Verwinkelte Ruhe (Sepia, 2026)

In der Altstadt von Lich entfaltet diese verwinkelte Gasse ihren ganz eigenen Zauber - ruhig, zeitlos und voller leiser Geschichten.

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#Hessen #Sepia #UrbanExploration
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The thread about Conder Tokens; when Edinburgh and Leith issued their own money

This thread was originally written and published in September 2020.

Today I have found out about Conder Tokens. Did you know about Conder Tokens? Until yesterday I didn’t know what they were and until today I didn’t know what they were called

Long story short, in 18th century Britain there was a chronic shortage of small denomination coinage due to excessive counterfeiting and low production of non-precious coins by the Royal Mint. But demand for them was soaring due to industrialisation and the need to pay workers and that there were ever more consumer goods around for people to buy. As a result, counterfeit coinage boomed, perhaps two thirds of all low-value coins may have been forgeries. The Royal Mint’s response was to simply stop producing copper coins and for 48 years from 1773-1821, they struck no copper coins.A Welsh industrialist – Thomas Williams of Llanidan, “the Copper King” – proposed an anti-counterfeiting edge to the coins to the Royal Mint so long as they used his copper, but they declined.

Clearly a modern industrial country could not function without a means to pay and buy, so industry, led by Williams, resorted to simply producing their own coinage. Such coins, or tokens, could be traded freely at the denoted value and presented to some wealthy sponsoring merchant, industrialist or local worthy for exchange as required. Most people didn’t travel far or hold on to money for long, so these tokens were an ideal way for them to be paid and for them to buy things.

The idea quickly caught on. The tokens were of a much higher quality than official coinage – indeed they are instantly recognisable to us as a variation of our modern pennies – and as they were issued by prominent businessmen the provenance could be trusted. The value of the copper content also made them less susceptible to being speculated on than promissory notes or other cheap tokens – they had an intrinsic value of their own. One of the biggest manufacturers of such coins was the industrialist Matthew Boulton (James “Condensing Steam Engine” Watt’s business partner).

Boulton had the machinery, the capital, the interests in copper mines, a personal stock of copper bought in a slump in the market and the contacts. He established the Soho Mint in the West Midlands in 1788 and went into volume minting of quality tokens. His machines were of his own patented design and were driven by steam engines. Each could mint 70 to 85 coins per minute.

Such was the demand for small coinage, these tokens quickly spread and were issued on a town-by-town, county-by-county basis. As such they are often called Provincial Tokens. The name Conder Token comes from James Conder, an issuer of such coins who soon became an avid collector and cataloguer of them.

In 1797, the Government finally came to its senses about the financial crisis and issued Boulton a contract to mint official copper coinage and so provincial tokens began to wane. Production ceased by 1802, with a brief return in 1811-12, before finally being forbidden in 1817. Many Scottish municipalities joined in issuing local coinage during this time. The table shows the number of different coins known for each area of the country. The financial capital in the Lothians and the industrial capital in Lanarkshire were unsurprisingly the most prolific, alongside the trade centre in Dundee (Angus).

And so this is how we come to there being such a thing as a Leith Ha’penny. This one, of 1797, shows a sailing ship on one side – an obvious Leith connection – and Britannia on the rear.

And the John White (a merchant of the Kirkgate) Leith ha’penny, wishing “Success to the Port” with another nautical scene, showing a ship entering the Port of Leith, and featuring the stuff of profitable trade on the back; gin and tea.

So of course if Leith has Ha’pennies, of course Edinburgh has to have them to! Notice that Britannia is a gain a common theme, as are recognisable civic buildings. WRIGHT DES on the front refers to James Wright, an engraver from Dundee who designed many tokens. He was a correspondent with Conder, himself and was as keen a proponent and collector of them.

And another version, earlier from 1790, featuring the municipal coat of arms and motto, thistles, and St. Andrew himself. Note the anchor on the rear, a symbol of both Edinburgh’s merchant prosperity and also its dominance over its port at Leith. These tokens were produced by Messrs. Hutchinson of Creech’s Land, an important old building at the west end of the Luckenbooths where Alan Ramsay had his book shop and had opened Scotland’s first circulating library in 1725.

The Campbell’s Snuff of Edinburgh Ha’penny, the Turk’s Head being a connection to smoking. if you squint you can make out the name “James” below the head, for the engraver Charles James. Campbell’s shop was apparently the business of Euphame Campbell, which makes this doubly interesting as it must have been very rare to have a token in the name of a woman.

The Archibald, Seedsman of Edinburgh Ha’penny. The coin features an Archibald family coat of arms on the front and an advert for his wares on the back. This Archibald was Joseph Archibald of West Nicolson Street, a burgess of the city, who kept a shop at 88 Chapel Street and a nursery at Lauriston, where a street, Archibald Place, is named for him.

Harrison of St. Leonards, Ha’penny. Henry Harrison was a bucklemaker on St. Leonard’s Hill. Harrison’s cypher is on the reverse, with the anchor of trade on the front.

Anderson, Leslie & Company Ha’penny from 1797, featuring the then new college building of the University on South Bridge. Again James Wright was the engraver. The wording around the edge of the reverse translates as “Nor let even the poor and infertile grounds lie neglected” and features a gardener. Not surprisingly given this design and wording, Anderson, Leslie & Company were also Seedsmen, based opposite the Mercat Cross in the Old Town.

The Scran archive has a wide range of photos of other Scottish Conder tokens (If you have a library card issued by most Scottish councils, you can log in using your library card number to get more meta content and bigger pictures) – click here.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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Old Town Books owner prepares to launch literary-inspired Fabled Ice Cream brand

A sweet new release is coming soon to Old Town Books — although it isn’t the latest summer romance or nonfiction read. The independent bookstore is preparing to ent…
#dining #cooking #diet #food #Food #aroundtown #books #fabledicecream #FoodTopics #IceCream #localbusiness #oldtown #oldtownbooks
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2608063/old-town-books-owner-prepares-to-launch-literary-inspired-fabled-ice-cream-brand/

The thread about a remarkable view of Edinburgh in 1750; what we can see of a cityscape that was about to change forever

This thread was originally written and published in October 2020. It has been lightly edited and corrected as applicable for this post.

