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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh Nov 15, 2023

The Ross Bandstand: the thread about 170 years of squabbling over a public performance space

The much-debated Ross Bandstand found itself being discussed (yet again) today. But what is the Bandstand’s story? How did it come to be there and who was Ross? Let’s find out.

The Ross Bandstand in 2013. CC-by-SA 2.0 Daniel Hallen

The Ross Bandstand was opened on the evening of Friday 10th May 1935, when an inaugural concert of “music in the parks” was attended by a crowd of at least 10,000 spectators. It was largely financed by a £5,000 (c. £300k in 2023) gift from William H. (Willie) Ross, after whom it is named. Ross was the Chairman of the Distillers Company Limited (usually just known as DCL or the Distillers Company) a company he had worked for since starting as a boy clerk out of school. He had risen through the ranks from the very bottom to the very top, taken over from the founding families and guided it through industrial and economic crises to become a British corporate stalwart.

William H. Ross, chairman of the Distillers Company Limited. © Glasgow City Council Libraries, Mitchell Library, GC 052 BAI

As early as 1926, the old Victorian Bandstand in West Princes Street Gardens, while still a popular public attraction, was seen as out dated and in disrepair (sound familiar?). Inevitably, letters began appearing in The Scotsman suggesting its replacement. It would take 9 years to come to fruition – nothing concrete had happened for the 8 years until 1934 at which point Ross stepped in with his offer. He approached the Lord Provost Sir William Thomson in 1934 on his own initiative, after the previous attempts had failed due to squabbles over funding, location and a backdrop of economic troubles (sound familiar?!)

A concert at the old Bandstand, 1905. © Edinburgh City Libraries

The City had only acquired West Princes Street Gardens in 1876 when the lease of the West Princes Street Proprietors expired; before then it had been a gated private garden for those residents and tenants along that section of that street. However they had been trying to acquire it since at least the 1850s. One of the most prominent voices for bringing the West gardens into public control had been the social reformer Rev. Dr James Begg of the Free Church. He spoke out against what the press called the “committee of shopkeeper” who were the proprietors and their champion Henry Cockburn, who felt the public lacked interest in the gardens. Begg countered that “public involvement was dependent on public rights, and shutting them out from public parks and gardens [had] gone far to destroy their public spirit“. Begg and the Scottish Association for the Suppression of Drunkenness managed to gain access to the public for the Gardens on Christmas and New Years Days “with a view to keeping parties out the dram shops“. Occasional public concerts in the gardens had to be stopped in both 1853 and again in 1875 when conditions descended into a near riot on account of “all denominations” of the citizenry trying to force their way into the Gardens to hear military bands, with “skirmishes” ensuing. They were supported in this by the Liberal and Reformist Lord Provost Duncan Mclaren. These arguments of public vs. private rights of access to the Gardens all sound very familiar, don’t they?

The first bandstand was built in 1872. When the West Princes Street Gardens organisation was wound up in 1879 it was found that they had substantial excess funds left and so these were used to construct a new bandstand in 1880 to the designs of Peddie & Kinnear. It quickly acquired an amphitheatre of seating on all sides.

The old bandstand, 1900. © Edinburgh City Libraries

In 1897/98, in another one of Edinburgh’s interminable squabbles about the location and funding of concert halls, West Princes Street Gardens was mooted as a site for the potential Usher Hall. It was eventually built on Lothian Road, completed 16 years later.

The new bandstand was designed by the City Architect, Ebenezer James Macrae, “the man who shaped modern Edinburgh“. It has a performance stage for bands of up to fifty members. A 40 feet wide concrete canopy projects 11 feet ahead of this, not just to keep the weather off the performers beneath but also to help direct the sound downwards and forwards to the audience. For the same purpose, the rear of the stage was constructed in the manner of a “sound mirror” and the stage was hollow, to act as a passive amplifier. A paved dance floor area was laid out between the stage and the seating. The opening programme for 1935 was a very martial affair – the schedule dominated by the bands of the Scots Guards, Irish Guards, Border Regiment, Royal Scots Greys and Gordon Highlanders (amongst others). However, in a break from military music, Councillor Stevenson of the Parks Committee made it known that they were investigating the potential for staging Shakespeare on the stage.

