ARCHITECTURE · EDINBURGH
Reading time: 7 minNew Eidyn is not a marketing invention. Eidyn is the oldest recorded name for the ground Edinburgh stands on, a hillfort first written down thirteen centuries ago. Its 152 apartments sit in three pavilions on the roof of St James Quarter, and the elevation is the whole point: this is a building making the same argument the original fort made, from a different height.
Introduction
New Eidyn is a 152-apartment residential development by Native Land, built across three pavilion buildings on the roof of Edinburgh’s St James Quarter, in the city centre. Designed by Edinburgh-based 7N Architects with interiors by Hudson & Mercer, the scheme has been completing in phases since 2023, with the first pavilion finished that year and further pavilions following. Apartments range from studios to four bedrooms, with one-bedroom homes starting from around £385,000 and three-bedroom premium apartments priced above £1 million.
The development takes its name from Eidyn, and that name is doing more work than a typical property brand usually attempts. It is not an invented word or a vaguely Scottish-sounding flourish. It is the place’s own oldest name, older than Edinburgh itself, and it refers specifically to a fort on high ground.
That is worth taking seriously before looking at anything else about the building, because New Eidyn’s own design logic, three pavilions raised above a shopping quarter, built specifically to look out over the city and the Firth of Forth, is making an argument that happens to rhyme with the name it borrowed.
A name older than the city it sits in
Edinburgh’s name comes from Din Eidyn, a Brittonic name for a fort believed to have stood on Castle Rock, the volcanic outcrop that Edinburgh Castle occupies today. The name survives because of Y Gododdin, an early medieval poem describing three hundred warriors who assembled at Din Eidyn before a doomed raid on Catraeth, thought to be modern Catterick in Yorkshire, in a battle usually dated to around AD 600. The Annals of Ulster record the fort’s fall to Anglian forces in 638, after which Din Eidyn’s Brittonic din, meaning fort, was replaced by the Old English burh, meaning the same thing, to produce Edinburgh. In Scottish Gaelic the same root survives as Dùn Èideann.
So Eidyn is not folklore. It is the earliest attested name for the high ground this city was built around, roughly thirteen centuries old, and it specifically names a fortified place raised above its surroundings. A development sitting in three pavilions on a rooftop above a shopping quarter, built to be seen from below and to look out over the city from above, is repeating the same basic move the original fort made: claim the high ground, and let the view do the arguing. Whoever named this building either knew that or got remarkably lucky, and either way it is a better piece of naming than most developments manage.
Who actually designed New Eidyn
New Eidyn’s architecture is by 7N Architects, an Edinburgh practice founded in 2009 by Ewan Anderson, who worked at Foster + Partners and Conran + Partners before starting his own studio. The firm is now led by three directors, Anderson, Craig Tait and Ben Watson, and its portfolio around Edinburgh includes the Western Harbour masterplan, Haymarket Yards, Rowanbank Gardens and the Holyrood Distillery, alongside university and civic work elsewhere in Scotland. That is a practice with a genuine, sustained body of work in the city New Eidyn sits in, rather than a firm parachuted in for one commission.
Interiors were developed with Hudson & Mercer, a London-based practice, working alongside 7N’s own interiors team. Landscape design for the development’s private outdoor space came from OPEN, and the material approach throughout has been described by 7N as a considered, tactile palette chosen specifically for its association with Edinburgh’s own character, rather than an imported luxury vocabulary applied regardless of city. Naming that full team matters, because a development this size is the work of several distinct practices, each responsible for a different part of what a resident actually experiences, and none of them should be flattened into a single generic credit.
Three pavilions, not one tower
New Eidyn is built as three separate pavilion buildings rather than a single block, sitting on top of St James Quarter’s retail podium in the centre of Edinburgh. That decision shapes the apartments directly. 7N Architects has described arranging each apartment’s layout as a sequence of spaces specifically to work with the views each pavilion commands, rather than fitting a standard floor plan and hoping the outlook cooperates. The result is a building where the panorama, across the Old Town’s skyline in one direction and the Firth of Forth in another, is treated as part of the brief rather than a marketing photograph taken after the fact.
