The rise and fall of high rise Edinburgh: the thread about multi-storey, public housing in the city

Between 1950 and 1973, Edinburgh built a total of seventy-eight municipal, multi-storey1 housing blocks which contained 6,128 flats (give or take a few) across 977 storeys.

I’m interested in writing a few stories about some of these buildings, their histories, how and why they got built and attitudes to them at the time but wasn’t sure were to start. As a starting point I’ve made an inventory of them all; so let’s have a look at all of them in chronological order.

1950-51 saw the first such building that meets the above criteria in Edinburgh, the 8 storey Westfield Court with 88 flats (and a childrens’ nursery on the roof!) It was constructed by local builders Hepburn Bros., better known for construction of interwar bungalows, with a steel and concrete frame clad in pre-fabricated concrete panels and an inner skin of traditional brick. Its design and facilities were heavily inspired by London’s Kensal House by Maxwell Fry. Although it was a starting point for the block that followed, it remains something of a one-off and is a rather unique, evolutionary dead-end in the city. I have written up its fuller story on this thread.

Hepburns built their second and last multistorey block for the city from 1953-56. It is the 7 storey, 42 flat block of Maidencraig Court at Blackhall. It was constructed at a time of acute national materials shortages, and compared to Westfield it had to have its ceilings lowered and room dimensions reduced, and as much steel as possible removed. This led to the first use of cross-wall construction in the city’s public housing. This method uses load-bearing internal wall panels of reinforced concrete and offers economies of time and materials compared to traditional load-bearing external walls or the sort of internal steel and concrete framework employed at Westfield.

After Westfield and Maidencraig there followed a series of experimental mid-height multi-storey blocks, which were variations on a basic theme, as a rather conservative local administration (headed by the Progressive Party) tentatively tried to work out what it wanted to do regards high-rise housing post-war. While there was a post-war housing emergency in the city, the authorities had purchased large volumes of temporary and permanent prefabricated housing (they were the most enthusiastic adopter of the former in Scotland) to meet immediate demands and the chairman of the Housing Committee, Councillor Matt A. Murray, was keen not to expand the city further on the outskirts but to focus on central redevelopments.

The 10 storey, 60 flat Inchkeith Court followed in 1956-57, located on Spey Terrace, just off of Leith Walk. Billed by the local press as “Edinburgh’s First Skyscraper“, it was built adjacent to a slum clearance zone on Spey Street, atop 139 piles on an old sandpit; an experiment in building on a confined site. The contractor was the Scottish Construction Company – ScotCon. The city specified a pitched roof be added to the design and also settled on each flat having its own hot water and heating supply under the control of (and paid for by) the tenant. The experiments in communal supplies at Westfield and Maidencraig had stung the Corporation with unexpectedly dramatic fuel bills as residents made the full use of the provision.

A month later the identical pair of Inchcolm Court and Inchgarvie Court completed in West Pilton. These were by English contractors George Wimpey and were also of 10 storeys and 60 flats each and also had almost apologetic pitched roofs. They differed in having an offset H-plan with a central access and service core and were of a different construction method. As at Westfield and Maidencraig, each flat had its own private balcony, although these were removed in later refurbishments.

The following year, 1958, a further pair of 10 storey, 60 flat blocks were completed; Moat House and Hutchison House at Moat Drive in the Slateford area of the city. These were by local contractors James Miller and Partners (a firm headed by the City’s former Lord Provost) and adopted another variation of a Y-plan. They are of reinforced concrete construction with this frame in-filled with brickwork and rendered over and have external balconies for most (but not all) flats. The pitched roof however was abandoned; it was an anachronistic design throwback that added unnecessary additional demands for materials and labour on buildings that were meant to be ultra-modern and simpler to construct.

The last of the 1950s experiments were the pair of Holyrood Court and Lochview Court at Dumbiedykes, which were also built by Millers. Construction was rather protracted and did not finally complete until August 1963. These are 11 storeys tall, with 95 flats arranged on an H-plan; regular flats in the side wings of the “H” but maisonettes and top-floor artists studios (with enlarged windows and heightened ceilings to improve natural daylight) in the central arm. Each block had communal laundries, reducing the size demands of flat kitchens and requirements for hot water provision, with the the ground floor containing lock-up garages. Construction is of reinforced concrete, faced in brick and rendered-over but with an unusual original feature (now lost behind re-cladding) of traditional sandstone masonry the whole height of the building in the staircase areas. The roofs are of an ultra-modern, inverted pitch and clad in green copper; to conceal the rooftop services and clothes drying spaces from the view of those gazing down from Salisbury Crags or up from Holyroodhouse Palace.

