Edinburgh

Greyfriars Bobby

A bronze of the Skye terrier said to have kept watch over his master's grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard for fourteen years, modelled from life and set on a drinking fountain in 1873.

Welcome

At the top of Candlemaker Row, where it meets George IV Bridge, a small shaggy dog sits on a granite column, looking across the street towards the kirkyard gate.

He is life-size, which is to say not very big, and he has sat there, watching, since 1873.

The story goes that his master, a policeman, died in 1858 and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, and that the little terrier would not leave the grave. The people of the Old Town fed him and sheltered him, and in the end the city took him in as its own. When he died, a statue was made in his likeness and set on a drinking fountain opposite the gate he had watched.

Cross the road afterwards to find his own headstone just inside the kirkyard, where people still leave sticks for him.

Before you go

The statue stands on the pavement at the corner of Candlemaker Row and George IV Bridge, free to see at any hour.

His grave is a few steps away, just inside the gate of Greyfriars Kirkyard, and his collar and dish are in the Museum of Edinburgh on the Canongate.

Where: The corner of Candlemaker Row and George IV Bridge, opposite the gate of Greyfriars Kirkyard.

Did you know

A night watchman's dog.

Bobby belonged to John Gray, a gardener who came to Edinburgh in 1850 and, finding no garden work, joined the police as a night watchman. Bobby walked the cobbled streets with him through the winter nights.

Greyfriars Bobby's granite headstone in a kirkyard

Did you know

Dinner at one o'clock.

Crowds gathered at the kirkyard gate to wait for the one o'clock gun, when Bobby left the grave for his midday meal at Traill's Coffee House round the corner, served in his own dish.

Greyfriars Bobby's headstone with the kirkyard church and a small statue visible behind

Did you know

Licensed by the Lord Provost.

When a law of 1867 ordered every unlicensed dog to be destroyed, the Lord Provost, Sir William Chambers, paid Bobby's licence himself and gave him a collar engraved with the fact.

a bronze Skye Terrier statue on a plinth beside a sticker-covered lamp post

Did you know

Modelled from life.

William Brodie modelled the statue from Bobby himself, shortly before the dog died. The words round its base say so: Greyfriars Bobby, from the life just before his death.

a bronze Skye Terrier statue on a fountain plinth outside a pub, two women passing on the street

Did you know

Water for dogs and people.

The statue tops a drinking fountain given by Baroness Burdett-Coutts: a low trough for dogs and a basin above for people, with two bronze cups on chains. The water was turned off in 1957.

The bronze statue of Greyfriars Bobby sits on its plinth opposite a row of Old Town buildings.

Did you know

Leave his nose alone.

Visitors rub the statue's nose for luck, and it shines. The city's museums ask people to leave it be, so the bronze lasts.

the base of Greyfriars Bobby's headstone with pebbles and sticks left as tributes

Did you know

More than one Bobby?

The historian Jan Bondeson found more than sixty loyal cemetery dogs recorded in 19th-century Europe, and has argued that the Edinburgh story may join more than one dog together.

Ben Lerwill

From our guide to Edinburgh

One of Edinburgh’s more unlikely historical heroes is Greyfriars Bobby, the little Skye terrier that reportedly spent the last 14 years of his life sitting patiently by his late owner’s grave. Bobby’s statue now sits atop a granite fountain on the corner of George IV Bridge and Candlemaker Row, close to Greyfriars Kirkyard, the cemetery where he’s now buried near his master. The churchyard is also notable for being home to the reportedly haunted mausoleum of Sir George ‘Bloody’ Mackenzie.

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