Mastodawn

The thread about Dean Public School; “from the Three R’s to transistors”

Preamble. The schools of the “School Board” era of public education (1872-1918) hold a particular fascination for me, one most profound where they have been “deconsecrated” and are either no longer in use as schools or have disappeared entirely. This thread began as a couple of lines for my own notes about the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” but soon snowballed into an alphabetical deep-dive into each.

Part six of the series of posts looking at “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” pays a visit to the former Dean Public School. Judging by the crowds of tourists on phones who gather daily in crowds outside, this must be one of the most Instagrammed of schools. I wonder how many stop for a moment to consider its history and its claim to a unique first in the story of education in the city. So let us take a moment for ourselves to do just that.

Following the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 (which made schooling compulsory in Scotland between the ages of 5 and 13) the newly elected School Boards undertook a flurry of construction to rationalise, modernise and expand the existing provision. At its formation in 1873 the Edinburgh School Board (ESB) took stock of the situation it had inherited in the city and found there were almost twenty-two thousand pupils being taught in one hundred schools, with the majority run by the various churches. Unsurprisingly the Presbyterians dominated, educating forty-three percent of scholars.

ProviderSchoolsPupilsShareFree Church174,28219.7%Church of Scotland164,22219.4%Heriot’s Hospital163,74217.2%Non-denominational & private203,65416.8%R. C. Church82,0149.3%Episcopal Church91,5187.0%Industrial & free schools, etc.81,4266.6%U. P. Church68573.9%Total10021,715Elementary Edinburgh Schooling in 1873, census by Edinburgh School Board

In 1873 the Board held a survey of teachers in the city to help prioritise where new schools should be built and the following year held a competition to find architects for its first batch of seven purpose-built schools; Bristo, Causewayside, Leith Walk, North Canongate, Stockbridge, West Fountainbridge and the Water of Leith Village*. The work was divided between the successful applicants, that for the Water of Leith was awarded to Robert Wilson, who would later become the Board’s house architect.

* = The naming and jurisdiction of this school is somewhat confusing. While the area today is widely known as the Dean Village, well into the 20th century it was always known as Water of Leith village. “Dean” referred instead to the old Village of Dean slightly to the north. Both Water of Leith and Dean villages were in the Edinburgh School Board catchment and while the new school was in the former village it was christened Dean Public School at opening. This was most probably in recognition that it served the Dean quoad sacra Parish (an ecclesiastical division, but not a municipal one). To add further confusion, until 1895 there was also a separate St Cuthbert’s and Dean School Board. This covered the western hinterland outwith the city’s municipal boundaries as they then stood and was responsible for schools such as Gorgie, Roseburn, and South Morningside (extension of the city boundary in 1882 meant that the former two schools were actually now in Edinburgh but served by the St Cuthbert’s and Dean Board!)

Water of Leith village, looking northeast past the Bell’s Brae Bridge to Holy Trinity Episcopal Church pre-1875. The school would be built in front of the tall mill building with the circular windows on the left, where the low range sits in this picture. Thomas Vernon Begbie glass negative dated 1887 (incorrect). The Cavaye Collection of Thomas Begbie Prints; City of Edinburgh Council Museums & Galleries

Perhaps because it was the smallest, the Dean Public School was the first of the batch to complete. The opening took place on Wednesday December 8th 1875 making it the first purpose-built school by the Board in the city. The Scotsman reported that at two o’clock, the 150 children of the older division were assembled in the upper classroom in front of the Board and “a large number of gentlemen interested in the work“, including Lord Provost James Falshaw, James Cowan the MP for Edinburgh and numerous town councillors. Following the singing of a psalm and a prayer led by the Rev. Whyte of Free St George’s Church, the Lord Provost gave an opening address and observed that “it was to him a most gratifying circumstance that an auspicious event like the present had occurred during his term of office.”

The roundel of the Edinburgh School Board, “the female figure of education” dispensing knowledge to the young at Dean Public School. © Self

The Chairman of the Board, Professor Henry Calderwood, mentioned that at this time they had 7,386 children in public education at the nineteen schools under their charge but that most of these were small and overcrowded and there was much work ahead to provide purpose-built accommodation for them. Thanks were given to the kirk session of Dean Free Church for allowing the continued use of their schoolhouse since the 1872 act before the new school was ready.

OS Town Surveys of Edinburgh in 1849 and 1876, before and after the Dean Public School was built. Note that at this time the village itself was referred to as “Water of Leith”, as it always had been. Note the Dean Free Church on the old Queensferry Road where schooling took place before 1875. Move the slider to compare. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The new school was arranged over two storeys with accommodation for 400 children (using a formula of 10 square feet of space per child). The infants were accommodated on the ground floor and the older children upstairs, each level having a principal large school room (57ft by 23ft, or 17m by 7m) which could be divided by movable glass partitions, as well as smaller classrooms. There were separate entrances for boys on one side and girls and infants on the other, with the playgrounds being similarly segregated. The total cost was £5,740 5s 2d; £1,030 9s 9d for the site and £4,709 15s 5d for the construction work.

Dean Public School in 1950, looking south. The squat gable of Drumsheugh Baths can be seen in the middle distance. Picture CC-by-NC-SA Dean Village Memories, via Edinburgh Collected

As early as 1878, in a report to the School Board the Inspector complained of overcrowding and a lack of writing desks in the school (those available were sufficient for only 1/3 of the children). This had “spoiled the writing, wasted time in the classes and has prevented the highest discipline grant through the copying traceable to over-crowding“. Failure to remedy these defects would result in the school’s government grant being cut. The school roll at this time was 311, with 200 children qualifying for the Examination in Standard – but the pass rates in these qualifications of 82% for Reading, 84% for Writing and 71% for Arithmetic were the lowest in the School Board. Headmaster Waddell was however praised for his organisation and discipline and the infant department was “in many respects a model one“.

Class portrait of older girls at Dean Public School, with the headmistress Miss Mary Mackenzie (labelled as Hunter). 1883 photograph by J. & S. Sternstein of Glasgow. Note that at least one girl has very short hair, likely the result of it being shaved to combat headlice. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.Class portrait of boys at Dean Public School, with the headmistress Miss Mary Mackenzie (labelled as Hunter). 1883 photograph by J. & S. Sternstein of Glasgow. Note the boy on the left of Mary seems notably older, taller and better dressed than his peers and may be one of the pupil teachers. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.Class portrait of boys at Dean Public School with (probably) their headmaster, Esdaile Hunter. 1883 photograph by J. & S. Sternstein of Glasgow. The boy to the left of her is notably taller, older and better dressed than the others and may be one of the pupil teachers, 1883 class photos from Dean Public School

The lack of accommodation was remedied in 1888 with a 3-storey extension for 132 additional children added to the rear, comprising a play-room, a sewing room and an infant classroom. The space beneath was left open and served as a covered part of the playground.