The 1960s saw a step-change in the volume of building, and also in scale. After the experiments of the 1950s, a lot of “bells and whistles” were trimmed off the specifications, use of traditional techniques abandoned and there was a move to taller blocks with industrialised construction in the name of building more and faster. After 1962, the city’s energetic housing commissioner, Labour’s Pat Rogan, adopted a policy of replacing the post-war, low-density, low-rise prefabricated housing estates around the city’s periphery with new high-rise, high-density schemes, again to built more and build faster.

Between 1960-61, two different pairs of blocks were built at Muirhouse by Wimpey, in a scheme called Muirhouse Phase II. The first were the 9 storey slab blocks of Gunnet Court and May Court, with 48 flats apiece of reinforced concrete cross-wall construction with brick and pebble-dashed, pre-cast concrete panel infill. These blocks squeezed the build price down to c. £2,000 / flat from £2,800 of Westfield and all the flats were maisonettes; accessed from open “streets in the sky” decks to the rear. Such a layout, where the flats are all two storeys with their own internal staircases, did create initial engineering headaches, but meant that there only needed to be half the number of public passageways, lifts only had two stop at half the number of floors and sleeping and living areas of adjacent houses can be better spaced apart to reduce noise complaints.

The other pair by Wimpey, at 15 storeys, were the city’s first real point blocks (i.e. buildings proportionally taller than they are wide or deep). These are Fidra Court and Birnies Court and have 56 flats each – however these proved to be 10% more expensive than the 9 storey slabs on account of the construction and engineering complexity of the extra height.

The last multi-storey part of Muirhouse Phase II was a pair of 11 storey slab blocks by ScotCon; Inchmickery Court and Oxcars Court, with 76 flats apiece. The central part of the slab has deck-access maisonettes, with wings on each side of regular flats A flaw in the design of these blocks has the concrete load-bearing frames exposed, which forms cold bridges into the core of the building and resulted in endemic damp problems which are only now, 60 years later, due to be finally resolved in a renovation project.

Lastly in the 1960-61 construction programme were the point block trio of Allermuir Court, Caerketton Court and Capelaw Court at Oxgangs, a site known as the Comiston Scheme at the time. Their names reflected some of the nearby Pentland Hills, the preceding blocks in Leith and Muirhouse having used the names of islands in the Firth of Forth. These 15 storey blocks had 80 flats apiece, 20 of which were maisonettes (on floors 2, 5, 8, 11 and 14), and were constructed by London-based John Laing & Co. I have seen them referred to as the Comiston Luxury Flats but I suspect this may be because in the newspaper columns where their Dean of Guild Court approval was reported, the announcement was alongside approval for “luxury flats” at Ravelston, under the headline of “Permit for £3m Housing; Edinburgh to Clear More Prefabs; Luxury Flats“. The laundry rooms were on the ground floor, and there were novel outside drying greens arranged in a spoked wheel pattern from a single, large, central pole. The flats were initially very popular, but suffered from long-term lack of maintenance and run-down of facilities and were demolished between 2005-06 as an alternative to refurbishment after a community campaign.

Another trio of point blocks were started in 1960 but did not complete until 1962 – Fala Court, Garvald Court and Soutra Court in the Gracemount Housing Scheme, a post-war, greenfield site development. These were named after hills and parishes in the Moorfoots; Garvald was originally to be Windlestraw, but the name was changed at the suggestion of housing chairman Pat Rogan who felt it was ambiguous in its pronunciation. These were constructed by the local firm Crudens and each had 14 storeys and 82 flats. They were not built with sufficient ties between the inner and outer wall skins and this had to be remedied at a cost of £100,000 in 1986. All three were demolished in 2009 as part of the wider redevelopment in area.

Last of the 1960 starts did not complete until 1963 and marked a step change in scale and construction methods – the infamous pair of Cairngorm House and Grampian Houses in the Leith Fort Comprehensive Development Area (CDA). These 21 storey, 76 flat towers were built by Millers and designed by Shaw Stewart, Baikie & Perry (John Baikie was principal architect, and was assisted by Michael Shaw Stewart and Frank Perry, all were working for the firm of Rowand Anderson, Kininmonth & Paul). The whole building was made up of interlocking, three storey repeating units, with single-storey flats in the middle surrounded by maisonettes above and below. One assumes that the names were a double reference both to their heights (they were the tallest residential structures in Scotland when completed) and how far you could see from the top. The core of each building was poured, reinforced concrete cross-walls and floors, clad in a system of prefabricated concrete panel units. These storey-high panels, of three standard widths, had external ribs to improve their strength but this contributed to their spartan, blocky appearance with almost no redeeming features beyond the labour savings their construction offered; it was estimated by Millers that the fifty men and external scaffolding that they had needed for each storey at Dumbiedykes had been replaced by four men and a crane to lift the prefabricated concrete panels into place. They came down in 1997, having been largely empty of residents since 1991 after a long period of neglect and decline, with the local press referring to them as Terror Towers and Withering Heights.