The three-pavilion structure has also allowed the development to complete in stages rather than all at once. The first pavilion was finished in 2023, with residents already in occupation, and further pavilions have followed. That phased handover is a practical consequence of building three distinct structures rather than one, and it means New Eidyn has been able to open its shared amenities, the Sky Gardens, the Garden Room, the concierge service, while later pavilions are still being finished around them.
What residents actually get
The development’s amenities are worth naming specifically rather than folding into a generic “hotel-style living” line, because several of them are genuinely unusual for a residential scheme. The Sky Garden, a landscaped outdoor space on the fifth floor designed by OPEN, runs to roughly 10,000 square feet, a scale that puts it closer to a public park than a communal roof terrace. A separate private Garden Room gives residents an indoor gathering space distinct from their own apartments. Round-the-clock concierge and security, and secure underground parking, complete the more conventional end of the offer.
The more distinctive detail is that New Eidyn residents have access to the gym and spa at W Edinburgh, the hotel that forms part of the same St James Quarter development. That is a genuine crossover between the residential and hospitality sides of the same masterplan, rather than a standalone leisure suite built and run purely for the apartments, and it is the kind of shared infrastructure that only works because the whole quarter was planned as a single piece of ground rather than as separate, unconnected sites.
Craft commissioned specifically for the building
New Eidyn has also commissioned original work from Scottish makers rather than sourcing decorative art generically. Painter Jasmine Linington, whose work draws on natural, water-based forms, and furniture maker Namon Gaston, known for Danish-influenced handmade furniture produced in Scotland, have both been commissioned for pieces specific to the development. Naming both here matters for the same reason naming the architects does: a “bespoke artwork” credit line without names is a courtesy withheld from the people who actually made the thing, and both are working makers with their own practices worth following beyond this one commission.
Frequently asked questions
What is New Eidyn?
New Eidyn is a 152-apartment residential development in three pavilion buildings on the roof of St James Quarter in central Edinburgh, developed by Native Land and designed by 7N Architects with interiors by Hudson & Mercer.
Where does the name New Eidyn come from?
Eidyn is the oldest recorded name for the site Edinburgh occupies, referring to a fort believed to have stood on Castle Rock and first recorded in the early medieval poem Y Gododdin, describing events around AD 600. The name Edinburgh itself derives from Din Eidyn.
How much do apartments at New Eidyn cost?
One-bedroom apartments have started from around £385,000, with three-bedroom premium apartments priced above £1 million.
What amenities does New Eidyn offer?
Residents have access to a roughly 10,000 square foot Sky Garden designed by landscape architects OPEN, a private Garden Room, round-the-clock concierge and security, secure underground parking, and membership access to the gym and spa at the neighbouring W Edinburgh hotel.
Who designed New Eidyn?
The architecture is by 7N Architects, an Edinburgh practice founded in 2009 by Ewan Anderson, with interiors developed alongside London-based Hudson & Mercer and landscape design by OPEN.
Is New Eidyn finished?
The development has completed in phases. The first of the three pavilions was finished in 2023, with residents in occupation, and further pavilions have followed.
Final thoughts
Strip away the price list and the amenity brochure, and New Eidyn is a building that took its own name seriously. Eidyn was never just a word available for licensing. It named a specific fort, on specific high ground, first written down some thirteen centuries ago, and the fort existed because that height mattered to the people who built it. New Eidyn’s three pavilions, raised above a shopping quarter and built to look out over the same skyline and the same firth, are making a version of that same argument from a different century.
That is a more interesting claim than most new residential developments make for themselves, and it happens to be backed by real architecture. 7N Architects, a practice with over a decade of work in this specific city, designed apartments around the view rather than around a standard floor plan, and the makers commissioned to finish the interiors, Jasmine Linington and Namon Gaston among them, are named, working practitioners rather than an anonymous “bespoke” credit. Whether or not every resident knows the history behind the name they live under, the building itself has not forgotten it.
Project Credits
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