1907 photograph showing the extension added at the rear of the school on the right, adjacent to the bridge. The apparently 17th century structure on the left is Well Court, in fact a late 1880s model workers housing complex in a Scottish Vernacular Revival style by architect Sydney Mitchell. 1907 photograph, Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.

When education was made free of charge in 1889 (the 1872 act had introduced fees, although assistance could be provided by the Parish Poor Boards for those who could not afford them), the headmaster at Dean wrote to the School Board to say that the hoped for improvement in attendance rates had not materialised within his district and that “the parents who before were indifferent, are now equally or more so“. In 1894, 120 children were sent to the school from the nearby Dean Orphanage, being reported as “perfect models of cleanliness and order” by the Scotsman and commended in the Evening News for making the school football eleven “a combination to be feared and respected“. They were moved to the new Flora Stevenson School in Comely Bank when it opened in 1901, before being moved back to Dean in 1913 when the new Parish Children’s Home on Crewe Road opened, putting pressure on capacity at Flora’s when there were 115 vacant places at Dean School.

The Dean Orphanage in 1850, recently relocated from its old location beneath the North Bridge where it been in the way of the North British Railway. The community of Bells’s Mill lies beneath and children from both of these locations would attend the Dean Public School. Salt paper print, unknown photographer. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.

With no playing fields or local park to call its own, the school sports days were held at Warriston Playing Fields. In June 1912 the Edinburgh Evening News reported that the pupils from Dean – for the first time in the history of the ESB – had performed mass dancing as part of the day. One hundred and sixty pupils danced “with great zest… danc[ed] a reel to the music of the pipes.”

Pupils of the Dean Public School perform a maypole dance at Warriston Playing Fields as part of their annual sports day, June 28th 1913, Edinburgh Evening News.

In December 1914, the staff of the school contributed £1 4s 6t to the Edinburgh Belgian Relief Fund. The following year Robert Peter Smith, assistant teacher, was wounded during at the Dardanelles when serving as a lieutenant with the 1/4th King’s Own Scottish Borderers.

Officers of the 1/4th KOSB in 1915. Robert P. Smith is in the 3rd row, third from the left, the shorter man sporting a moustache. Photo via UK Photo and Film Archive.

In 1939 the school was requisition by the War Office and temporarily relocated “for the duration” to the St Mary’s Cathedral Mission Hall on Bell’s Brae, the ancient convening house of the Incorporation of Baxters (bakers) of Edinburgh. It was returned to educational use and in 1953 was placed under the charge of Dorothy Edmond. The new headmistress was determined to raise the school’s profile and instituted a uniform, having a school badge specially commissioned for the blazers.

She rallied parents together and asked for support financially. Although it would not be a lot, it was a lot to some folks and it caused some controversy… Miss Edmund was strict and eventually was held in high regard by both parents and children.

Recollection by pupil Kathleen Glancy of Dorothy Edmond. Via Edinburgh Collected.

Dean School badge, showing the castle of the arms of Edinburgh, open books symbolising learning, the blue of the Water of Leith running through the centre. The Boar’s Head is from the arms of the Nisbet of Dean family, The Cock’s Head may refer to the Poultry Lands of Dean, which in the 17th century conferred the holder the hereditary title of Poulterer to the King. From Kathleen Glancy by Dean Village Memories, CC-by-NC-SA via Edinburgh Collected.

But not even the determination of Miss Edmond could counter the significant long term depopulation in the neighbourhood, the result of much of the housing stock being decrepit and condemned combined with the decline of the remaining traditional industries of milling and tanning. In January 1961 the school closed, its roll having reduced to just 37 pupils, less than 10% of capacity. Those remaining were transferred to Flora Stevenson’s and the empty building was leased to the defence electronics company Ferranti Ltd. of Crewe Toll for a period of seven years as a training centre for apprentices and assembly line staff. The Evening News felt it an appropriate symbol of the city’s growing demand for specialist technical education that its oldest public school should have made the transition “from the Three R’s to transistors“.

Christine Robertson, age 10, photographed alone in the school on its last day, 20th January 1961,

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Ferranti did not require the two basement rooms and these were given over to the use of the Edinburgh Union of Boys Clubs as a base for an outdoor education scheme, the Adventure Centre for Use. A number of Ferranti staff were involved in this, including the works’ own Mountain Climbing Adventure Group for its younger employees. This provided equipment and specialist training to established clubs in activities such as climbing, mountaineering, canoeing and dingy sailing. After Ferranti’s lease was up, in 1969 the school became an annexe to Telford College, whose domestic courses were based nearby at the Dean Education Centre, the former Dean Orphanage.

Dean School in the 1960s. Picture from Dean Village Memories, CC-by-NC-SA via Edinburgh Collected

In May 1984 the school was disposed of on the open market (offers over £100,000) by Lothian Regional Council and was converted into flats in 1986 by James Potter Developments. Eighteen two, three and four-bedroom properties were created which would have cost between £39,000 and £55,000 when completed.

Former Dean Public School in 2025. Comparison of the photo with that further up the page shows how extra floors were cleverly inserted by reducing the window heights significantly from those of the Victorian schoolrooms. Photo by Fiona Coutts, via Britishlistedbuildings.

The previous instalment in this series looked at the Davie Street School(s) in the Southside.

#DeanVillage #Edinburgh #EdinburghSchoolBoard #Education #Ferranti #FurtherEducation #LostBoardSchoolsOfEdinburgh #School #Schools #Written2025

Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh Oct 9

The thread about the Davie Street School(s); from “Rewards For Good Boys” to “Britain’s most unusual school”

The fifth chapter of our series looking at the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” looks at Davie Street School; with which I made the mistake of proclaiming “there doesn’t seem to be anything interesting about this one” before I had taken a proper look see. Naturally I proved myself completely wrong! And so actually what follows is the quite interesting story of the various schools that have called Davie Street home.

The first school at Davie Street was the Lancasterian School whose foundation stone was laid by the Lord Provost and Magistrates on Monday 12th October 1812. It replaced a temporary home which had been built on the Calton Hill, a “long, low, wood and brick erection“. The school was the work of the Edinburgh Education (Lancasterian School) Society, a charitable institution founded in 1810 by “several respectable Gentlemen…” to address the lack of education for the lower classes of the city by providing it at the “least possible expense of time and money“. It had been determined to use the educational system of Joseph Lancaster, thought it to be both the most economical and the most extensively tested system in practice.

Joseph Lancaster, portrait by John Hazlitt c. 1818 in the National Portrait Gallery, NPG99.