The next phase of the Leith Fort CDA scheme was Fort House – a 7-storey deck access block of 157 mainly maisonette flats on a rambling, wonky X-plan built by J. Smart & Co to a design also by Shaw Stewart, Baikie & Perry. This block sat on 162 large diameter piles, 3 feet wide and 30 feet deep and its odd plan was to make the maximum use of the available space as it was confined within the historic but oppressively high walls of the old Leith Fort. It was a reinforced concrete frame infilled with brown bricks degenerated into some of the city’s most infamous housing in the 1980s. Despite a renovation which saw pitched roofs, awkward looking rooftop pediments and additional insulation added, it was demolished in 2012-13 and replaced by low rise Colonies-style housing, with those prison walls greatly reduced in height.

1962-64 saw another tall pair of point blocks erected by Millers in Leith as part of a redevelopment scheme variously known as Citadel Area Phase 1 or Couper Street Area. These are the 20 storey, 76 flat John Russell Court and Thomas Fraser Court were designed by Robert Forbes Hutchison. Now known as Persevere Court and Citadel Court, respectively, John Russell was an antiquarian and author who wrote some of the first, comprehensive histories of Leith, and Thomas Fraser was his schoolmaster. Each block is comprised entirely of maisonette flats (except for four, top floor penthouses), with two separate wings joined by a service and access core, although neatly packaged to appear as a single, point block. Originally finished in concrete panels dashed with Norwegian quartz chips, 1980s makeovers had them insulated and clad in colourful blue and yellow corrugation at the same times as the names were changed and tenancies were restricted to those over the age of 35 and without children under the age of 16.

The multi-storey flat peaked, literally, in Edinburgh in 1965 when Martello Court in Pennywell, Muirhouse completed. This 23 storey, 88 flat point block remains the tallest residential structure in Edinburgh and has unusual with wrap-around external balconies all the way up to the top. These served a dual purpose; as the building had only a single staircase, they were to assist escape in the event of a fire, however were unpopular with residents who wanted them gated off. Built by local contractor W. Arnott Mcleod to designs by Rowand Anderson, Kininmonth & Paul, it was intended to showcase local skills in the field of housing but was ultimately over-budget and delayed; the final project cost approximated £3,571/ flat, almost 60% more than neighbouring multis that had completed just 4 years before. Corporation Housing Architect Harry Corner branded the building “a disaster“. This was the first high-rise block to dispense with communal laundries since they had been introduced, with each flat having laundry facilities in the kitchen, and each floor having an external drying area. In a superstitious move, there is no thirteenth floor, the floors being number 1 to 12 and then 12A to 23.

There was no such qualms about the number thirteen with another block in the Muirhouse area, Thirteen Muirhouse Way was never formally named (and confusingly was actually 11 to 21 Muirhouse Way!) This nine-storey, 44-flat slab block was part of the Muirhouse Temporary Housing Area Phase II scheme to replace the post-war prefabs to the south of Pennywell. It was very similar to the earlier Gunnet and May Courts nearby. This block was part of a scheme completed 1963-1965. In 1982 the residents set up a Tenant’s Steering Committee to lobby for improvements to deal with the windows, dampness, heating and insecure entry. The council did eventually draw up plans for a refurbishment but in 1987 branded it “one of the worst in the city” and instead used new borrowing powers to have the block demolished and replaced by a low-rise scheme of accessible housing. Demolition came in 1988, just shy of its twenty-third birthday.

Also completing in 1965 was a large scheme on a greenfield plot at Sighthill, known as the Sighthill Neighbourhood Centre. This scheme was initially mooted in 1957 and in 1962 a scheme for two 23 storey point blocks and an 8 storey slab was approved, but was challenged successfully by the Civil Aviation Administration over the proximity to the flightpath of Edinburgh Airport. This resulted in a change to three lower 17 storey, 95 flat blocks – Glenalmond Court, Hermiston Court and Weir Court – and an increase in height of the slab block to 11 storeys; the 98 flat Broomview House. Construction was by Crudens. The entire scheme was demolished between 2008 and 2011, and replaced by a new estate of low and mid rise housing, which includes streets named after Glenalmond, Weir and Broomview (but not Hermiston; probably to avoid confusion with other nearby areas of that name.) These names were taken from the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Weir of Hermiston.

Yet another completion in 1965 was the well known “Banana Flats” of Cables Wynd House in Leith; officially Central Leith Phase 1 or Cables Wynd Redevelopment Scheme. The architect in charge was Robert Forbes Hutchison and the contractor was J. Smart & Co. This vast, 10 storey slab block of 212 largely maisonette flats has a distinctive curving plan to accommodate pre-existing roads and tenements and was designed to house up to 800 residents. The building has a concrete frame – a ground floor of columns and crosswalls above that – with a cladding of pre-cast concrete exterior panels covered in quartz chips. To reduce the number of lifts and stairwells, entry to the houses is deck access along three internal “streets in the sky“, which give access to the flats on floors above and below also. Bedrooms are arranged so that none are adjacent to the deck, to reduce noise disturbance. It was Category A listed in 2017.

