From www.genuki.org: "Penicuik (Cymric pen-y-cog, 'hill of the cuckoo'), a town and a parish in the South of Edinburghshire. A burgh of barony and a police burgh, the town which stands, 600 feet above sea-level, on the left bank of the river North Esk, by road is 12 miles North by West of Peebles and 10 South of Edinburghshire.

The place wears a well-built airy appearance, superior to that of most towns of its size; contains some good shops and spacious well-to-do dwellings; and has a town hall, a post-office, with money order, savings bank, insurance, and telegraph departments, a branch of the Clydesdale Bank, 2 hotels, a gas company, a drinking fountain (1864), angling, bowling, cricket, and curling clubs, horticultural and ornithological societies, a drill hall, a cemetery, hiring fairs on the third Friday of March and the first Friday of October."

(Extract from Groomes Ordnance Gazetter of Scotland c.1895)