Lancaster’s was a Quaker and early pioneer of education for the masses, his schools being highly unusual at the time in being reward-based and almost entirely lacking in punishments. Like the contemporary Madras System of Dr Andrew Bell (familiar to generations of Leithers as the Dr Bell), the Lancasterian System taught large classes in a single “school room” with one teacher supported by multiple pupil monitors. These were older children who relayed the instructions to the younger and kept an eye on their work. The contemporary engraving below shows the pupil monitors walking amongst the rows of younger children, helping them with their work, with the teacher seated on a podium at the front. On the wall a sign reads “REWARDS FOR GOOD BOYS” and the walls and ceiling are hung with toys such as kites, hoops, racket and shuttlecocks, balls and bats which the children could win.

Contemporary engraving of a Lancasterian School – the Royal Free School on Borough Road. The teacher sits on a podium at the front, the children are arrayed in ranks by age (and ability) and the older Pupil Monitors move amongst the rows, relaying the lesson and checking the work.

Davie Street had two school rooms, boys and girls being taught separately, sufficient to hold 1,000 scholars and was one of the first steps on the route to a free, mass education in the city. For a subsidised fee of just 2s 6d per quarter, children over 6 years old were taught their Reading, Writing and Arithmetic with the only book in use for teaching being the Bible. However with its Quaker roots, the school was non-sectarian and counted amongst its founding directors in Edinburgh both Presbyterians and Episcopalians. Children were taught the Church of Scotland’s approved Catechism by rote but “the Directors, from respect to the rights of private judgement, do not impose it on children whose parents have conscientious objections to it“.

Davie Street showing the Lancasterian School, 1849 OS Town Survey of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The school was “the achievement of the Whigs and of the pious” and was well supported at the highest levels of Edinburgh and Scottish society, as evidenced by the titles of its presidents and directors in the below newspaper advert. It was not universally popular however and according to “Memorials of His Own Time” by Lord Henry Cockburn it was “cordially hated by all true Tories, who for many years never ceased to sneer at and obstruct it.”

Principal office bearers of the Edinburgh Education (Lancastrian Schools) Society in 1812 as published in the Caledonian Mercury.

A report of the Committee of Council on Education of 1844 noted that the headteacher, Mr Robert Dun, had supplied “at his own expense, a considerable assortment of philosophical apparatus, with which he performs, before his pupils, the more useful and interesting experiments in Chemistry and Natural Philosophy“. Dun was praised as running an institution being representative “of a well conducted monitorial school“.

There is no educational institution in Edinburgh which does a more extended share of substantial good than the Davie Street Lancasterian School, now 25 years established, and none upon which the public spirited and philanthropic can, to better account, bestow their money.

The school at this time was very much a family affair; it had 200 older boys taught by Robert and an assistant plus 100 infant boys by his father, Robert Senior. 250 girls were taught by John and Miss M. Dun – Robert’s siblings. Including evening classes, the total roll was 622 but it was noted that absence could run high, between 10 to 20 percent. The Duns had joined the school in 1826 and remained there for 35 years until Robert resigned in 1861 and received wide praise for their long-term efforts to educate and better the lot of the poorer children of the city.

Mr Dun, of the Edinburgh Davie Street School, decidedly the best Lancasterian teacher I have yet met, has introduced much useful knowledge into his plan; and, if the means were afforded him, would yet do much more.

James Simpson, “Necessity of Popular Education as a National Object”, 1834

A notable alumnus of the Lancasterian School was George McCrae (1860-1928), later Colonel Sir George McCrae DSO DL VD. A self-made man in the textile and drapery trade, McCrae was knighted in 1908 for his services as MP for Edinburgh East. He is best remembered in Scotland for raising and commanding the 16th Battalion, The Royal Scots during World War 1. This unit, better known as McCrae’s Own, was composed of Edinburgh men and its ranks included 16 members of Heart of Midlothian Football Club as well as players from Hibernian, Raith Rovers, East Fife, St. Bernard’s, Falkirk and Dunfermline football clubs. Much of the rest were drawn from the supporters of these clubs.

George McCrae during his time as an MP, by Sir John Benjamin Stone, 1901

At the time of the Duns’ departure the school was proving to be a financial liability for its directors. In that year its expenses were £147 14s 5d but they had raised only £98 9s 7d in subscriptions and fees; outgoings exceeded income by 50%. The Lancasterian School was being kept solvent only by the £900 proceeds of the sale of a bequeathed house. The trustees had therefore been looking to put the institution on a sounder financial footing and in 1857 had proposed to the Governors of the Heriot’s Hospital Trust that it be transferred to their care.

George Heriot’s Hospital (School) in 1966, looking towards the Castle. Edinburgh City Libraries, Edinburgh and Scottish Collection.

The Governors in turn remitted the request to a sub-committee who reported favourably on the idea “when the state of funds admitted to an increase“. In the event it was not until 1874 – with the State’s financial support as a result of the Education (Scotland) Act 1872) – that Heriot’s were able to complete the takeover of Davie Street which was to be converted to one of its Outdoor Schools. These schools, instituted in 1838, were outdoor in the sense that they provided education outwith the walls of Heriot’s Hospital itself. They were run on the Madras System and financed by the surplus of the Heriot Trust to provided a free education for the “children of burgesses and others“: in practice this meant the poor.

In October 1874, temporary accommodation was arranged for the non-paying pupils of Davie Street while their school was to be demolished and replaced with a larger and more modern building for 650 children. The architect of the Heriot Trust, John Chesser, drew up plans for a two storey school in a Jacobean style, richly ornamented with the roses and stars from the coat of arms of George Heriot and mouldings and corner towers directly inspired by the mother Hospital School.

Davie Street school as rebuilt by Heriot’s in 1875

The school reopened on Whitsunday 1875, the tablet on its principal gable now reading George Heriot’s Hospital School. Its first – and only – headmaster was to be Mr John McCrindle who held this position until his retirement in 1905. The infant headmistress was Miss Jane Johnston from 1877 to 1908, she herself having been educated at one of the Trust’s the Outdoor Schools at Heriot Bridge.

An engraved portrait of John McCrindle by the Edinburgh Evenening News upon his retirement, July 18th 1905

In 1879 a tragedy occurred when a pupil, Ellen Bennet, died from burns she had received at the school; on a cold November day she sneaked unsupervised back into her classroom at lunchtime and climbed over the guard of the fire that heated the room to warm herself causing her clothing to catch fire. The following year there were 180 infants and 320 older children on the school roll and “almost all the children… are the boys and girls of parents of the strictly working and artisan classes. They all appeared scrupulously clean and very tidy at the examination“.