Cables Wynd was joined nearby in December 1966 by Linksview House, an 11-storey, 96-flat block by the same architect and contractor as the former. It sits at the northern end of the Kirkgate and was officially the Central Leith Phase 2 or Tolbooth Wynd Redevelopment Scheme. Although it is a regular, straight slab and is significantly smaller than its bendy neighbour, its construction and internal layout is fundamentally similar. It has reinforced concrete columns on the ground floor and crosswalls above that, similar precast cladding panels and again three access decks to maisonette flats.

Between 1965-66, at the Greendykes Temporary Housing Area, a pair of 15-storey, 86-flat point blocks was constructed by Crudens – Greendykes House and Wauchope House. These were part of Pat Rogan’s policy of quickly increasing completion of new housing by replacing the life-expired, low-density, low-rise estates of post-war prefab bungalows with mixed mid- and high-rise schemes. Population density in these areas was more than doubled, from 60 to 140 people per acre, meaning the sitting prefab tenants could re-homed and there were more new houses too. This facilitated the clearance of slum housing in the inner city – still a huge problem at the time.

February 1966 saw the completion of high-rise buildings in the north of the city, with Northview Court at West Pilton – again a prefab replacement build, officially Muirhouse Area 3. It was something of an afterthought, replacing a smaller block on the plans at a late stage. Its 16 storeys contain 61 flats and the contractor was Wimpey.

The Moredun Temporary Housing Area was next, where a row of four 16 storey blocks was constructed on the only thin strip of solid bedrock in an area othewise riddled by mining and subsidence. The contractor was Wimpey and the 91 flat blocks are called Castleview House, Marytree House, Little France House and Moredun House.

The next phase here was two identical blocks to the previous four, which also completed in 1967. These are Moncrieffe House and Foreteviot House and are further up the hill and in a more exposed position than the first four. As a result of this exposure, and the way the wind swirls around and between the blocks, they have long suffered with windows blowing in (and out).

In 1967, to the west of Greendykes, a 15-storey pair of towers was completed at the site of the Craigmillar prefabs; the 57 flat Craigmillar Court and Peffermill Court. They were built by Concrete (Scotland) Ltd. on the prefabricated Bison large wall panel system – as a result they were 10% cheaper than Wimpey at Moredun

Between 1964-67, a pair of 13 storey blocks was completed at Restalrig Gardens; Lochend House and Restalrig House. Constructed by Millers, these 76 flat, T-plan point blocks are reinforced concrete construction with brick infill and external harling. They replaced the old Georgian villa of Restalrig House, which had been requisitioned during WW2 to act as a headquarters for the National Fire Service. It was acquired by the city in 1945 to act as a hostel for homeless families but was damaged by a fire in 1956 and evacuated, being used as a store for surplus council equipment thereafter.

1965-67 proved to be a busy period, with 21 high-rise blocks completed in total, the fruits of Pat Rogan’s efforts as housing chairman. His successor – G. Adolf Theurer – was a Progressive (Liberal / Unionist / Conservative political grouping), but something of an ally and continued his basic policies.

In 1968, the Kirkgate Redevelopment Scheme was completed by the 64 flat Kirkgate House, built by the Token Construction Co. This had been intended to be a 25 storey crowning monument, but ended up being behind schedule, overbudget and only 18 storeys tall.

A 1968 outlier, in geographical terms, is the 11 storey, 41 flat Coillesdene House at Joppa by Wimpey. It sits within the red brick walls of the villa of the same name. Like Restalrig House, this had been requisitioned during WW2 by the National Fire Service and acquired and ultimately demolished afterwards by the Corporation for housing, with some of its undeveloped garden land having been used for temporary prefabs.

Just along the road from Joppa, on Portobello High Street, Portobello Court completed in 1968. This 8 storey, 60 flat, T-plan block is the centrepiece of a mixed-rise housing scheme which replace the old tramway depot. It was built by J. Best.

A further phase of temporary housing replacement completed at Sighthill in 1968, a scheme known as The Calders. This was another mixed height development by Crudens. The high rise element was three 13 storey, 136 flat slab blocks built on the Skarne large panel system. These are named after locations in West Linton parish; Cobbinshaw House, Medwin House and Dunsyre House (like the Sighthill Neighbourhood Centre, there may be a Robert Louis Stevenson connection here). The Ronan Point Disaster of May 1968 occurred while they were completing. This fatal partial collapse of a brand new large panel system tower block prompted an immediate national review of such structures, and an immediate halt was called on moving new tenants in to Cobbinshaw House and final construction paused on the other pair. Structural surveys and improvements were made, and the domestic gas supply was removed from Cobbinshaw and replaced with electric, with the other pair completing as all electric before they could be occupied. The buildings were renovated and re-clad in the early 1990s.