The Ross Bandstand in 2012 © Edinburgh City Libraries

On Sunday 13th May, 1945, Winston Churchill’s VE Day Broadcast over the BBC was relayed to the Ross Bandstand, followed by a concert and Victory Dance performed by the band of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. What would become the Edinburgh Military Tattoo started out at the Ross Bandstand in 1949, when 15,000 people attended a display of military drill and music from the band of the Highland Light Infantry under the direction of Colonel George Malcolm. The Royal Scots Greys provided a trumpet fanfare, the Royal Scots the pipes and drums, there was sword dancing, rifle drill, PT displays, a “Sixteen-some Reel” danced by the men of the Royal Scots and women of the Women’s Royal Army Corps and a general parade of service personnel.

VE dance in May 1945. Evening News photo, from “Living Memories” by Jennifer Veitch

In the 1950s, the Council organised a programme of entertainments at the bandstand throughout the season. In 1954 you could see dancing, displays of fly fishing, ballet, a parade of animals from Edinburgh Zoo and of course military bands (the Cameronians were in residence). From 1946, as part of a postwar “Holidays At Home” scheme, on Saturdays throughout the summer there was a “Children’s Hour” performed each Saturday at 1030AM. Music, sing-alongs, Punch & Judy, competitions, team quizzes and dancing all took place. These ran until 1961

The final Children’s Hour at the Ross Bandstand, 9th September 1961. Evening News photo.

The bandstand began to fall out of favour in the 1960s, attendances dropped as public expectations changed. There were repeated letters to The Scotsman demanding the seating have a roof put over it “as a matter of desperation”. £10,000 was earmarked for this, but never spent. A temporary roof was eventually procured by Edinburgh District Council for the Bandstand’s seating area in 1986 at a cost of £180,000 for festival events. The 14 ton crane hired to erect it promptly cracked the concrete of the seating area and got stuck. When it came to re-erect the roof in 1987, the Conservative group on the council attempted to stop it at the Policy & Resources Committee. They wanted the whole bandstand gone on account of “the noise and cost to ratepayers”. It was “a scar on the landscape” said Cllr David Guestv

The crane stuck in the Ross Bandstand. The temporary roof tent and supporting structure can be seen behind it. Evening News Photo.

The SNP precipitated local controversy in 1971 when they tried to book the Bandstand to host a public debate on party policy on the European Common Market. The very conservative Finance Committee came down hard on the line that it was strictly to be used only for “entertainment purposes”.

Headline – Lord Provost of Edinburgh Asked to Aid SNP Case

Alongside use as a semi-covered Festival venue, the institution that was the end-of-festival Fireworks concert helped to save the bandstand, as each year the Royal Scottish National Orchestra would play a concert choreographed to fireworks launched from the castle. However, because there is never anything new under the sun in Edinburgh local politics even in 1989 the District Council was accused of “fervour” for “low art” by trying to make it more accessible the public by staging popular events and the letters pages of The Scotsman once again overflowed with debates on the pros and cons of the festivals.

The most recent attempt at redevelopment started way back in 2016 when the City of Edinburgh Council consulted on the future of the bandstand, with US architects appointed in 2017 to design new proposals which came to be dubbed “The Hobbit House” on account of the curving, grassed canopy. This was part of an overall public / private “partnership” scheme called (for reasons opaque ) The Quaich Project. It eventually foundered in 2021 due to a combination of political squabbling, disagreements over the design, substantial dissatisfaction over the potential restriction of access to what is seen as a public space and the main funder pulling out. The interminable debates around the Ross Bandstand continues to go on to this day, as it has done for the last 170 years.

The 2017 “Hobbit House” design proposal. From Rossbandstand.org

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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh Oct 15, 2023

The “most fortunate of the city politicians”: the thread about the life and times of Orlando Hart

This thread was originally written and published in October 2023.

Last week’s thread about the bankers Sir James Hunter Blair and Sir William Forbes contained a caricature by the prolific John Kay that satirised the local political scandal of “The Levelling of the High Street” as part of the construction of the South Bridge. On the left is a local politician by the name of Orlando Hart.