Davie Street showing the Heriot’s School, 1876 OS Town Survey of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The school’s life with the Heriot Trust was to prove short lived. In 1886 the Edinburgh School Board agreed to purchase it for £2,368 16s 8d. The Heriot’s schools at Stockbridge (later St. Bernard’s) and Abbeyhill (later Regent Road) were also acquired at this time, the Trust having decided to dispose of all of its Outdoor Schools and move its remaining day scholars to the Hospital itself. The Trust approved the sale and transfer in January 1887, part of the transfer arrangement being that they would continued to fund the free education of its existing scholars – the School Board charged fees, unlike the Outdoor Schools – any pre-existing arrangements for free education, so long as the beneficiary continued to pass the relevant exam standards.

The Board “were not at all satisfied with the internal arrangement” of Davie Street and so spent a further £2,379 2s 9d on expansion and alterations. Their architect, Robert Wilson, added an additional wing to the south with accommodation an additional 130 pupils, increasing its capacity to 690. By re-using the additional ornamental stonework this addition appears almost seamless, beyond the plainer style of the roof line. Despite the change of administration, the “Heriot’s Hospital” tablet remained on its façade, never being replaced by the School Board’s roundel.

Davie Street showing the School Board’s public school, note the large projection of the new wing to the south. 1893 OS Town Survey of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The peace of Davie Street Public School – as it was now known – was breached in October 1889 when a wave of excitement spread throughout British schools via newspaper reports of an attempt by schoolboys in Cardiff to institute a general strike. Their demands were a half-day Wednesday, no homework, shorter hours and no corporal punishment. The action spread contagiously and by the following afternoon the boys of Davie Street had organised themselves, marching behind a banner (reported to be “a handkerchief nailed to a stick“) to Castlehill and Dalry schools in an effort to instigate risings there too. Their demands – reasonable to modern eyes – were conveyed on a scrap of paper; “strike for short hours and no home lessons and free education for the whole school“. The action rumbled on for a few days more with “strikebreaking” pupils at some schools reporting being hissed at the gates by the holdouts before it petered out. Those who were judged to have been ringleaders found themselves punished for their efforts with the tawse – a short, sharp reminder of how things had changed since the days of the reward-based Lancasterian School.

Headline, Evening Mail, 9th October 1889

Perhaps memories of the brief uprising of 1889 died hard as in October 1913, once again boys from Davie Street marched out of their school in spontaneous protest in an effort to get their compatriots in the district – at Causewayside, South Bridge and St. Leonards – to join them in resisting rumoured (and entirely spurious) plans to force them to attend school on Saturday mornings.

Life was harsh for many of the children in the Old Town and Southside and a particularly extreme case was reported in the Evening News in November 1908 involving children from Davie Street. Philip Lavin of 150 Dumbiedykes Road was sentenced to three months imprisonment at the Sheriff Court for ill-treatment and neglect of his five children, aged six months to 13 years. He had been repeatedly visited and warned of his conduct by the Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SSPCC) over the course of five years. Finally, Headmaster R. James Reith wrote to the SSPCC to inform them of bruising on the face of one of Lavin’s daughters which he suspected was the result of assault. Visiting the house again, they found the childrens’ “clothing was scanty and on [their] bed the only covering was an old quilt.” The hungry children had sometimes shared just two rolls between four for their breakfast or five potatoes for their dinner. Lavin earned good money as a painter, 30s a week, but spent it on drink and gave none to his wife, Marion Hewit. She instead had to go out to work for the upkeep of herself and the children and continued to do so when she became ill until collapsing and being sent to the City Fever Hospital suffering from acute consumption (TB). She died less than a year later, on 20th October 1909; her husband however lived until the age of 76.

Boys of Davie Street School in 1910, many barefoot, waiting for tickets for a day trip to Ratho organised by the charitable Courant Fund.

In 1917 the School Board undertook an extensive reorganisation of education in the city to provide additional “supplementary education” – that for children over the age of 12 but who had failed to pass the qualification exams for Higher Grade schools. They recognised there was a demand for specialist commercial and technical education at this stage for children who soon be entering the workplace when they finished their compulsory schooling at the age of 14. It was therefore agreed to establish specialist institutes in the city and Davie Street was selected to become part of one of the city’s first specialised supplementary Technical Schools. In 1918, Davie Street closed without ceremony as a primary school and became an annexe for the nearby James Clark Intermediate School.

Former James Clark School with its remarkable corner tower.

Initially Davie Street provided rooms for practical subjects such as art, home economics and science while these facilities were constructed at James Clark (which had been planned for elementary education and therefore was not originally built with them). In 1924 it was then taken in hand to be properly modernised (including being converted from gas to electric lighting) and converted into specialist technical workshops for teaching the trades of brassfinishing, tinsmithing, upholstery, plumbing, tailoring and printing. In this guise it provided centralised training in these crafts for the Southside, successful completion of its printing courses could lead to bursaries for a print qualifications at Heriot Watt College and entry into one of the city’s most prized blue collar careers.

An exhibition of work in the printing and allied trades by students of Davie Street in 1957 – a bookbinding for HMS Caledonia is admired.

The specialist technical education at Davie Street was moved from the curriculum of James Clark School to those of Telford and Napier Colleges after 1966, its workshops being run-down and moved to those institutions shortly thereafter. James Clark school itself closed in 1972 as part of the citywide secondary education shake-up required to move to a fully comprehensive system; by this time its roll had declined steeply from an inter-war high of over 1,000 to just 300.

Davie Street School in 1959 from the Dumbiedykes Survey by Adam H. Malcolm © Edinburgh City Libraries L973B

Davie Street sat vacant for a number of years until it started what was to be an altogether very different chapter in its life story. In 1969 it was turned into the Theatre Arts Centre, the brainchild of Edinburgh Corporation’s drama advisor Gerard Slevin. Slevin approached English teacher Leslie Hills, a self-described “newly minted teacher“, to run this project on the basis that she had upset her school establishment by abandoning the old “chalk and talk” methods and using instead the medium of drama to engage and teach her students. On her first visit to Davie Street she found:

The paintwork was ancient; the boiler was coal-fired and the toilets indescribable. I said yes. I was 23.

Leslie Hills, describing her first visit to Davie Street School

On a shoestring budget, the school was converted to its new purpose which involved removal of a large quantity of old printing machinery, outfitting the hall as a drama studio and cleaning the toilets as best as could be done. With a drama teacher, art teacher and music teacher under Leslie, by the autumn of that year the centre was open for business: “It was an extraordinary position to be in. No-one knew what we should be doing, so we made it all up.”

Edinburgh Corporation’s Theatre Arts Centre sign (Art was a spelling mistake), rescued from Davie Street when it was replaced by a sign for Lothian Regional Council in 1975. Picture kindly provided by Leslie Hills.

