25th July 1985

Queen Elizabeth II opens Waverley Mall

Edinburgh’s Waverley Mall was originally called Waverley Market, which had been the name of the real market on whose site it now stands. Sitting almost entirely below ground level, it was designed in such a way that it should not spoil the view of Edinburgh Castle from Princes Street.

It was renamed Waverley Shopping Centre in the early 1990s and, ten years later, Princes Mall. It was retitled once again in 2016, following another renovation, to Waverley Mall, at which point its name nodded at both its oldest and most recent incarnations, taking ‘Waverley’ from the market, and ‘Mall’ from Princes Mall.

A royal first?

Although officially opened on 25 July 1985, the mall had been welcoming customers since November the previous year. A post on an early incarnation of the mall’s website stated that “It is rumored (sic) that during the opening of the Mall the Queen travelled on an escalator for the first time.”

The first escalators in Britain had beeninstalled in Harrods department store, in London, in 1898.