The British Library has done great things for the accessibility of the images in their collection by putting many of them at high resolution on Flickr, with a rights-free access. One such image is an absolutely glorious 1750s watercolour painted from the Castle Hill in 1750 by Paul Sandby, showing Edinburgh on the cusp of the great transition which would drain the Nor Loch, build the New Town and North Bridge, and change the city forever. One of the main things is just how big Calton Hill appears, as it’s been built upon and what we think of now as the hill is just the top poking out. Also the Castle Esplanade has not yet been landscaped

https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/50263334808

The young Paul Sandby had a position first in the Military Drawing Department in London, and then as a draughtsman with the Board of Ordnance under Lt. Col. David Watson. At this time Watson was engaged in surveying and mapping almost the whole of the country of Scotland in the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. It was Watson who headed up the military survey of Scotland and who was involved in appointing William Roy as its cartographer.

Sandby was employed to translate Roy and Watson’s surveying triangulations onto the paper as maps, and in summer he would join some of the surveying expeditions to make detailed and accurate landscape illustrations of important military features such as castles. He was not just a very good draughtsman, he turned out to be an exceptionally talented landscape artist. These watercolours show a striking accuracy and an attention to detail for the topography and lighting that make them particularly realistic. In his down time, Paul started making quick sketches and watercolours of the Scottish landscape and its people, documenting the country around him at the time.

He left military employ in 1751 to become an artist and became known for making “real views from nature in this Country“. Paul’s older brother, Thomas, was also an artist and surveyor. He was the personal draughtsman to the Duke of Cumberland (or Butcher Cumberland, depending on your point of view), and it may have been his influence that secured Paul his position and from whom Paul got his early artistic training. He also made good sketches and illustrations of Scotland, including a few of Edinburgh.

So let’s immerse ourselves on a little tour of this part of Edinburgh in 1750; I’ll try and highlight some of the interesting features in it, concentrating on the things you can no longer see. Before we get going, two of the most striking topographical features are; just how big Calton Hill appears as it’s been built upon (what we think of now as the hill is just the top poking out) and that the Castle Esplanade has not yet been levelled and landscaped, instead it was fairly rough ground, an extension of the Castle Hill and a favoured place to promenade by the city’s upper classes.

Let’s start on the left. First up we see the “North Flanker” of the Castle’s outer defences, one of a pair of arrowhead bastions defending the outer gatehouse still there (in a remodelled manner) to this day.

An earlier image, from about 60 years previous, by John Slezer – a Dutch or German surveyor who made a number of sketches and stylistic maps of the City – shows where Sandby’s vantage point was (red arrow). Also shown are the West Kirk or St. Cuthbert’s (orange arrow) and the Castle wellhouse tower remains (blue).

On the shores of the Forth we can see North Leith and Newhaven (yellow), South Leith (green), St. Mary’s Kirk (blue) and the first of the glassworks cones (red), which had relocated to this spot only 2 or 3 years previously from North Leith. Not marked to the right of the glass cone is a windmill – used for crushing lead ore (a key ingredient in making crystal glass) – and the long, low sheds of the roperies – the principal, shore-based industry of Leith at the time. Sandby made other sketches and watercolours overlooking Leith too.

Where Princes St. now runs, is a narrow, walled roadway, the Lang Dykes or Lang Gait (Scots for the long walls or long road – marked in red). In green is the little village of Picardy, established in 1730 to accommodate French weavers brought in to improve the local industry. Also, houses belonging to Sim (blue) and Hogg of Moultrieshill (yellow).

About 40 years after Sandby, the prolific watercolourist John Clerk of Eldin made a good illustration of Picardy, taken from the north slopes of the Calton Hill. We can see it is something of a model village, to its right is the house of the amusingly named Mr Spankie.

South of the Lang Gait is the area of fields and parkland (green) known as the Barefoot’s Park, and south again the blue area of the Nor’ Loch. At this point it would have been a partially drained swamp, and we can see this in the image with a lot of marshy ground breaking its surface. In orange is an area of quarrying where the Waverley “Mall” now sits. Poking out at the bottom in yellow is a collection of buildings around the old Castle wellhouse fortifications, which were used by skinners and tanners in the dirty business of processing the hides of the animals slaughtered at the eastern end of the Loch in the fleshmarkets.

In yellow is the collection of houses around Moutrie’s or Multer’s Hill (now styled Multrees), roughly where the Register House was soon to be built. In red, the tenements along Leith Wynd of the High and Low Calton. And on the hill (green) the Old Calton Burial Ground, later cut through by Waterloo Place. This cemetery was for the citizens of the Burgh of the Calton, most of whom were – for reasons of historical land ownership patterns – actually in the parish of South Leith, which was inconvenient for burial purposes.

At the head of the Nor’ Loch, below the medieval dam which held back its filthy waters, was the Physick Garden, where medicinal herbs and plants were cultivated. This institution was a direct fore-runner of the Royal Botanic Garden, it had moved here from the grounds of the Palace of Holyroodhouse in 1675 and would move again, to a location alongside Leith Walk, in 1763, before its final journey to Inverleith. By it are Trinity College Kirk (yellow) and Hospital (blue) and behind (red) is Paul’s Work, a charitable poorhouse which by this time had evolved into a “house of correction” or workhouse.

On the north slopes of the Castle Hill, is Alan Ramsay’s house and garden (no guesses where they took the name Ramsay Garden for the Victorian fantasia which now occupies this site from – Ramsay’s house was incorporated into it). Ramsay’s original house was built about 1740 and was known as the Guse Pye (Goose Pie) on account of its tall, octagonal form.