The first pupils to attend came from the city’s Junior Secondary schools, those destined to be replaced by Comprehensives in the coming years. “Many came from difficult backgrounds, some from the surrounding housing soon to be flattened, where water was obtained from a tap in the yard. Many were underfed, ill-clothed for Edinburgh’s winters and, leaving school at 15, just too wee to be sent, bewildered, out to scrapyards and tyre depots with a bit of paper on which was written an address in a part of town of which they had no knowledge.“

Slum housing in Edinburgh, 1969. Marshall’s Court, Greenside, . S. G. Jackman photo, Edinburgh City Libraries, Edinburgh and Scottish Collection.

Up to 500 secondary-age children a week came through the doors of the Theatre Arts Centre from across the city, including from “List D” reformatory schools, those pushed to the very extremes of the education system. Leslie Hills takes up the story:

I talked to every class on their first day, explaining that we did not use the belt – still in use in schools – and that the rules were behave yourself and no graffiti – except in the toilets into which they were allowed to take felt-tipped pens which were in plentiful supply. The boys’ toilet became a wonder to behold – absolutely covered in intricate designs. I never worked out how they did the ceilings. The rest of the building remained pristine.

With its radical approach to learning through the mediums of drama, art and music, the laid back approach to uniform, lesson structure and timetabling and the lack of corporal punishment, the “school-in-a-theatre” was dubbed “Britain’s most unusual school” by the Daily Record. It was a fitting coincidence that Davie Street School had unwittingly been returned to its roots of education without punishment.

Drama teacher David Prince is “attacked” by his pupils at the Theatre Arts Centre in an exercise learning about the value of movement in drama. Daily Record, 2nd December 1970

The initial success of the Theatre Arts Centre gamble allowed the facilities and services on offer to be improved. Finding out from the Corporation’s painters that they didn’t need to follow the official schools’ colour palette of mushroom and cream, re-painting made use of colour. One room was colour drenched in pale green and fitted with an epidiascope and light box for projecting and copying designs for poster; An in-house theatre company – Theatre in Education – was set up who undertook outreach visits to city schools; A technician and a van was acquired to run a stage equipment lending library; The curriculum was widened to include photography, printing and film; Evening drama clubs for teenagers were run and later, Edinburgh Youth Theatre found a home here and it was a regular performance venue during the annual Festival Fringe.

The reorganisation of local authorities in 1975, the Centre became part of Lothian Regional Council and the geographical remit expanded accordingly. Leslie Hills departed in 1980. Ten years later it survived a threat to its continued existence at Davie Street when the site was short-listed as a potential location for a new medical centre for the district. It was announced in 1993 that a central arts school for Lothian Region would be created in the former Leith Academy building on Duke Street, which would have seen Davie Street closed and relocated there. This plan never came to fruition, likely as the result of Lothian Region losing control of its further education colleges later that year. Having survived these threats, it was the Local Government etc (Scotland) Act 1994 – which abolished Lothian Regional Council in 1996 – that did for the Centre. It was closed by the new, unitary City of Edinburgh Council in 1997 when the Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Forsyth, refused to provide sufficient funding to the newly established councils. Dr Bell’s Drama Centre, the primary-age equivalent of the Theatre Arts Centre was closed at the same time. A “cheery wake in the rather battered studio” was held by staff past and present to celebrate its 28 year life, which also marked the end of 185 years of continuous educational use of the site.

Over the next three years the Council sought to dispose of the old school and it saw only intermittent use as a Fringe location. It was finally sold for redevelopment in 2000 and was converted into flats, a change which at the very least preserved its fine Jacobean-style masonry for the future.

Davie Street School in 2021, estate agent’s photo from the sale of one of its flats

The previous chapter in this series looked at Causewayside School. The following chapter covers Dean Public School.

The previous chapter of this series looked at Causewayside School.

#Edinburgh #EdinburghSchoolBoard #Education #Heriots #JamesClarkSchool #LostBoardSchoolsOfEdinburgh #Quaker #School #Schools #Theatre #Written2025

Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh Aug 18

The thread about Mount Alvernia; the “Princesses of Poverty” who would not leave Liberton in life or in death

Every so often houses come up in Liberton on the Edinburgh property listings for a charming-sounding place called Mount Alvernia. You don’t have to look twice to guess that this development has been converted from some sort of past ecclesiastical use. And you’d be right, it was once a monastery. But it had no monks: it was home instead to a community of nuns. Perhaps more unusually, two times the authorities of the Catholic Church tried to use legal methods to displace these “Princesses of Poverty“. And twice they failed!

Estate agent’s photo of a nice-looking housing development in Liberton, which quite obviously appears to have been converted from some sort of ecclesiastical building.

This monastery was opened in August 1897 by nuns of the Poor Clares (Colletines), a branch of the Order of Saint Clare. This order takes its name from St Clare of Assisi who founded it for women who gave up their worldly possessions to devote themselves to the spirituality of St Francis of Assisi. Mount Alvernia itself is in Sicily and its name is associated with the Franciscan order.

St Francis and St Clare, inside cover plate from “Princesses of Poverty: Saint Clare of Assisi and the Order of Poor Ladies” by Father Marianus Fiege, 1900

Six Poor Clares had come to Edinburgh in July 1895 to found a new house north of the Border. They had traveled from Baddesley Clinton in the West Midlands, where their order had established itself in England in 1850 for the first time since that country’s reformation. Two acres of ground at Liberton was acquired for their purpose, adjacent to Mount Vernon House which had recently been occupied by nuns of the Society of the Sacred Heart as a Home for Penitents and where a Roman Catholic Cemetery had been established. It was noted at the time that this site was particularly suitable owing to its proximity to the ancient estate of the Convent of St. Catherine of Sienna.

Ordnance Survey 1:25 inch map, 1914, of Edinburgh, centred on Mount Alvernia at Liberton

These Poor Clares were a closed, contemplative order who took solemn vows to lived a life of poverty. They fasted frequently and rejected the wearing of shoes. They observed continual silence and did not leave their cloister. They devoted themselves entirely to the worship of God and prayer for all people, particularly the suffering and needy. The rules of their house prohibited them being supported by endowments and instead they lived entirely upon charity. To facilitate communication between the Intern Sisters – those within the cloister – and the outside world there were a small number of Extern Sisters, who lived in quarters adjacent and to which they were not restricted. The Externs helped support the community through the baking of communion bread (St Clare and her order have a particular association with blessed loaves), producing handmade religious scrolls and through practical tasks such as marketing eggs and undertaking secretarial services.

The foundation stone of the monastery was laid by Archbishop Angus Macdonald of St Andrews and Edinburgh on 19th May 1896. The buildings were in a Collegiate Gothic style to the designs of A. E. Purdie, a London Architect, and it was built from local Craigmillar Stone faced with Dunfermline Stone.

