The Dean Village, originally the Village of the Water of Leith, grew around a milling community. The town of Edinburgh and the Incorporation of Baxters (the Bakers' guild) operated eleven water mills in and near the Village and produced all the meal for the town and surrounding villages. For a milling industry the situation was uniquely attractive, a fast-flowing river providing power, two areas of flat land for mill sites and a main road leading to the town. Milling was carried out here since at least the twelth-century, when David I referred, in his great charter to Holyrood Abbey, to the 'Mills at the Dene'. Dene or dean means a deep valley.

A tour of the village may well start at the top of Bell's Brae. The old part of the house here dates from between 1673 and 1690 and was an inn, the Baxters' House of Call. Built into the north-east wall of the house at the corner of the Dean Bridge is a stone dated 1619 from the village below, with the ripening sun, the wheatsheaves and bakers' shovels or 'peels', accompanied by the quotation from Genesis: 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.' In the late nineteenth century the old house was embellished and extended for a well-known Edinburgh character, James Stewart, who ran a cab-hiring business from here.

Bell's Brae, built in 1673, became the main road out of Edinburgh to the Queen's Ferry and the north. Halfway down, the building on the right, now offices, was 'Cabbie' Stewart's coach-house. The tall building on the left, built about 1891, provided stabling for his horses on the two lowest storeys (now an office), while the top two storeys were built as the home and studio of Charles Martin Hardie, RSA. At the foot of the hill on the left is the Baxters' Tolbooth of 1675, a building that served as head-quarters to the Incorporation of the Baxters and as their granary. It is a splendid building of its period, now restored as flats. The windows in the stair-tower are of the seventeenth century type. Above the blocked doorway the lintel has the inscription GOD BLESS THE BAXTERS OF EDINBRUGH UHO BULT THIS HOUS 1675. The carving above it has the Baxters' crossed peels, three cakes and a pie and the inscription: GOD'S PROVEDENC IS OUR INHERITENC.

Opposite, on the wall adjoining the bridge parapet, are two carved stones from Lindsay's Mill, a date stone 1643 with crossed peels, and an inscribed lintel: 'Blessit be God for all His Giftis.' Beside the bridge is an early seventeenth century house restored by Sir Basil Spence. It is a very good example of how old buildings can be sympathetically restored for modern use.

Miller Row is the beginning of a riverside walk to Stockbridge. On the right, offices built in the 1980s occupy the site of 'Jericho', erected in 1619 as a granary for the city of Edinburgh, but the scene of a disastrous fire in 1956. On the left, a group of three grindstones stand on what remains of Lindsay's Mill. Further down, the small neo-baronial building was erected in 1912 by the publisher Nelson as a racquets court on the site of Mar's Mill. The Dean Bridge, one of Scotland's most impressive structures, was designed by Thomas Telford and completed in 1832. It rises 108 feet above the river. The path passes below it, following the line of the mill-lade on its way to the site of Greenland Mill and beyond to Stockbridge and Silvermills. Two miles downstream the lade returned its water to the river. If you walk downstream between Moray Place Gardens on the right and Dean Gardens across the river, you come to two mineral wells. The first is St George's Well of 1810, the second and much more elaborate is St Bernard's Well of 1789, a little classical temple designed by Alexander Naysmith. (The terrace was added in 1888.)

As you return to the old bridge in the village, you see the massive West Mill across the river. The date 1805 on its facade refers to a re-building, for there were mills here much earlier. It has been converted into flats. The built-up circular apertures on the mill once gave ventilation to the grain floors. The mill-lade ran under the building below the main entrance and returned to the river by the two arched recesses on the water frontage.

Turning into Damside you follow the line of that lade (for which the Scots word is 'dam'). The buildings on your right and left date from the late nineteenth century, when they replaced much older houses. Well Court, on the left, was designed by Sidney Mitchell in 1884 for John Ritchie Findlay, proprietor of The Scotsman, to provide decent housing for working-class tenants (and to enhance the view from his house in Rothesay Terrace). The building with a clock tower was a community hall, but is now an office. On the flat ground beyond there used to be three more mills as well as some weavers' houses. In the nineteenth century the mills were replaced by a tannery which was demolished by about 1980. Houses and flats have been built on the site of the tannery and of the many houses which crowded the steep slope above.

A lane leads to a metal footbridge beside the ancient ford. Dean Bank Footpath leads upstream from here to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and Dean Gallery. Originally the river provided power in its twenty-three miles for over seventy watermills, a higher work output than any other river in Scotland. Across the river Hawthorn Buildings, yellow-washed and half-timbered, were built in 1895 in a very un-Scottish style. Unfortunately, the last shop in the village has closed. There used to be several.

Dean Path is the street which leads north out of the Village. At the lower end on the right and further up on the left there are some old houses with characteristic stair towers either at the back or the front. On the right are the private gardens of Belgrave Crescent. A sign on the left indicates an alternative access to Dean Bank Footpath. At the top of Dean path is the Dean Cemetery, one of Edinburgh's most attractive and historic burial grounds. It was laid out in 1845 on the site of Dean House, the home of the Nisbets of Dean from 1614 to 1827. Here many figures of Sir Walter Scott's Edinburgh are commemorated, including Lord Cockburn and Lord Jeffrey. The name Dean Village used to apply to a group of houses near the entrance to the cemetery, where Belgrave Mews now stands.

If you follow the riverside path upstream from the footbridge and passing the weir from which a lade used to run through the Village, you come to a beautiful stretch of the river beneath a steep wooded bank. The tall brick building on the other side of the river was built as cabinet works for Whytock & Reid. There used to be several industries in this Sunbury area, a distillery, a wrought-iron works, a garage, but now there are offices and houses. A footbridge leads to them. Further upstream is Belford Bridge built in 1887. Just before the Belford Bridge, steps lead up to the street level and a pedestrian access to the Dean Gallery, which was built as an orphanage in 1831-33, to a design by Thomas Hamilton. Beyond it is the National Gallery of Modern Art, which can also be reached from the valley.

If you follow the path under the road bridge, you will come to a hotel on the site of Bell's Mills, which were destroyed by an explosion in 1971, but the granary, dated 1807, and the eighteenth-century miller's house survive. Further upstream, where the valley opens out, there is a timber footbridge from which a path leads up to the Gallery of Modern Art (formerly John Watson's School, built in 1825 to a design by William Burn).

If you follow Belford Road eastwards (towards town) you will see several fine buildings. Belford Church, by Sidney Mitchell 1889, now the backpackers' hostel; Lynedoch House (sheltered housing for the old) by Roland Wedgwood Associates 1977; Drumsheugh Baths (a private club) by Sir John J Burnet 1888; Drumsheugh Toll by Sir George Washington Browne 1891. Across the valley is Holy Trinity Church built in 1838.