On the right in blue are the tall tenements (at least 9 or 10 storeys tall) of the Castlehill. The lower structures are clearly damaged, most likely from the brief siege of the ’45 when the Castle’s guns were turned on the Jacobites and the castle garrison sallied forth to burn the closest buildings to deny them as cover to the Jacobite pickets. Note in this image and the previous there are groups of well attired women and men promenading on the footpaths where the Esplanade would later be constructed.

Less distinct – but take my word for it they are there! – we can make out Pilrig House (red) in the lands between Edinburgh and Leith, and down by Leith Links are two big houses, probably Coatfield Mains and Hermitage House (in yellow).

Sandby’s work (like Slezer before him) is an invaluable record of what Edinburgh and Leith looked like at this time, when there are relatively few artists active in documenting what this part of the world looked like. They are an accurate reference point to compare with the maps of this time and also the plethora of Victorian engravings which frequently fill in the gaps with romantic speculation. If you’d like to see more of Sandby’s extensive back catalogue, look no further than the National Galleries of Scotland’s online collection.

n.b. this thread was originally written a full 9 days before a very similar article about the same picture coincidentally appeared in the Edinburgh Evening News. You read it on Twitter first!

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

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NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Coinyiehouse: the thread about the Royal Mint of Scotland’s long and continuing service to the city’s poor and marginalised

Why buy one, small, cheaply-finished, semi-basement, 1 bed flat for £290k when you can buy 2? Have a look at this not atypical Edinburgh property listing.

But let’s not just be cynical here. It’s an interesting placename is Coinyiehouse (not Coinyie House, or Coinyie-House as given on the street signs, those are modern aberrations); from the Scots coinyie (coinage), from the French cuigne. In even older times it would have been spelled with the letter yogh (ȝ) as cunȝie. Interestingly, in Scots the word not only means coinage, but also the corner of a building – from where we also get the word quoins. These words all come from the same Old French cuigne, which originally meant a wedge or keystone. It was the wedge-shaped die used for striking coins that saw the word come to be applied to monetary tokens.

The placename is both ancient, as this was the site of the Royal Scottish Mint from 1574 to 1707 (in earlier buildings, demolished around 1871) – but is also quite recent – it was only so name Coinyie-House Close as recently as 1981, when the square was redeveloped. For this reason the yogh has been replaced with a “y” rather than the traditional “z”, to avoid mispronouncing it as Coinzie.

Prior to 1574, the Mint had been in Edinburgh Castle, but that was destroyed by the English during the Lang Siege of the Marian civil wars, which was ironic as it had been moved there from outside Holyrood Abbey in 1559 for its own safety! The rebuilt Mint reputedly had extremely thick walls and the reason for the courtyard in the middle was so that it could be lit by windows from within, and not the street, to provide additional security. There is a single photograph of the original building of the “new” Mint, attributed to 1887 but these buildings were demolished 16 years before that date. Above the door is the inscription “Be Mercyfull to Me, O God, 1574“, which places this building as one being the property of George Heriot which was intended by him to form his hospital. On its first floor was the meeting chamber of the Mint, where metals would be assayed, and its upper storeys were residences and chambers for its officials.

The pictures below show coins of the £ Scots currency from the reign of James VI which would have been struck here; any earlier coins struck in Edinburgh pre-date the Mint being in this location. A Merk was 2/3 of a pound. The reason a coin of a value as high as £20 was needed was because the Scots pound was considerably weaker than the English; on the Act of Union in 1707 there were 12 Scottish pennies to the English. It is for this reason that the Gaelic word for penny is Sgillin, which is the same as the Gaelic word for Shilling. When the currencies were re-valued, the old word for a (Scottish) Shilling was applied to the (New, English) Penny, as they had the same value. The word survived decimalisation and is in use to this day.

When James VI moved to England to taken up that Crown as James I, the Scottish Mint continued in operation. Although it would be closed down after the Act of Union, it did continue to operate for a while to assist with the re-coinage scheme of silver (Sterling) coins post-1707. This process was overseen by an exacting man of the name Sir Isaac Newon, Master of the (English) Royal Mint. The new coins used Troy ounces (12 per £) rather than Scots ounces (16 per £). Under the watchful eye of officials from the London, 103,346 Troy pounds in Crowns, half-Crowns, Shillings, and Sixpences were minted in Edinburgh with a value of £320,372 between 1707-1709. These coins struck in Edinburgh can be identified by the small letter E under Queen Anne’s likeness on the head side and were the last coins which were minted in the country.

The modern Coinyie-House Close actually does not lie on the site of the Mint at all, it is slightly to the north. The Victorian school building which later became the Panmure St. Ann’s Centre occupies the southern range; the former school playground, now a car park, occupies the rest of the footprint.

The Ordnance Survey town plan of the 19th century fortunately put the location of the Mint in the correct place, which should have been easy as the buildings were still there! The comparison maps below show in this time the widening of Blackfriar’s Wynd into Blackfriar’s Street in this period, which cause the demolition of the ancient Cardinal Beaton’s House and an entire street of decrepit old tenements. It was this same improvement scheme of 1867 which saw the south range of the block on the Cowgate demolished to widen that street, along with all the buildings on the opposite side of the street too.

Fortunately, before the Mint was demolished a number of artists paid the square a visit to paint and sketch it. The word Mint puts in mind a grand structure but the reality was more plain and surrounded by a ramshackle collection of late medieval and Stuart period buildings and tenements.

A very similar view is shown below in an earlier watercolour by James Skene.