Artist’s impression of the Monastery at Mount Alvernia from the Edinburgh Evening News, 15th May 1896

In a Presbyterian city, whose Catholic minority was notably poor, the nuns struggled to attract alms and the first 20 years of their existence saw a considerable debt being acquired. £1,384 was raised in time for their Silver Jubilee in 1920 to clear it. The money had been entirely collected by two local men, Bernard Flannagan and a Mr Higgins. However just 5 years later the community was in distress once more and the Glasgow Observer and Catholic Herald carried an urgent appeal for help, “their distress was never more pronounced“. Once more, Bernard Flannagan acted as collector on their behalf.

For 33 years, Mount Alvernia‘s resident chaplain was Rev. Father Patrick McMahon (1863-1945) and his golden jubilee of service was celebrated there in March 1938. But all was not well behind the closed doors of the cloister and an irreconcilable schism, brewing since 1934, had arisen between the five Extern Sisters (Sister Margaret Mary Clare – Agnes Burns; Sister Marie Colette Theresa – Laura Elizabeth Harrison; Sister Mary Clare – Edith Harris; Sister Mary Theresa – Catherine Morgan; and Sister Mary Joseph – Susan Higgins) and the 17 Interns, which included the Abbess and the Vicaress. The Externs Sisters refused to submit to the authority of the Abbess and had chosen Sister Mary Clare as leader, from their own ranks. The Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Andrew McDonald, was unable to resolve the situation and took the drastic action of closing the monastery and dispersing the sisters to other houses.

Archbishop Mcdonald in 1920, when Abbot of St Benedict’s Abbey at Fort Augustus; By William Drummond Young. CC-by-SA 4.0, Blairs Museum via Wikimedia

The Diocese served notice for the community to leave in April 1938. The Intern Sisters left a week later but the Externs refused to go. The Church then had a Sheriff’s writ served evicting them from their home and cut off their electricity and gas. They were banished from their order and excommunicated. Sister Mary Clare, leader of the Externs, told the Evening News that they had been served a letter by the Church’s law agent informing them of their expulsion and stating they were no longer entitled to wear their habits. They were to return these on or before the 28th April in exchange for the sum of £10 towards replacement clothing and a pension of £1 10s per week, for just 13 weeks, to help them establish themselves in civilian life.

St Clare repelling the Saracens, plate from “Princesses of Poverty: Saint Clare of Assisi and the Order of Poor Ladies” by Father Marianus Fiege, 1900

Despite threats from the Church to withdraw even this pitiful pension the Extern Sisters remained defiant; they had made their vows and the Priest had commanded their Abbess” Receive this new spouse of Christ, keep her and guard her pure and spotless until you present her at the judgement seat of God. To Him you will have to give an account of her soul“. In short, their vows were sacred and perpetual and to leave the Monastery to return to civilian life would be breaking them. “Rome, and Rome alone, we must obey“, Sister Mary Clare told the Evening News, “Here we will live and here we will die.” The Externs intended to challenge their eviction and “trusted an answer would come from God“.

Fresco of Saint Clare and nuns of her order praying, Chapel of San Damiano, Assisi

That answer came in the form of their supporters whose number included the lawyer Doull Connolly, who acted for them and organised a defence at the Sheriff Court. A sympathetic cardinal Cardinal was written to, asking him to make an appeal to the Pope on their behalf. The Archbishop of Glasgow decided the Externs were not excommunicated in his jurisdiction and gave them the sacraments, for which transport was arranged thrice weekly. Even the local coalman slipped them a couple of bags every fortnight. While the dispute split opinion amongst Scotland’s Catholics, in Edinburgh it aroused considerable curiosity; numerous sightseers took a trip to Liberton to see Mount Alvernia for themselves, to bring gifts and to offer their support to the nuns within through the grille of the Monsastery’s doorway.

The case went to the Sheriff Court where T. J. D. Connolly acted as defence advocate. On July 5th Sheriff Substitute James Macdonald KC ruled in favour of the Extern sisters, who told the Daily Record that they hoped to be left in peace, but the Church appealed.

SUMMARY EJECTION NOT ALLOWED. Evening News headline, 6th July 1938

That appeal was heard in the Court of Session the next year. Connolly told that court the case, with 2 churchmen and 2 nuns as pursuers and 5nuns as defenders, was “unique” in its annals. On June 14th Lord Robertson held the defence was irrelevant and granted a decree for the Nuns removal.

EDINBURGH EXTERN NUNS MUST REMOVE. Evening News headline, 14th June 1939

The nuns appealed in turn and in March 1940 – on the same day that the Evening News reported 2 German bombers had been shot down in the North Sea – it also reported the case had been concluded in their favour and Lord Robertson’s decision was overturned.

LIBERTON NUNS WIN APPEAL. Evening News headline, 29th March 1940

The Externs could finally live on in piece, and alone, at Mount Alvernia. This they continued to do for over a decade until the early 1950s when a determined effort was made by Archbishop McDonald’s successor, Archbishop Gordon Gray, to heal the rift and re-open the Monastery to Interns. Two of the Extern holdouts were amongst the first Interns of the re-established Monastery, the other three agreeing to move to new homes in England at this time.

Portrait Of Cardinal Gordon Gray (1910 – 1993), Former Archbishop of St Andrews And Edinburgh

The re-established Poor Clares got on with their holy lives in peace and harmony until the decision was taken by the Abbess Mother Frances to close the monastery in 1992. Their ranks had dwindled from 22 to 13 and those who remained were of advancing age and unable to support themselves. A final Mass was given by Bishop Kevin Rafferty on 28th August. Their community was dispersed to other houses of the order, but left behind the bodies of the 24 nuns who had died during their lives at Mount Alvernia and who had been laid to rest in its burial ground.

The Funeral Procession of St Clare, plate from “Princesses of Poverty: Saint Clare of Assisi and the Order of Poor Ladies” by Father Marianus Fiege, 1900

The premises were sold for £200k to the “Pastoral and Social Charity Ltd”, whose board was bishops and archbishops of the Scottish RC Church. They provoked outrage in 1994 when they proposed disinterring the 24 nuns laid to rest at Mount Alvernia and moving them to nearby Mount Vernon cemetery

Contemporary newspaper photo of the Mount Alvernia burial ground. Edinburgh Evening News, 23rd September 1994

The removal of the nuns’ remains was to prepare the site for sale to developers – they contented that future developers would be at liberty to remove headstones or cover the grave plots. But when the petition for the warrant to disinter came before the Sheriff Court, the District Council objected and were ordered to advertise it in the press to try and trace any relatives of the nuns (which was something in which the Pastoral and Social Charity had failed in its attempts).