L-R, Orlando Hart, William Jamieson (of Portobello), Sir James Hay, Sir James Hunter Blair, Archibald McDowall. CC-by-NC-ND, National Portrait Gallery, NPG D16419

Orlando? I didn’t at first believe there was a man in 18th century Edinburgh called Orlando! Lowland Scotland in the 18th and 19th century had a habit of naming their sons from a rather small pool of names – work by Richard Rodger on the 1861 Census has shown that a full 50% of boys in Edinburgh were named either John, James, William or Robert and the top 10 most popular names accounted for 79% of all boys. But it turns out I was totally wrong, and Orlando Hart was one of a population of (probably) just two Orlandos in the whole country at this time. I am informed (thank you Corpyburd on Twitter) that this seed of doubt, on my part, has a name – The Tiffany Problem. This is when people do not believe something historical is true, because it sounds modern, and takes its name from people associating the name Tiffany so strongly with the 1980s and a certain pop star that they cannot believe it was a relatively common medieval name. So I just had to try and find out a bit more about this exotically-named man.

So who was Orlando Hart? When and where he was born, I do not know, I cannot find any birth registration for him, but based on the known facts of his life he was probably born between 1720-30. Hart wasn’t a particularly common surname in Edinburgh at the time, only 12 boys and 8 girls named Hart were registered born in Edinburgh in the 20 years 1715-1735. So unless he was born under a different name as one of those 12, I assume he may not have been born in Edinburgh. In 1751 we get our first solid record of him, when a journeyman1 shoemaker of his name married Elisabeth Henderson of the Water of Leith Village at the West Kirk of St. Cuthberts.

East View of St. Cuthbert’s or Old West Kirk, as it was, by James Skene, 1827 © Edinburgh City Libraries

A journeyman is a craftsman who had finished their trade apprenticeship but was not their own master, i.e. he worked for another ↩︎

Children followed; (Mac)Duff in 1755 (named after a friend), Archibald in 1760 and Katharine in 1766. A son also named Orlando Hart, was buried in 1772. Like many aspiring and connected men of the time, Orlando was a Freemason; in 1755-57 and again in 1761-62 he was a Grand Steward in the Grand Lodge of Scotland – a man clearly getting somewhere in life. It is evident he was popular amongst his contemporaries, in 1757 he was elected to the Monarchy of the Jolly Sons of St. Crispin – a fraternal organisation for shoemakers and by 1760 he was noted as a “Shoemaker in Lady Yester’s Parish“. Lady Yester’s – or the South East Parish of Edinburgh – served the portion of the city south of the Cowgate and east of College Wynd. The church moved from a 17th century building in the High School Yards to a new one on Infirmary Street in 1805.

Lady Yester’s Parish Kirk on Infirmary Street, 1820 by Thomas Hosmer Shepher. © Edinburgh City Libraries.

But Orlando Hart was moving upwards in life and didn’t stay still long, 3 years later he was a “Shoemaker In the Mint” – the old Royal Mint of Scotland, north of the Cowgate where Coinyie-House Close now stands. He is recorded as being shoemaker to James Boswell in the latter’s correspondence.

The Mint by James Skene, 1824. the mint is on the right with that same staircase. © Edinburgh City Libraries

Successful and popular as a shoemaker and a freemason, it was natural that local politics should follow and in 1766 he was elected Deacon of his Trade Incorporation, the Cordiners. (Cordwainer was the ancient word for a shoemaker, who made shoes from new leather – Cordoba, from the Spanish city of Córdoba where the best shoe leather traditionally came from. A “cobbler” in contrast was someone who repaired, or re-made, shoes.) The Deacon was the most senior office holder of his Trade, elected by and from amongst his peers. It also conferred him a seat on the town council as a representative of his Trade. Further success followed, in 1771 he was elected Convenor of the Trades, the most senior officer of all the city’s Trade Incorporations.