In 1968-69, two 15 storey, 85 flat blocks were completed at Hawkhill on the site of an old tallow melting works – Hawkhill Court and Nisbet Court. These used the no-fines poured concrete method – where there is no fine sand component in the aggregate, and therefore the end product is porous and has air pockets – to try and deal with the condensation and damp problems that plagued earlier concrete builds. The contractor was local firm J. Smart & Co. Nisbet is the name of an old local landowning family (Nisbet of Craigentinny), although not one that was ever specifically associated with Hawkhill.

The last pair of the blocks in the prefab replacement scheme, and the last residential point blocks built in Edinburgh were built between 1969-71 at Niddrie Marischal; the pleasant sounding Teviotbank House and Tweedsmuir House, names from the Scottish Borders. These were built by Hart Bros. and were 15 storey, 57 flat blocks using the Bison large panel system. As well as the last, they were some of the worst such houses Edinburgh ever built and they were devoid of residents by 1989 after only 18 years and were unceremoniously demolished in 1991. The blocks had the last laugh though and refused to collapse under controlled explosion, having to be carefully tipped over later by a giant hydraulic ram known as Big Willie.

While Niddrie Marischal was still on the drawing board, Edinburgh’s public housing focus shifted away from the old Comprehensive Development Areas and Temporary Housing Sites to a grand new edge-of-the-city scheme at Wester Hailes. This was meant to be a “New Town within the town” for up to 20,000 people. However, despite the best of intentions, the Corporation was caught between price inflation and forced cost cutting by central government. As a result, it was forced to increase the housing density – putting multi-storey blocks back in favour again – and cut costs to balance the books. The cost cutting meant that construction quality was lacking, landscaping was bleak and that many of the facilities and public amenities that a growing community required were absent.

The overall Wester Hailes scheme is comprised of multiple, distinct neighbourhoods, within which there were multiple development contracts. These included three big groups of multis, all of which suffered from bad design, bad engineering and bad workmanship. Group one, by Hart Bros, was at Hailesland, and was comprised of six 10 storey slab blocks using the Bison large panel system. These blocks contained between 67 and 107 flats and were finished in stark, pebbledashed concrete panels. They were also shoddily built, to the point of compromising their very structural integrity. In 1990, after a life of only 18 years and a long period of uncertainty and partial vacancy, three of the blocks were demolished. The remaining three were repaired and renovated as there were not funds to write off and demolish structures on which the construction debt had yet to be paid off; these were renamed Kilncroft, Midcairn and Drovers Bank and were given colourful, corrugated cladding and pitched roofs.

The two remaining high rise groups at Wester Hailes were all built by Crudens on a proprietary system using a concrete frame and floors, in-filled with brick cladding and covered in harling. They were so badly built the render was falling off in huge chunks from the get go, and much of it had to be pre-emptively chipped off. Its application had been so lacking in control that the thickness varied between half and two and a half inches, as a result these nearly new flats were left looking decrepit and piebald. The Westburn Gardens group got no names, just the ominous sounding Blocks 1-7. They were built between 1970-72 and comprised seven slab blocks of 9 storeys with 55 flats each, except the last which got 112. They came down in 1993, aged just 22 years old.

The other Crudens Group was on the same system at Wester Hailes Drive and Wester Hailes Park. They at least got street numbers instead of block numbers, but were just as badly built as Westburn. Constructed from 1971-73, they came down in 1994 at the tender age of 21.

The year 1972 was both therefore both the peak and the swansong of multi-storey housing in Edinburgh; 12 blocks were finished at Wester Hailes, pipping the 11 of 1967, and the final 5 completed the following year. Such was the fallout from the multitude of scandals at Wester Hailes (and wider elsewhere, both in the city and nationwide) and also the rapid and terminal reputational damage they suffered in the 1980s that Edinburgh has never again built residential multis.

Of the seventy seven blocks in this inventory, some forty four are still standing and thirty three have been demolished. Twenty of the latter were 22 years old or younger and the average age at demolition has been 30.3 years. The oldest block to be demolished was Fort House, aged 50, and the youngest were the Hailesland Bison Blocks, at only 18.

If you’d like to look at all these housing blocks on the map instead, just follow this link or click on the thumbnail below. This map is colour-coded by the number of storeys.

I have made much use of the reference of the Tower Block Archive of Prof. Miles Glendinning and team, including facts and photos, and I recommend this resource to you if you have an interest in the subject. I can also recommend his publications “Rebuilding Scotland, The Postwar Vision 1945-1975” and “The Home Builders. Mactaggart & Mickel and the Scottish Housebuilding Industry” by Miles Glendinning and Diane M. Watters, amongst others, for further reading.I am also much obliged to Miles for letting me read his interview notes with key movers and shakers in local authority housing in Edinburgh in the 1950s and 60s, which are full of invaluable details and insights.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

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.