From a Post Office Directory from Skene’s time, we can see that the Mint was home to a whole range of different crafts and trades:

• Peter Begbie, Last Maker
• James Burn, Lacemaker (In Skene’s lower Sketch he has “W. Burn” on the sign above the 1st floor windows)
• John Foster, Chimney-piece Maker (In Skene’s upper sketch he has “J. Forest” above the door)
• John Kettle, Grocer
• James Murray, Wright
• J. Peterkin, Japanner (Japanning is a black lacquering process to protect wood and metal)
• Andrew Wilson, Smith

Skene also gives us an alternative view of the courtyard, looking north in the direction of the High Street.

An 1873 watercolour by John le Conte shows the same view in portrait, we can see the Arms of King Charles II above the distant door in the centre above “God Save Ye King” and a date of 1675, and on the pediment to the right is a further date stone for 1674.

Our modern Coinyie-House Close is not built on the Mint at all, but on the the former United Industrial School for Boys, itself in a 17th century structure. This was inspired by Dr Thomas Guthrie’s “Ragged School” – a mixture of education, feeding and training in basic but practical skills for work – but offering an education that was not strictly Presbyterian in nature. Part of the founding ethos of the school, and the reason it used the word united in its name, was a reflection of its cross-denominational status. It was open to Catholic and Protestant children and its foundation was partly in response to what its founders saw as an imaginary problem of “religious difficulty” which was being used to justify denominational segregation in Scottish education. This marked it out as fairly unique for the time; it pre-dated city’s nominally non-denominational School Board Public Schools.

This non-denominational status only went so far however, the religious education of the school was denominational, being conducted in separate rooms by separate Catholic and Protestant teachers. To satisfy the bodies which provided the School’s funding, the religious teachers were paid out of their own separate funds and not the revenues of the school. The founders had recognised the burgeoning Catholic population of the Cowgate was poorly served by educational institutions and what we might now term social services. This area was Edinburgh’s Little Ireland, where an Irish immigrant community made its home. The Roman Catholic Church of St Patrick was (and is) nearby, just to the east on the other side of South Gray’s Close, housed in an 18th century building that started out life as an (English) Episcopal Chapel before passing to the Relief Church and then the United Presbyterians.

In 1875, the attendance of the United Industrial School was 120 boys and 28 girls. Of its pupils, a majority of boys went on to enter the trades of shoemakers and tailors, and of girls, most when into domestic service. The school attempted to teach its pupils specific trades rather than just monotonous skills such as net making and basket weaving; this was to try and give the children a practical outcome at the end of their education and an incentive to attend. The second-most frequent career path for both boy and girl pupils was emigration, mainly to America.

A typical day in the life of a school child is given below. Note that each denomination is taken separately for prayer, catechism and bible class and on Sunday to their respective church services and Sunday schools:

The school opened in 1848, just a year after Dr. Guthrie’s school and was housed in a building known as the Skinner’s Hall just to the north of the Mint, a 17th century L-plan hall which had been the meeting house of the Incorporated Trade of that name and more recently an Anglican Chapel.

As time progressed, the school roll became increasingly Catholic (a reflection of the demographic changes in the district) and pupils were increasingly placed there “under detention“, i.e. by the courts for reformatory purposes. In the 1860s and 70s the school was improved and new workshops were provided. It came to expand into the wings to its the south and west. To keep the costs down all the joinery work, and much of the other labouring, was carried out by the older boy pupils, superintended by their headmaster.

The school became boys-only due to a declining intake of girls but continued to expand and provide a more wholesome range of activities including swimming and school bands. Despite the best efforts to continue its improvement, the Scotch Education Department (as it was then known) withdrew its funding in 1900 on account of them deeming the environs of the Cowgate an unfit situation into which to send boys under detention. It closed at the end of that term and was sold, the trustees passing the remaining funds to Dr Guthrie’s Original Ragged Industrial School which migrated south out of the city to Gilmerton. The closure caused an capacity crisis in the city for the “ragged” boys, doubly so for the Catholic boys “under detention” as the next nearest industrial school certified to take them was St. Joseph’s, outside Tranent, to where twenty three of them were packed off to be reformed.

The buildings did not go to waste however and were purchased by the Roman Catholic church for incorporation into the neighbouring St. Ann’s R.C. School for Girls. At this time (and until 1918), the Catholic church remained opted-out of the School Board system and maintained responsibility for the education of the young of its denomination. This was on account of a (not misplaced) opinion that the School Boards established by the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 were fundamentally Presbyterian in their religious outlook, despite being Non-Denominational on paper. The Catholic Church also maintained segregation of the sexes in different schools; the School Board did so but only within a common building.

The Roman Catholic Church had arrived in the Cowgate in 1856 when it consecrated the former United Presbyterian church as St. Patrick’s. In the church hall they opened St. Patrick’s School for boys and in an old building on Niddry Street was St. Anne’s School for girls (note at this time, Anne seems to be spelled with an e. After 1872 however the Education Department repeatedly threatened to withdraw its subsidy unless better premises could be found. The boys of St. Patrick’s were eventually moved to St. John’s Hill into a former Industrial school there and a new St. Ann’s would be built on the Cowgate, in the south portion of the old Mint site. This location was perhaps somewhat appropriate given the last coins minted here were in the reign of Queen Anne – even if she was a committed Anglican herself. These schools were only brought fully into the state system by the Education (Scotland) Act 1918, but remained single sex.

The new St. Ann’s was opened in May 1880 to designs by the Edinburgh City Architect, Robert Morham. Its cost of £3,000 was met by the selling of the old buildings, the balance coming from Father Edward. J. Hannan, priest of St Patrick’s. Morham gave the school the in vogue Collegiate Gothic styling, but given he was not the School Board architect, the building is visually distinctive from its city contemporaries. It had a capacity for 300 infants and 300 older girls however in 1884 it is noted it had only 180 infants and 190 senior pupils, under the charge of Sister Evangelist and Sister Mary Gertrude, respectively.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/davids_leicas/36560577360

St. Ann’s was expanded in 1931, a matching west range added to take the façade all the way to Blackfriar’s Street. A plan of 1939 intended that the school would be modernised and expanded to become a single co-educational Catholic primary school for the entire centre of the city. This was part of a rationalisation of R. C. schooling in the Old Town and Southside, both of which had undergone rapid depopulation in the previous two decades due to slum clearances. However the war intervened and this plan was never put into action. The relentless demographic pressure on the school roll meant it was soon surplus to requirements, and it was closed by 1955 and merged into nearby St. Patrick’s, which would close in turn in 1981 for the same reasons.