Legal Notice inserted in the Scotsman, 15th March 1994, of the petition to disinter the nuns buried at Mount Alvernia

Of the nuns in question were Mother Mary Joseph (Susan Higgins) and Sister Mary Clare (Edith Harris) – who were the 2 Extern sisters who had been involved in the 1930s court battle and had become Interns when the house was re-established. Relatives were duly identified, including Sister Mary Clare’s great niece, and they appealed against the petition. Their objection noted the findings of the Court of Session in 1940 that when a woman joined the order, she bound herself “to live her whole life in the convent, thereafter being laid to rest within the convent grounds“.

Richard Carson, the Director of Environmental Services for the District Council submitted that four of five of the bodies in question would be in “horrific condition” due to having been buried relatively recently, the last in 1991, and stated that the District Council was willing to take on stewardship of the burial ground as it had done for other sites in the city. After hearing from both sides, the Sheriff Peter McNeill QC threw the Church’s petition out on the grounds insufficient evidence had been provided that the sale of the site was contingent on the burial ground being cleared. He ruled that “the remains were sacred” and could only be moved if a pressing reason could be proven. Veronica Harris told the Evening News “It’s a sign of the greed of this century that people can dispose of the remains just to make a fast buck” and that it was a “great relief” that the disinterment would not go ahead.

Mount Alvernia in 1998, after six years of closure, neglect and vandalism having taken its toll.

In 1998 planning permission was granted by the District Council to AMA (New Town) Ltd to redevelop Mount Alvernia for housing on condition the burial ground be walled off and maintained. The ever tasteful Daily Record reported this under the headline “Tomb With a View”.

Mount Alvernia, viewed from the burial ground, with the modern flats on the right, chapel on the left and range of the monastery between.

“Rest in Peace. But be Quick About it. Hallowed ground now bears a sell-by date and the grave is not necessarily forever.”

Annette McCann, Scotland on Sunday, 29th January 1995

#Catholic #Church #Court #Edinburgh #Liberton #Monastery #Nuns #Written2025

Brian Cooper Jun 27

The thread about the Salisbury Arms and the famous literary association that never was https://threadinburgh.scot/2025/06/27/the-thread-about-belleville-house-and-how-the-famous-literary-association-that-never-was/ #ConanDoyle, #House, #Newington, #Pub, #Pubs, #Southside, #Usher, #Written2025

The thread about the Salisbury Arms and the famous literary association that never was

My eye was caught by a claim in local news that the author Arthur Conan Doyle once frequented the Salisbury Arms. In the best spirit of Sherlock Holmes, this thread sets out to thoroughly and factu…

Threadinburgh

Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh Jun 27

The thread about the Salisbury Arms and the famous literary association that never was

Here’s an eye-catching headline one one of those sites that passes itself off as local news from today. “First Look at transformed Edinburgh boozer visited by Arthur Conan Doyle“.

Edinburgh Live headline, 25th June 2025. “First Look at transformed Edinburgh boozer visited by Arthur Conan Doyle”.

The piece goes on, “Once a favourite watering hole of the iconic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle“. Stop the bus! Arthur Conan Doyle was a regular in the Salisbury Arms? That’s news to me! Now, I’ll readily admit that I don’t know everything about Edinburgh, but something here feels a bit off.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, Arthur Conan Doyle

But let’s be fair, not everyone spends quite so much time poring over local history as I do, and not everyone will be irked enough by something that troubles them to look more into it. But I’m not everyone and I was sceptical and so in the best spirit of Sherlock Holmes I set out to do a little deduction of my own. To paraphrase the great detective, when it comes to Edinburgh history “it is my business to know what other people do not know!”

Sherlock Holmes statue in Edinburgh, erected opposite the birthplace of Conan Doyle. CC-by-SA 3.0 Kim Traynor via Wikimedia

The first indicator that something isn’t quite right is that the website of the Salisbury Arms itself doesn’t trouble to mention its famous literary association. The game is afoot! Delving a bit deeper, a quick tap of the keys in a search engine traces the Conan Doyle claim back to an advertorial piece from the Scotsman in June 2011. In this it is stated – without reference – “Apparently Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle used to frequent the hostelry now known as The Salisbury Arms in Dalkeith Road.” That word apparently is key here and from it we should suspect that the author was well aware that their claim was without evidence. Wind the clock forward to January 2017 and we find in the sister publication, Evening News, a repetition and reinforcement of the claim: “The most intriguing connection the Salisbury Arms has is with the fictional private detective Sherlock Holmes” it gushes, before quickly contradicting itself; “Whether Conan Doyle was ever a visitor… is unclear” and then instantly trying to get itself out of jail with “but it is thought he dropped by on a few occasions“. Once again I think our author was very aware that there was nothing to back up the claims they were making. By this point I’m willing to stake a round of drinks on the fact that my initial cynicism is well founded.

“Historic Salisbury Arms to undergo major renovation work”, Evening News, January 14th 2017.

I could stop there, but I like to be both firm and fair in my debunking and come to an argument armed with the facts, so I shan’t.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

A Scandal in Bohemia, Arthur Conan Doyle

So let us take a proper look into the history of the Salisbury Arms, after all history is probably why you are reading this in the first place! Along the way I can attempt to keep my reputation intact by offering a well evidenced counter argument, I can demonstrate the sort of readily accessible sources that you a I can turn to for investigating a case such as this and and hopefully we can all learn something more of the history of the place in question and write it down for the benefit of others (particularly writers of local news!). Looking at the building in question itself, it doesn’t need an expert eye make a sure guess that it probably began life as a Georgian villa.

The Salisbury Arms, Edinburgh, 2015. © Paul Farmer, CC-by-SA 2.0 via Geograph.

A quick search through the online Book of The Old Edinburgh Club – one of my frequent first ports of call for local history queries – brings us to Volume 24 and pages 152-197, “The Lands of Newington and Their Owners“, by W. Forbes Gray. In this piece we find that a house and plot here was seised (officially registered) to Francis Nalder, merchant, in 1812. Referring to a map of the area around this time – Kirkwood’s Town Plan of Edinburgh of 1817 is a reliable source, freely accessible from the National Library of Scotland – we see Mr. Nalder’s name appears as landowner here too.

Kirkwood’s town plan of Edinburgh, 1817. Showing “Nalder” on the site of the house which is now the Salisbury Arms. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

From Forbes Gray’s we learn that this plot was one of just many such others which were feued from the Newington Estate in the early 19th century to create a new suburb. Newington’s lands were an irregular rectangle defined by the Gibbet Loan (now Preston Street) to the north, East and West Mayfield to the south, Dalkeith Road to the east and the turnpike road south to Selkirk and Carlisle (now Minto Street) to the west. There was a large house, Newington House, in the southeastern quarter. This estate was an old one but had been split into six lots by the city back in the 16th century. Over subsequent centuries, five of the plots were acquired and combined by the Lauder of Fountainhall family, from where they passed to John Henderson of Leistoun. Henderson’s grandson bought the sixth and final plot in 1733, reuniting the estate and taking for himself the title Henderson of Newington.