Glastonbury set times for you! Bringing the og Wessex Soundsystem Trad Folk Rave vibe once again, this time with a new expanded line-up. We're running on festival time, so hopefully you'll get that Saturday night 12.30am is technically Sunday morning. There's no easy way to put that is there ? Photo of one the stones in Metheral Stone Circle on Dartmoor. Pagan af, see ? See you inna field very soon!

#Glastonbury @glastofest #Glasto #Pilton #festival #folk #trad #folkrave #live

This thread is a bit of an A-to-Z of the different types of permanent, prefabricated, post-war housing built in Edinburgh between 1945-1950.

In the aftermath of WW2, hundreds of thousands of temporary, prefabricated houses were built across the UK, as part of a national crash-building programme to ease urban slum dwelling, replace war losses and provide housing for men returning from war until the construction of permanent housing could catch up with demand. In Edinburgh, some 4,000 temporary prefabs were built, of four types; AIROHs, ARCONs, Tarrans and Uni-SECOs. But prefab housing wasn’t just temporary, it was also for permanent construction. It was hoped that by mass-manufacturing standard designs of modern houses in factories, they could be rapidly built with limited skilled labour.

A is for Aluminium. Some of the first permanent prefab houses ordered for Edinburgh were of the Permanent Aluminium or Blackburn Mk.II design. These were based on the AIROH (Air Industry Research Organisation for Housing) single-storey, temporary, aluminium cottages – of which some 54,000 were built – but with thicker walls and insulation, designed to last 60 years instead of the AIROH‘s ten. These were developed by the British aircraft industry as a way to find use for its skills and manufacturing facilities in the postwar environment, and to make use of a glut of scrap aluminium from surplus aircraft. This material has its advantages; it is light, strong, does not rust or readily corrode and – initially – readily available from scrapped aircraft. It took 2 tonnes of aluminium to build an AIROH house frame. So a single large fighter aircraft like a Typhoon give you all the aluminium for a house. The Blackburn Aircraft Company of Dumbarton got on board.

They have been described as an “airplane in house form“; manufactured in sections on an aircraft production line, in sections that could be transported by road, and assembled quickly on site by unskilled labour. They came pre-fitted with standard kitchens and bathrooms, all of which just needed connected together on site on a simple brick or concrete plinth. The problem for aluminium houses of all types was that the price of the material soon rebounded and they became very expensive to produce, but they filled a gap and were not the worst of the temporary prefabs by any stretch.

Edinburgh purchased 166 permanent Blackburn Aluminium Houses; 145 for the Craigour Scheme in Moredun and 21 for Muirhouse.

These houses are quite easy to identify, as they are small, detached cottages with 3 regularly-sized windows and an offset front door. The shallow-pitched roof has a small brick chimney stack and was originally aluminium sheeting. There were 3 overlapping joints on the façade where the 4 prefabricated modules were joined together. These houses were quite popular, they sit on large plots and have big gardens. They are detached and the frames have not been subject to corrosion. Many have been insulated, re-clad, re-roofed and even extended. Some have been demolished and new houses built on their plots.

B is for BISF. These houses were named after their manufacturer and designer, the British Iron and Steel Federation. The house is of a conventional, semi-detached design, but uses a steel frame with steel window and door surrounds and Critall-Hope steel framed windows. The lower storey was clad in render applied to a steel lath and the upper storey had steel sheeting formed to look like timber. Interior partitions were plasterboard or wooden fibreboard and insulation was glass fibre. Most have been stripped back to their frames, re-insulated and re-clad with pebble-dash, and given modern plastic double glazing units. The fibreboard walls were prone to damp and fire and most were replaced with plasterboard during refurbishments.

In Edinburgh, c. 300 of these houses were built in Southhouse / Buirdiehouse (1947) and Moredun / Fernieside (1949) Schemes and most (if not all) remain to this day. They are somewhat unusual in that they were always intended to be permanent, and have not suffered from the usual structural degradation and corrosion that have plagued other non-standard houses. As such they are one of the few prefab designs that have never been designated as defective (which means you can get a mortgage on one).

Useful identification features for BISF houses are that they are always semi-detached; they have a single, squat, central chimney on a pitched roof; the re-clad houses often have a mix of brick and pebble-dash cladding; the main ground floor window extends almost to floor level; and they lack the heavy reinforced concrete door and window surrounds of the concrete houses.

B is for Blackburn Orlit. These houses were a collaboration between the Blackburn Aircraft Company in Dumbarton and the Orlit Construction Company (see under O). They were designed in 1949 and used an improved, simplified version of the Orlit reinforced concrete frame and wall panel system, combined with the lightweight aluminium roof structure and pre-fabricated internal partitions covered in plasterboard, by Blackburn. Kitchens and bathrooms were also prefabricated “pods” produced by the Scottish Myton Company, based on experience with the Tarran temporary prefab houses. Four houses were built as a prototype in Clydebank in 1949, followed by 214 in 1950-51 on the Saughton Mains Scheme in Edinburgh, as semi-detached and terraces. Around 1,300 were built in total across Scotland.