After closure, St Ann’s lay vacant for almost twenty years until being converted into a community centre in 1975. Three decades later the community centre was closed and the building would be returned to educational use as Panmure St. Ann’s, a small, specialist unit for children “who experience social, emotional and behavioural difficulties“. Panmure comes from Panmure House on Panmure Close, which you may have heard was once the home of one Adam Smith in the 18th Century. Smith lived there from 1778 until his death in 1790. After WW2 the semi-derelict building was bought by the Canadian media magnate and owner of The Scotsman newspaper, Roy Thomson, Lord Thomson of Fleet. He had it refurbished and converted into the Canongate Boys Club, which opened in 1957.

In 1970 Panmure House was listed and had been passed to the “care” of the Corporation of Edinburgh. They merged its community services into that of St. Ann’s on the Cowgate and closed it. Like many old buildings passed into Council stewardship, this would lead to it being left to rot and finding itself on the buildings at risk register! By the early 21st century Panmure house was falling down, but was saved by a restoration for the Edinburgh Business School, a fitting home given the Smith connection.

Panmure St. Ann’s was granted full school status in 2013 but was closed again, for good, in 2017 due to budget cuts and a declining roll. It recently re-opened as a centre for homelessness services, taking it back to its roots as a place for the poorest and marginalised of the city.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

The house that pens built: the thread about the many lives of Waverley House

There is a building in Craiglockhart in Edinburgh that frequently comes up in property listings with the romantic and ancient sounding name of Perdrixknowe .

The name is straightforward enough in its etymology, Perdrix- is the French for Partridge, –knowe is the Scots for a hillock or a mound (from the English Knoll), often specifically in the context of a gathering place for fairies. James Steuart, in his history of Colinton Parish, records that the Partridge Knowe, or Patrickes Know (Perdrix frequently became Patrick in Scots placenames) was the rise in the ground to the north of the Craiglockhart and Craighouse hills.

There are a couple of other –knowe place names in the general area, e.g. Broomieknowe just to the south, Kingsknowe to the west. John Thomson helpfully records the name in the maps of his 1830s “Atlas of Scotland“. But I can locate neither Perdrix– nor Partridge– knowes in the Ordnance Survey Name Books for Midlothian of 1852-3 or in any archived newspapers of that period, suggesting it had already fallen out of favour as a local place name by that time.

Certainly Perdrixknowe, as ancient a name as it may be, was only given to the house here as recently as 1990 when it was converted into retirement flats. When it was first built back in 1884, by the genius architect, local politician and quarrymaster that was Sir James Gowans, it was known instead as Waverley House. We should not be troubled by this name in the slightest, it was a very common trend back then to give something a referential name to the works of Sir Walter Scott. Except in this case, all is not quite what it seems.

The house was built for a wealthy local businessman by the name of Duncan Cameron (1825-1901). The Cameron family owned the stationery firm of Macniven & Cameron based on Blair Street in the Old Town. The brothers John and Donald Cameron had joined the stationery wholesaling firm of Nisbet Macniven in the 1840s and soon ended up first running and then taking a share in it, the name changing to Macniven & Cameron in 1845.

Duncan joined his older brothers in the business in 1850 and in 1862 patented a new and improved fountain pen nib which he christened The Waverley. This was featured a fine, upturned point so as to better write on rougher papers; a double efficiency that both sped up the writing speed of clerks and also allowed them to work on cheaper papers.

The name was of course taken from the works of Walter Scott, as just about everything popular in Scotland seemed to be at the time, and the tin in which the nibs came even had his image on it.

The Waverley nib was a smash hit success, it was affordable, it was effective and because it could write on cheaper papers its utility was wide, “a luxury for the million” as the testimonial from the Argus newspaper says on the tin. With an official contract to supply pens to Her Majesty’s Government Offices, it was with good cause that they proudly boated that “Macniven & Cameron’s Pens Are the Best” on the box. Their nibs were much in demand in India amongst the Imperial civil service, indeed their Hindoo nibs of 1873, designed for caligraphy and sold in a tin with an Indian elephant upon it, may have been deliberately aimed at it.

With famed stable mates The Owl (“Par Excellence the Ladies’ Pen”) and The Pickwick (for “Swift Commercial Writing“) in their portfolio, the company became one of the names in pens and the Camerons became fabulously wealthy. From the names of these best sellers the company took its familiar slogan, “They came as a boon and a blessing to men, The Pickwick, The Owl and the Waverley Pen“.

Macniven & Cameron didn’t make their own pens, they did not have the specialist fine manufacturing base in Edinburgh to do this in the required volumes, and so instead they subcontracted the work out. Such was the demand however that in 1900 they acquired a factory in Birmingham, the epicentre of this specialist manufacturing in Britain, to bring production in house. The city housed eleven of the top twelve manufacturers of pens in the 1930s, producing ten-to-fifteen thousand pens per week.

The company advertised widely in the press and was quite canny, being a prominent adopter of railway advertising and made sure adverts for its wares were prominent in main line stations. A certain generation of rail traveller may still recall the enamelled signs that used to prominently greet the travelling public.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/allybeag/2142739598

Back to Duncan Cameron, like all self respecting Victorian businessmen he expressed his success in life by having built for himself a fabulous villa. For his architect he chose James Gowans, one of the most creative and distinctive local architects and one who had a passion for masonry worked from the nearby Redhall quarries.