Cordiner’s Hall, “near the College” (where Old College of the University now lies). A watercolour by James Skene, 1820. © Edinburgh City Libraries

His rise did not stop there. By 1773 he was a Magistrate – a legal officer of the Town Council in the lowest level of courts – again the Trades had a right to put forward a candidate for one of these positions. The Town Council and its officers at this time was a mixture of elected councillors and also a balance of seats held by the representatives of the Trades and the Merchants. By now, Orlando Hart’s business has moved to the centre of the Old Town, “Opposite the Guard“, meaning the old guard house lodge in the centre of the High Street, between the Tron Kirk and St. Giles. A prestigious address, in a time before the Old Town was yet to be supplanted by the New Town as the place to do business.

Old Guard House of Edinburgh, James Skene, 1827 © Edinburgh City Libraries

Not content to be just a successful Shoemaker, freemason, man of his Trade and local politician, he was also quite a dab hand with his golf clubs. Golf was a pastime that occupied the important men of the city and was as much a place to fraternise and do business as to improve your handicap. When the Royal Burgess Golfing Society reformed in 1773, who should be elected club captain but Orlando Hart?

“Cock O’ The Green”, a John Kay caricature showing Alexander McKellar, an obsessive golfer on Bruntsfield Links and contemporary of Orlando Hart.

He represented the City as a Commissioner of the Convention of Royal Burghs, where the representatives of the various Burghs would gather once or twice a year to thrash out the issues of the day, and also at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland alongside the Lord Provost of Edinburgh (the most powerful local politician in all of Scotland). In 1775 he was once again elected Deacon Convenor of the Trades – for a good 25 years of his life he was constantly in one office of local government or another. These were positions elected from and amongst his peers, a mark of his popularity amongst them. John Kay’s brief biography says he was “Considered one of the most fortunate of the city politicians… He possessed a happy knack of suiting himself to circumstances, and was peculiarly sagacious in keeping steady by the leading men in the magistracy”. What this means was that Hart was always careful to align himself to the most senior men in the council, whomever they may be, without treading on the toes of others. He was awarded the honorific (and profitable) office of Keeper of the Town Water Works.

“The first Waterhouse or Reservoir, Castlehill”, a John Le Conte watercolour of 1840 showing the old water reservoir and house on the Castle Hill which supplied the city, and was a convenient location for the housing of a fire engine. © Edinburgh City Libraries

In 1787, Orlando Hart’s name appears at the back of an important book as subscriber to “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect” – the Edinburgh reprint of Robert Burns’ sensational début publication, which saw the good and the great of the city clamouring for the author’s favour. A year later, his name pops up in another interesting place; as being called to assize as a Juror in the case of one William Brodie – Deacon Brodie to you and I. Brodie was a man who had once held an equivalent office of local government, Deacon, as Orlando, but the latter was not selected to sit on the jury.

Stinking Edition, 1787 Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. Robert Burns. So called because of a printing error where ‘Skinking’ became ‘Stinking’. CC-by-SA 4.0 Rosser1954

Hart must have been well into his sixties by 1791 when he was once again elected as one of the two Town Councillors representing the Trades. By this time he must also have been exceptionally wealthy, as he bought a feu on Charlotte Square – the newest and most prestigious development in town – to build himself a house. That feu was for number 6, which he bought for £290. He spent probably spent ten times that on completing the house to Robert Adam’s plans (a total c. £490k in 2023). Number 6 Charlotte Square is of course Bute House, residence of the First Minister of Scotland.

Bute House, 6 Charlotte Square, CC-by-SA 2.0 Scottish Government

It is not clear if Orlando Hart ever lived in the house himself, he died on September 9th 1793, no more than a year after its completion and just months after being elected as one of the managers of the Public Dispensary of Edinburgh . His wife, Elisabeth Henderson, died exactly a week later. Macduff Hart, who was his sole surviving son by this time, inherited Orlando Hart & Sons shoemakers. It was from the estate of Orlando Hart that No. 6 was sold to the Craufurd family in 1796, Mrs Isabella Craufurd being the widow of a banker and owner of a plantation and 600 slaves in Jamaica. She took up residence there with her son.

That was the life and times of Orlando Hart; I have yet to find his registry of death so cannot identify where Hart’s Ground, the family burial plot was. I also suspect he may have been godfather to a number of children as I can find boys born in Edinburgh during his lifetime of his name – Orlando Hart Baillie (son of a Shoemaker) and an Orlando Hart Wilson, who would go on to enjoy a relatively successful naval career.

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