Historic Vaults Small-Group Tour review
My verdict: the one I would book myself. Seventy-five minutes in the deepest Blair Street chambers with a small group, audio devices, a museum, a film, and excavation finds you are allowed to pick up. It is history first and it does not pretend to be anything else. Rated 4.7, though from only 614 ratings — the smallest sample of the six.
Why this one is different
Almost every tour into the Edinburgh Vaults is sold on atmosphere. This one is sold on the excavation. You meet at the Mercat Cross beside St Giles’, walk a stretch of the Royal Mile with the guide, and go down into the Blair Street chambers, which the operator describes as the deepest and largest accessible rooms in the complex. Whether they are the deepest is their claim, not mine, but they are unmistakably a different set of rooms from the South Bridge ones.
Underground you get audio devices, the Vaults Museum with its interactive 3D models, the short Vaults Revealed film, and the part that sold it to me: the chance to handle objects pulled out of the rubble during the excavation. Norrie Rowan is credited with finding the chambers in 1985, and he and his son spent the 1990s taking hundreds of tonnes of fill out of them. What came up was thousands of oyster shells, clay pipes, buttons, broken medicine bottles and children’s toys. Holding a clay pipe that somebody dropped down there does more for me than any amount of low lighting.
Usually included
- A Master Storyteller guide for the full 75 minutes
- A walk along the Royal Mile before the descent
- Exclusive access to the Blair Street chambers
- Audio devices, so the guide is audible in every room
- The Vaults Museum with interactive 3D models and the Vaults Revealed film
- Handling centuries-old artefacts found in the excavation
Not included
- Food, drink or hotel pickup
- The whisky, beer or soft drink that comes with the evening tour
- Jump scares, actors and anything staged
- Step-free access — the spiral stair is unavoidable
- Anyone under five, and pets other than assistance dogs
What works
- The only one of the six where you can hold something that came out of the rubble
- Audio devices plus a small group means you hear the whole tour
- Substance rather than performance, which is rarer here than it should be
- Seventy-five minutes fits a daytime slot without eating the afternoon
- Runs rain or shine, and the underground half is weatherproof by definition
Worth knowing
- 614 ratings is a thin sample next to the flagship’s 12,464
- No drink included, unlike the two-hour evening version
- If you wanted to be frightened you will come out unfrightened
- Still a spiral staircase, so still not step-free
- Uneven surfaces on the walking section — comfortable shoes are not optional
What reviewers say
The sample is small but it is unusually consistent, and it is consistent about the same thing: people came for history and got history.
If you are interested in history, this is your tour.
Shannon expertly helped us envision what life must have been like.
Michael was brilliantly entertaining and informative in equal measures.
Catherine from Ireland described her guide Linda as making it both an educational and a wonderful insight, and David from the United States said his guide vividly painted life in the vaults. Those are the two jobs a guide has down there, given the rooms themselves are empty. The recurring names are Linda, Shannon, Michael and Nikola.
Who it suits
People who read the museum labels. Families who want their children to come out knowing something rather than sleeping badly — the minimum is five, the same as the evening tour. Anyone who has already done a ghost tour somewhere and found it thin. And anyone nervous about enclosed spaces who still wants to go down: a small group, a guide you can hear in your ear and no theatrical darkness makes this the most manageable of the underground five, which is why it comes up on the claustrophobia page.
When I would point you elsewhere
If you want the same chambers and the same museum with a drink by candlelight and an extra forty-five minutes, book the evening tour with whisky instead — same operator, same stair, more of an occasion. If you want to be startled, this is the wrong listing entirely and the Extreme Paranormal tour is the right one, with the caveats in that review. And if you specifically want the South Bridge chambers on the Niddry Street side, this tour does not go there — the Underground Vaults Tour does.
Ask the guide what the oyster shells mean before somebody else does. They were the cheap food of the period, they came up in their thousands, and the answer reframes the whole hour. More of that story on why Edinburgh has vaults.
Compare it against
Small groupEdinburgh: Underground Vaults Evening Ghost Tour with Whisky
Most bookedEdinburgh: Underground Vaults Tour
Above groundEdinburgh: Witches & History Old Town Walking Tour
Frequently asked questions
Is this an actual ghost tour?
No. It is the history-first option: audio devices, a museum, a film and excavation finds you can handle, told straight. Nobody jumps out. If that is what you wanted, the night tours page sorts the six by how much theatre each one carries.
Do you really get to hold the artefacts?
Handling centuries-old objects found during the excavation is listed as an inclusion, and the reviews back it up. The finds from the 1990s dig included thousands of oyster shells, clay pipes, buttons, medicine bottles and children’s toys.
Which vaults are the deepest in Edinburgh?
The Blair Street operator describes its chambers as the deepest and largest accessible ones, and this tour goes into them. They are a separate system from the South Bridge chambers — the difference is set out on the Blair Street vaults.