The detailing of the house itself heavily referenced the source of Cameron’s wealth; look at the mouldings around the pediments and cornicing and also the chimney pots and you will see that these are pen nibs. James Gowans liked this sort of visual pun, his own house – Rockville – was decorated with daisies, his surname being the Scots term for that flower. The inverted crow-stepped detail around the main window is a feature distinctive in the work of Gowans.

A description of the house is given in a 1902 advertisement for its sale, a “substantially built and commodious two-storey villa, with area flat behind and conservatory in front, sheltered from the east; Containing dining room, drawing room, parlour, five bedrooms, four dressing rooms, bathroom, 2 WCs, kitchen, scullery, pantriea (pantry), servants’ accommodation; Laundry with fixed tubs and boiler; Hot and Cold water throughout; Ample cellerage. There is an Acre of Garden Ground.” The photograph below shows the main front door, flanked by an ornamental stained glass window and one of the conservatories that wrapped around the front of the building.

The grand staircase balusters I have seen being described as based on fountain pens, but I can’t find a photo however but the interior photo below suggests that this similarity may be purely symbolic, unless those are bundles of pen bodies?

Duncan Cameron was well known throughout Edinburgh but kept himself out of public life and municipal affairs. He was however known to the people of Blair Street where his factory was based and his obituary notes that he was kind and generous to “many a poor widow in the neighbourhood“. With plenty of money to spare, Duncan senior bought himself the Oban Times in 1882. His parents both hailed from Glencoe and he maintained a keen interest in and sympathies with the lot of the Highlander, extending to being able to converse in Gàidhlig. The Camerons were well known in the area and were referred to as the Pen Folk. He installed his son (also Duncan) as editor of his newspaper. He held his position as Chairman of the Board of the family business until his very end: he died suddenly in February 1901, aged 76. Duncan junior took over the business but did not keep on Waverley House; it was for sale in 1902 and by 1903 it was being lived in by the “Misses Geikie“.

In 1890, Duncan junior had returned to Edinburgh to join his father in the pen business, which had left a vacancy at the top of the Oban Times. This was filled by the next son, Waverley, who was named after the pen. Sadly Waverley drowned in a tragic yachting accident off nearby Lismore just a year later in June 1891. He had been sailing with friends when their boat was swamped by a sudden squall; Waverley’s hat was all that was recovered of him and his friend, Donald Campbell, later succumbed to his exposure. Only Allan MacDonald survived the accident. His grieving father had a large Celtic cross erected on the Lismore shore as a memorial, close to where the boat had gone down.

After his father’s death, Duncan junior kept the pen side of the business going but massively expanded the manufacturing stationery side of things, with new factories opened in Leith and London. He ran the company from London until he retired to Oban, his son Waverley B. Cameron taking over. He was chairman of the Oban Times, until his death in 1954.

In 1911, the Oban Times editor’s chair was filled by Flora Anne, Duncan senior’s eldest daughter, when she and her husband retired to Oban. By this time she was known as Mrs Macaulay, her second husband being George Macaulay, a Superintendent of the Edinburgh City Police but also a highlander. The Macaulays had a house at Argyll Lodge, but also an apartment above the Oban Times‘ offices on the second floor.

George passed away in 1924, but Flora remained involved in the running of the Oban Times for the final 47 years of her life. She was a supporter of Highland culture and the Gaelic language and in 1947 helped establish the Macaulay Cup for camanachd (shinty), which is still going. She died in Oban in 1958 at the age of 99, still working on the paper despite having been invalided in an accident and confined to her home since 1952. She was returned to the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh to be buried alongside her first husband and near the Cameron family plot, a vast Celtic cross with Pictish details marking the spot.

Duncan senior’s younger daughter Mary, who painted the portrait of him earlier in this post, was a renowned artist and sister to Duncan junior, Waverley and Flora. She travelled to Spain in 1900 to study art and fell in love with the country, becoming known for her Spanish scenes. She had a particular skill for painting animals, having practised using the family dogs and her own horse as models and by taking classes at the Edinburgh Veterinary College to better understand animal anatomy.

In the late 1939 Waverley House was taken over by the Scottish Wayfarer’s Welfare Society as a boys home, it having been evicted from its own premises in Stockbridge by wartime Civil Defence. It took in boys from broken homes or off the street – usually turned over by sympathisers in the authorities as an alternative to the punishment of a reformatory – who found themselves in the city “penniless, tattered, despondent and hungry“. The organisation could house around 25 to 30 boys at a time, they typically stayed for six months before moving on to employment such as agricultural labour or the armed forces. The Society had only been established in 1935, starting off with the donation of £10 and use of an abandoned police station on Hamilton Place by Miss Dorothea Maitland.

It was a very progressive place for the time and while it was initially set up just to be a night shelter, it soon took on a wider purpose as a reactionary response to the ill effects of institutionalisation at the time. It sought to provide its boys with the caring, family atmosphere that was missing from their lives, with each resident being assigned a “Housemother” and a “Housefather” from amongst the staff. It had a rule of never turning a boy away, and never holding someone’s past against them and sought to re-integrate wayward youths back into society with a sense of purpose and self-worth. It was reported as having had a good success rate, with 51 out of 55 boys cared for in 1957 passing successfully on from the house into work.

The house parents rose at 430AM to ready the first boys for their work or training, and all boys had to return by 10PM, later on Friday and Saturday evenings. Even after they left the boys were encouraged to treat Waverley House as their family home. The Wayfarer’s Society were still there as late as 1983 when they advertised for staff for the establishment to help care for its nine residents. The trustees of the society sold the building to Ogilivie Homes in 1989, who converted it to the retirement complex of Perdrixknowe and started it on the next chapter of its life.

