By his charter of 1456, James II granted the community of Edinburgh the valley and the low ground between Calton Hill and Greenside for performing tournaments, sports and other warlike deeds.[1] This was part of his policy of military preparedness that saw the Act of 1457 banning golf and football and ordering archery practise every Sunday. This natural amphitheatre was also used for open-air theatre and saw performances of the early Scots play "Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis" by Sir David Lyndsay. In May 1518 the Carmelite Friars (also known as White Friars and locally based at South Queensferry), were granted lands by charter from the city at Greenside and built a small monastery there. Monasteries were suppressed following the Scottish Reformation of 1560, and this stood empty before conversion in 1591 into a hospital for lepers, founded by John Robertson, a city merchant.[3] So severe were the regulations that escape, or even the opening of the gate of the hospital between sunset and sunrise, would incur the penalty of death carried out on the gallows erected at the gate. The monastery would appear to have been located at the north-east end of Greenside Row and its site is shown there on the 1931 Ordnance Survey maps.[11] Ten skeletons found in July 2009 during roadworks to create a new tramway in Leith Walk (since abandoned) are believed to have been connected with the hospital.[12]