & Son Sawmakers in the underground workshop beneath the Royal Mile. After David retired, Andrew continued the business until it eventually passed to his nephew, William Marshall, around the turn of the twentieth century.

Margaret, whom Andrew married in 1860, died on 22 January 1918 aged eighty eight. The couple had long left the Old Town behind, settling first in Marchmont and later in Morningside.

Yet the story did not end there. The team also uncovered a poignant detail: Andrew and Margaret are buried with Margaret’s nephew, Andrew Marshall, who died at just nineteen. His presence in their grave suggests deep affection within the family, and adds a quiet, human tenderness to the narrative of their final resting place.

But when the researchers reached the plot, they found no marker. No inscription. Nothing to name the three individuals resting there.

For lives so central to the story we preserve every day, the silence felt too heavy to ignore.

A marker restored to history

Thanks to Ashleigh, Adam and Robbie’s work, and with the full support of The Real Mary King’s Close, a new gravemarker has now been placed on the burial plot in Morningside Cemetery. Quiet. Respectful. A simple act of remembrance for three ordinary Edinburgh residents whose lives allow us to tell extraordinary stories.

This marker does not attempt grandeur. It offers something far more meaningful: recognition. After more than a century, the Chesneys and young Andrew Marshall are no longer unmarked in the earth.

Why the Chesneys matter

Andrew and Margaret were the final residents to leave Mary King’s Close, departing only when the City Chambers expansion compelled them to move. Their exit in 1902 marked the end of residential life beneath the Royal Mile.

Today, thousands of guests walk through the rooms, closes and workshops the family once knew. They see the tools of the sawmaker’s trade. They hear echoes of the lives shaped under the cobbles of Edinburgh’s Old Town. By honouring their resting place, we strengthen the bond between the stories we tell and the real people who lived them.

Continuing the work of remembrance

Our thanks go not only to Ashleigh, Adam and Robbie, but to all who help protect and preserve Edinburgh’s hidden history, from researchers to volunteers across the city.

With the new gravemarker now in place, Andrew and Margaret Chesney — and their nephew Andrew Marshall — are once again named, remembered, and rooted in the story of Edinburgh.

A small stone. A big silence lifted. And a reminder that every life, no matter how quietly lived, leaves its imprint on the city above it.