Thank you to John Grant who has allowed me to include some of the research of his late father-in-law, Derek Prime, who was a resident of Perdrixknowe and took a keen interest in research its history, as well as that of the Cameron family and Sir James Gowans.

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Pikes, battle rattles and Leith axes: the thread about some Scottish weapons and their role in policing the capital

I have a very interesting little Osprey Publishing book by Jonathan Cooper called “Scottish Renaissance Armies, 1513-1550“. It is beautifully illustrated by Graham Turner.

I had a notion to get my hands on a copy ever since I saw this picture of some of the Scottish troops at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh in 1547 and the man captioned as a “Rattler“. I had no idea what a Rattler was, but clearly he had brought a piece of wood and a metal balloon on a stick to a gun fight.

Fortunately this book can reveal all, thanks to the meticulous observations made by an English Officer, William Patten, who was present at the battle and was taking careful notes. What I disparagingly referred to abone as “pieces of wood” were infact… pieces of wood!

They were new boards’ ends cut off being about a foot in breadth and half a yard in length; having on the inside handles made very cunningly of two cord lengths

Patten continues, “These in Gods name were their targets against the shot of our small artillery“. Targets refers to a small shield, as in the Highland Targe, from Old French targa. Patten suggests they were trying to defend themselves from gunfire with these. And as for the “rattle”?

And with these we found great rattles, welling bigger than a belly of a pottle pot covered with old parchment or double paper, small stones put in them to make a noise and set upon a staff more than two ells* long

( * = An ell was a unit of length c. 37 inches long.)

But why carry a child’s toy into battle in the first place? “This was their fine device to frighten our horses, when our horsemen should come at them.” So the rattle isn’t a toy, it’s a cunning 16th century psychological warfare device deployed by the Scots. Except, as Patten continues scathingly,

Howbeit because the riders were no babies nor their horses any colts they could neither duddle the one nor affray the other. So that this policy was as witless as their power forceless

It’s still intriguing; the Scottish army at Pinkie was not that militarily backwards. It was a large and reasonably well equipped force and was used to facing the enemy with proper weapons. And would the noise of a rattle even been audible in the midst of battlefield that included many cannons and handguns? I doubt it. Patten notes that these devices were found in the Scottish camp after the battle, they weren’t recovered from the field. So perhaps it had another use? Maybe it was to create a noise to help encourage the men, or get raw levies used to the din of battle? Perhaps this was just a piece of post-war, anti-Scottish propaganda, as is very common in battle reports. As the saying goes “history is written by the victors“. He also refers to the “[Pope’s] rattelbladders” (thank you to Michael W. Pearce for this observation) and the “Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language” suggests that this is the root of an old term Rattlebag, for one who “bustles from place to place, exciting alarm on what account soever“

The artist’s notes by Graham Turner for the image describe that the Rattler is “assessing his chances should be be asked to carry these items in combat” and it’s “little wonder” they were left behind in the camp. He’s basically doing a 16th century version of “Aye, Right“. Instead of rattles, the principal weapon of the Scots at Pinkie was the pike, as it had been for some 250 years.

While tactics had changed they still required at the most basic level a long, stout pole (mandated by the Scottish Parliament to be 5 to 6 ells – or 15.5-18.5 feet – long). These were made from ash wood and imported from the continent as Scottish trees could no longer supply them. A 10-12 inch steel head was stuck on one end (these were produced locally), and strips of steel were riveted down the head of the pole to make it harder to chop off. If you lost the tip, you were left with a long wooden stick or your small side sword to defend yourself with.

A development of the pike was the halberd. This had a spike – like the pike – but also a chopping axe head on one side and a piercing hammer spike on the other. It was a shorter, handier and more multi-purpose weapon. Crucially, in the melee of close combat, while a pike could only thrust, a halberd could chop. This included chopping pike heads off. leaving the pikeman defenceless. The English halberdiers inflicted a bloody defeat on the Scots pikes at Flodden in 1513. Indeed it was the calamity at Flodden that resulted in the first formation of a civic defence force; funds were raised for twenty-four men under arms to be commanded by one of the city’s Bailies (senior magistrates). This force however lasted all of two years and was disbanded when the immediate threat had passed.

But while the pike remained the favoured weapon of Scots armies on the field, even after firearms came along, for personal defence weapons like the halberd were more useful; “a halberd was often the weapon of choice kept in a man’s home“. Pikes were too long and too unwieldy for personal combat and really only effective when used en masse on the battlefield in what was called “Push of Pike”. In Edinburgh, burgesses and townsmen were permitted to keep a halberd in their shop or premises “for self defence and to quell the general lawlessness“. In 1633, when King Charles I eventually made his way to Edinburgh for his Scottish coronation, the burgh’s “trained band” (a sort of local military reserve, at a time when there were no standing armies) turned out in “white satin doublets, black velvet breeches and feathered hats” and were armed with halberds and muskets.

Halberds, like pikes, required a stave (shaft) and these were often imported from the Low Countries, with heads made locally. Leith reputedly had a roaring “halberd industry“, which makes sense as the wood was probably entering the country through her port and there was long a dedicated Timber Bush (from the French Bourse, an exhange). Leith’s importance as an industrial centre for putting sharp, pointy bits on the end of wooden sticks was such that a form of weapon called the Leith Axe became common in the early 16th century. It’s described as looking like a “bardische” or “glaive”

Various small forces of city guards were raised on and off in the 16th and 17th centuries, but they rarely persisted on account of having to pay for them. In 1649, a new Town Guard was formed under the Lord Provost, comprising of three officers, two sergeants, three corporals and sixty guardsmen. The sergeants were armed with halberds and the regular guardsmen were issued with muskets and carried short swords or bayonets for personal protection. They dressed in the style of Scottish soldiers at the time; Hodden grey breeches and overcoats. In 1690, the colour of the clothing switched to the red coats so associated with British soldiers. Their breeches were also red (unlike the white or light grey usually seen on soldiers) and the facings of the coats were in blue. On their heads they wore broad bicorne hats with white piping.