These houses have the usual heavy, PRC door and window surrounds of Orlit houses and the irregularly-spaced concrete “quoins” on the corners. The ground floor front room window is deep (deeper than standard Orlits), but has often been in-filled with a shallower window. They have a shallow-pitched, gabled Blackburn roof (the roofs of Scotcon Orlits and those added to earlier Orlits are “hipped”) and lack the usual Orlit narrow, first-floor window over the front door. Instead they have 3 windows squeezed into the façade upstairs.

B is for Blackburn Mk.IV. Another collaboration between Blackburn and Orlit. These houses were of a more traditional construction, with walls constructed out of pre-cast “no fines” concrete blocks on a concrete slab foundation and Crittal steel-framed windows. I assume given Blackburn‘s involvement there were aluminium internal components used. You will find these in Edinburgh at the West Mains Scheme in Blackford,where 134 were built in 1951 as 4-in-a-block terraces. Nearly all have now been re-rendered, hiding their original concrete blockwork structure. Because they lack the Orlit‘s PRC frame and steel joints, they have not been classed as defective.

Identification features are the blockwork walls (where you can see them); the lack of the heavy, PRC door and window surrounds of most Orlit houses; the door surround has as small concession to detail (usually absent from such houses) with a moulding line around it; the central bay windows at ground floor level originally had a copper-sheathed roof.

B is for Blackburn Permanent. Also known as the Blackburn Mk.III, as the name suggests, this was a permanent house making use of Blackburn’s prefabricated internal partitioning and shallow-pitched aluminium roof structure, which was originally covered in aluminium sheeting. The form was basically the same as the Blackburn-Orlit house, but without the heavy PRC window and door frames and walls are traditional blockwork. Edinburgh built these as semi-detached and 4-in-a-block terraces, at Moredun in 1949 and the then Midlothian County Council as semi-detached houses in Currie in 1950.

Identification features are the shallow roof pitch, squat chimneys, and the strip of 4 windows with brick infill on the first floor. Again there is a very deep sitting room window. These houses are usually harled or pebbledashed.

O is for Orlit. The Orlit System was developed by the Czech architect Erwin Katona, a Jewish refugee who had come to London in the late 1930s. He developed a modular, pre-cast reinforced concrete (PRC) system of construction that could be built in a factory and rapidly assembled on site with limited and unskilled labour. PRC columns and beams slotted together to form the structure, in-filled with an interlocking system of concrete tiles. Floors and roofs were of concrete channels. The roof could be a flat concrete slab covered in bitumen paper or a traditional wooden, pitched structure with tiles. Windows were Critall steel-framed, set within PRC concrete frames of standard sizes. The Orlit System could build a range of buildings, from single-storey cottages and municipal buildings to tenement flats. Usually they were semi-detached houses though.

The System was meant to be for permanent houses, with a 60 year lifespan, but was unfortunately riddled with flaws and weaknesses. Over time, PRC deteriorates, particularly at construction joints and junctions between components, with a gradual reduction in structural effectiveness. It suffers from inadequate thermal insulation, as well as thermal bridging – making houses cold and prone to condensation on the walls. As early as 1949, people in Edinburgh were writing to the newspapers to complain about the flaws in brand new Orlit houses. The original Type 1 system was replaced with the Type 2 to try and remedy the deficiencies. By 1950, they had abandoned the pre-cast frame system almost entirely (except for the window surrounds) and moved on to modular concrete block construction, which eliminated the structural weaknesses at least! All Orlit houses built to the original Type 1 or 2 systems have been designated defective.

Orlits were popular with Scottish local authorities and set up a subsidiary – the Scottish Orlit Company – with its headquarters and factory in Sighthill. Around 6,000 were built across Scotland, of which half have been subsequently demolished. Edinburgh built around 668, 410 of which have been demolished. These were a mix of the usual 2-storey semis and tenement flats; all of the latter were built at Bingham and were demolished in 1985. 134 semis were built at Saughton Mains (in 1948) and 80 at Southhouse / Burdiehouse (in 1947), all of which remain. This post does not cover the later 1950s-built Orlits at Ratho Craigpark, Oxgangs Farm and Gilmerton Dykes.

The Orlit System evolved over time, and has a large amount of variety available due to the flexibility of the system, however the best things to look for are the heavy outlines of the pre-cast concrete window surrounds, the narrow windows over the front door and to the side, and the bulky outline of the original concrete flat roof slab to which the later hipped roofs were added to remedy the deficient nature of the structure. I believe all Orlit System houses built in Edinburgh were originally flat roofed.