For hand-to-hand skirmishing the guards now carried a weapon similar to the halberd, but distinctly Scottish; Lochaber Axe. This would have been familiar to many of the men as they were frequently elderly soldiers drawn from the Gàidhealtachd; highlanders. The Edinburgh barber, satirist and caricaturist, John Kay, had a fondness for capturing the likeness of some of the City Guardsmen, typified by Shon Dow (or John Dhu, in Gaelic this would be Iain Dubh, or John Black), a veteran of the 42nd Regiment of Foot, or Black Watch.

An altogether different artist in Edinburgh at this time was David Allan, who made a series of beautiful little watercolour sketches of people at work around the city. One of these was a guardsman, and he is brandishing his Lochaber Axe to put the fear up some mischievous boys.

I’m not sure where the Leith Axe stops and the Lochaber Axe begins, the two are very similar. A difference seems to be that the latter was often equipped with a hook – often it’s suggested this was to assist in dismounting horsemen, but equally plausible was this was merely to hang the weapon up in the guardhouse.

Anyway, Shon Dow became the stereotype of the elderly, curmudgeonly, Gaelic-speaking, fond-of-a-dram Edinburgh town guardsman in Georgian caricature. He is always shown holding his Lochaber Axe close, legend had it that he could fell a rioter with a single strike from it. The Guard used their axes for tasks such as night patrols and for what we would call “public order policing“, where it was handy in the confines of the City closes and wasn’t slow to reload like a musket.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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The thread about the Eight Day of Christmas; who were the Maids of the Maiden Castle?

This thread was originally written and published in January 2020.

This part in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas thread is preceded by a post about Swanston.

On the eight day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; the Maiden(s, a milking). This, perhaps surprisingly, is the first documented name applied to Edinburgh Castle, in a Charter of King David I in 1142; Castellum Puellarum – the Castle of Maidens. It was not until a century later in the time of King Alexander III, 1265, that it is referred to as Castrum de Edynburgh or Castle of Edinburgh. The oldest remaining structure in the castle, St. Margaret’s Chapel, was built in David I’s time in the middle of the 12th century.

No clear explanation exists for the Maiden reference. There are a number of Maiden Castles in England, all except one of which are Iron Age hill forts. This might be a descriptive tame for a “fortification that looks impregnable” or a euphemism implying that it has never been taken in battle. It may also be the evolution of a Brythyonic language term Mai Dun, meaning a “great hill”. Stuart Harris, the man who wrote the book on Edinburgh place names, discounts this theory for Edinburgh; “there is nothing whatsoever to suggests that this was a translation of some[thing] earlier“. He points out that the original references is the Latin – Puellarum – which was translated in the 13th century to its English and French equivalents – Maidens and Pucelles.

Some of the more improbable tales include an early 14th century reference in the Chronicles of Lanercost to a community of nuns who lived here in the 6th century under the Irish Saint Moninne or Modwenna, before being ejected, or to it being a safekeeping place for Pictish princesses. More likely is that it was a romantic term taken from Arthurian legend, one that may have been applied by David I himself. In Arthurian lore, the Land, Island or Castle of Maidens, is a place visited by a man in his dreams where only women live.

In the 12th century, the Welsh chronicler Geoffrey de Monmouth – who was one of the prominent figures in popularising the Cult of Arthur at the time – wrote in his History of the the Kings of Britain of the Castellum Puellarum as “facing Albany” i.e. looking towards the Lands of the Picts and Scots. At this time, these would have been north across the Forth from Edinburgh. He is also credited with the invention of the Duke of Loth – husband to a sister of Arthur – and from where Lothian takes its name. Geoffrey de Monmouth’s chief patron was a nephew of David I and it is probable that David had met him. The sixteenth century Scottish historian and intellectual George Buchanan and the 20th century Arthurian scholar Roger Sherman Loomis both lend credence to this theory.

In Edinburgh lore, the term Maiden also has a much more grisly connotation; it was an early modern device of public execution, a form of guillotine.

The Maiden was introduced to Edinburgh in 1564 to replace the town’s sword, which was worn out and needed replaced. The Provost and Magistrates of Edinburgh ordered its construction by the carpenters Adam and Patrick Schang and George Tod. The whole contraption could be disassembled for storage, only being moved to the point of execution and erected as required. It was returned afterwards, and this is referred to in the town records as “careying of the Maiden ther and hame agin”.

The Scottish machine is made of oak and consists of a sole beam 5 feet in length into which are fixed two upright posts 10 feet in height, 4 inches broad and 12 inches apart from each other, and 3½ inches in thickness, with bevelled corners. These posts are kept steady by a brace at each side which springs from the end of the sole and is fastened to the uprights 4 feet from the bottom. The tops of the posts are fixed into a cross rail 2 feet in length. The block is a transverse bar 3¼ feet from the bottom, 8 inches in breadth and 4½ inches in thickness, and a hollow on the upper edge of this bar is filled with lead…

The axe consists of a plate of iron faced with steel; it measures 13 inches in length and 10½ inches in breadth. On the upper edge of the plate was fixed a mass of lead 75 lbs in weight. This blade works in grooves cut on the inner edges of the uprights, which are lined with copper…

Notable victims of the Maiden include James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, one time Regent of Scotland and the man reputed to have introduced its concept to the country, Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll and his son Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll. The Maiden was last used in 1716 to execute John Hamilton at the Mercat Cross for the murder of the landlord of a tavern during a brawl. It was again taken down and carried hame agin but was thereafter forgotten about. The original was rediscovered over a century later and is now on display in the National Museum of Scotland.

The Edinburgh and Leith-themed twelve days of Christmas thread continues with a post about Lady Fife, her house, well and “brae”

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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