S is for Scotcon Orlit. Scotcon (from Scottish Construction Company) were a subsidiary of the Scottish Orlit Company, formed expressly to undertake local authority housebuilding in Scotland. While much of their work was prefabricated tower blocks, they also built on the standard Orlit system. 296 Scotcon Orlit houses were built in Edinburgh in 1950-51, a mixture of semi-detached houses and 3-storey tenements. 126 have since been demolished, but 170 remain; in the Niddrie Marischal Scheme (tenements and semis); at Saughton Mains (only 3 semis, perhaps built as demonstration models given their proximity to the Scottish Orlit Co. factory at Sighthill); Dunsmuir Court in Corstorphine (tenements) and at Easter Drylaw (tenements).

Because they use the Orlit system of PRC beams and columns, with pre-cast interlocking concrete block walls and PRC window and door surrounds, they are designated defective. They have traditional timber-framed, pitched roofs.

Scotcon Orlits look like other Orlits, with the heavy PRC window surrounds, but that of the ground floor front room is much deeper. They have the trademark narrow window over the front door, and (where they haven’t been covered up with pebbledash), irregular concrete “quoins”. The “hipped” roofs were built as pitched timber and tile structures, so they lack the heavy slab of the early Orlits built with flat roofs (to which a pitched structure was later added).

The tenements can be recognised by the heavy PRC window surrounds, with the usual wide and deep front-room window, and narrow windows over the front door. All the Scotcon Orlit tenements in Edinburgh are 6-in-a-block. The ground floor houses have their own entrance doors to the side.

S is for Swedish Timber House. The Swedish government sold 5,000 flat-pack timber houses of a standard design to to the British Government after WW2. Half went to Scotland, particularly for rural housing, and the first 350 arrived as early as October 1945. Similar houses had been built in Glasgow in 1937 by the Swedish Government to demonstrate them to Scottish local authorities. 100 were gifted to Edinburgh Corporation by Sweden as a gesture of post-war good will, with 50 each erected in West Pilton and Sighthill under the supervision of Swedish foremen, as a mix of semi-detached and 4-in-a-block terraces. An additional handful were built by the SSHA at their Sighthill Demonstration Site.

Because they are of traditional timber construction with pitched, slate roofs, they have never been designated defective. Most have been externally insulated, and re-clad with harl or render, but some retain their original timber cladding.

The original tongue-and-groove timber cladding of thin strips, with those of the first floor overlapping the ground floor, are the best identification feature. They have a large front room window on the ground floor and a small canopy over the door. Most of those that still retain their timber cladding have been treated with dark brown or red preservatives, but originally they were brightly painted in cream. The roof is tiled and well pitched, with a single, central chimney to the front.

W is for Whitson-Fairhurst. These houses are named after their designers, W. A. Fairhurst and Melville, Dundas & Whitson Ltd. They were of a modular, prefabricated concrete system built by the Scottish Housing Group, a post-war conglomerate of housing builders who had pooled their resources to meet government and local authority contracts for mass construction. They use a system of PRC columns and beams to form the structure of the house, which are in-filled with an outer skin of brick and an inner skin of breeze blocks. Window surrounds and door frames are relatively heavy PRC structures. A traditional timber roof structure was covered in concrete roof tiles and they were harled or pebbledashed. 3,400 Whitson-Fairhurst houses were built in Scotland,. In Edinburgh they were only built in the Southhouse / Burdiehouse Scheme, where 100 semi-detached houses were built. They are designated defective.

At first glance they could be confused for an Orlit house, with heavy PRC window surrounds. The biggest difference is that the roof is of the gable-type (when seen from the front, the sides of the house are flat all the way to the top of the roof), not “hipped” as in Orlits (when seen from the front, the sides of the roof are pitched towards the top) The front window is much deeper and they lack the Orlit‘s signature narrow window above the front door.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2024, Andy Arthur

https://threadinburgh.scot/2022/12/20/the-thread-about-blackburns-bisfs-orlits-and-whitson-fairhursts-a-guide-to-pre-fabricated-permanent-post-war-housing-in-edinburgh-how-to-recognise-it-and-where-to-see-it/

#Burdiehouse #CouncilHousing #Currie #Edinburgh #Houses #Moredun #Orlit #Pilton #PostWar #PRefab #publicHousing #Sighthill #Southhouse

I #support #women & their #families in #EdinburghNorthSmall #Muirhouse #Drylaw #Pilton #Granton #Royston #Wardieburn
We offer #food at all of our #groups #activities

Everyone needs to #eat & food is a great #gateway to other #Wellbeing activities & helps #ReduceIsolation

While #FoodBanks might have their place, not all that are #hungry & #broke can get a #referral

I put this document together for our area #PleaseShare

#FoodSharing
#FoodShare
#CommunityFood #CommunityMeals
#Dignity