1817 Kirkwood town plan of Edinburgh, highlighting the lands of Newington. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

At this time the Newington House on the above map had not yet been built and there was instead an older mansion located in the northwest corner at the end of what is now West Newington Place. It is shown on the Ordnance Survey 1849 Town Plan as Old Newington House. After Henderson the lands were acquired in 1751 by a saddler, Patrick Crichton. The financial problems of his son Alexander in the 1780s saw loans taken out, secured against the estate, which were defaulted on. One of the major creditors came to an agreement in 1803 whereby Benjamin Bell of Hunthill, surgeon, bought Newington for £5,000 thus settling the debt.

Benjamin Bell by Sir Henry Raeburn (c. 1780-90). From “Raeburn to Redpath” booklet by Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh, via Wikimedia.

Bell, “the first Scottish scientific surgeon” and “father of the Edinburgh school of Surgery” built the new Newington House but died in 1806, before he had a chance to settle in and enjoy it. It so happens that he was the great grandfather of Joseph Bell, the surgeon and lecturer known as the inspiration from which Arthur Conan Doyle formed Sherlock Holmes. So finally we arrive at a kernel of a grain of truth in at least one aspect of our story. Bell’s eldest son, George, sold Newington House to Sir George Steuart of Grandtully in 1807 and Steuart bought up more of the land shortly thereafter to form gardens around the house, but also with a farsighted view that he could feu this land himself, and his own charter indeed allowed him to do so after a period of time had elapsed.

Newington House in the 1880s, with the family of Lord Provost Duncan McLaren (in top hat) assembled on the lawn. SC1224483 via Trove.Scot

In due course, his estate-within-an-estate would later be developed into the planned suburb of the Blacket Estate (where, ironically, Joseph Bell was an early resident, at number 44). Thank you to Hugh Mackay of the Blacket Association for pointing this out.

1817 Kirkwood Plan of Edinburgh centred on Newington House, showing land owners as Sir George Stewart (sic) of Grandtully, Bart. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Having sold the house, George Bell and his brothers began the process of feuing the rest of their land here into plots for fashionable new suburban villas. To distinguish theirs from Steuart’s holding, they gave his district an on-trend new name which also happened to be a pun on their own: Belleville. On the 1826 feuing plan on the NLS maps site, both names are given:

“Plan of the Lands of Newington and Belleville, 1826”. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

This new name for the district stuck for a short while in the newspapers, but old habits can die hard and it soon reverted back to being just plain old Newington. But two houses kept the former name alive; Belleville Lodge on South Blacket Place (now Blacket Avenue) and Belleville at 58 Dalkeith Road – which is that house which would much later become the Salisbury Arms. The first record of that name being used in connection with the house that I can find is on the 1855 valuation roll over on Scotland’s People, with the owner and occupant being listed as William Donaldson, Grocer. By 1865 he has been replaced by Miss Mary Duncan as “William Donaldson’s Representative“. She is still the owner in 1875, but the occupant is one James M. Watters, Captain.

Belleville Lodge. A gate pier carries the name “Belleville Lodge” painted on it and also on a brass plaque, complete with a sign to the right saying “Belleville Lodge. Mansfield Care”.

Come 1885 there is once again a new owner and occupier; William Nelson of Salisbury Green. This latter house you can see on the 1817 map above of the Newington Estate is directly to the east of Belleville, it’s the baronial pile opposite which now forms part of the Pollock Halls complex. Confusingly the same valuation rolls show William also owned and occupied Salisbury Green at this time, it’s not clear why he needed both! He was a wealthy publisher of the family firm Thomas Nelson & Sons, whose vast Parkside Works lay just across the way, and who is known for restoring St. Bernard’s Well at Stockbridge and St. Margaret’s Chapel in Edinburgh Castle.

Salisbury Green house, a 3-storey mansion in the Scottish Baronial Revival style.

Ownership of Belleville never seemed to stay with one person for long. By 1895 the valuation rolls show it was Robert Inch, a well known and prosperous seed merchant who ran his business from the Timberbush in Leith. He died there in 1912, after which it was bought by its next door neighbour, Mrs Jane Binning Burn Murdoch of Arthur Lodge . Regular listeners might be familiar with the Burn Murdoch name, she was the wife of the artist and explorer WG Burn Murdoch who was so involved in helping Edinburgh Zoo acquire its first polar bears, at the same time as indulging in his passion for trophy hunting them. The house was let out and an advert at this time gives us a description of its accommodation and features:

Newspaper advert for the lease of “Belleville” house. “Entrance hall, cloak room, 3 public rooms, billiard room, 8 bedrooms, 2 dressing rooms, 2 bathrooms, laundry and ample servants’ accommodation” plus stables and garaging. The Scotsman – 19 March 1913

Mrs Burn Murdoch’s maiden name was Usher, she was a daughter of Andrew Usher of that distilling dynasty which financed and lends its name to the Usher Hall. Belleville by 1930 was in the hands and occupation of her sister, Elizabeth Usher Cunningham and in turn by 1935 it was Elizabeth’s son, Howard, who was there. Howard Usher Cunningham served with the Royal Irish Regiment during World War 1 at Gallipoli, in the Balkans and in Palestine, being awarded the Military Cross in the last theatre. He was in the fertiliser business with the family firm of J. & J. Cunningham of Leith, which was one of the five constituent companies of the Scottish Agricultural Industries conglomerate which formed in 1928. He was appointed director in 1929, rising to Managing Director in 1947. During World War 2 he was the Ministry of Supply Fertiliser Controller for the country, which earned him a knighthood.

In 1942 the house of Belleville was turned over to the Edinburgh Home for Babies and School of Mothercraft, a charitable maternity home and training establishment for both midwives and young (often single) mothers. This organisation had lost its base on Colinton Road to the Civil Defence for the duration of the war and at first had been evacuated to the countryside, but returned to the city in 1942 once the immediate threat was passed where it could better undertake its work. Usher Cunningham returned to the house briefly after the war but by 1948 it had been taken over by the Relief Society for Poles in London as the Polish House, a Polish community centre for exiles and a headquarters for organisations such as the Polish YMCA and Scottish-Polish Society.

Scotsman article, 29 January 1948, showing a picture of the dining room of 58 Dalkeith Road under the title “Polish Centre in Edinburgh”, with two columns below of description.

The Polish House was transient and soon moved on as Poles in Edinburgh either emigrated or integrated, it relocated to Drummond Place where it joined the Polish Press Agency. In 1950 the Edinburgh Corporation looked to acquire the building as a remand school but it was instead opened as the Davidson Clinic, to treat young adults and children with “anxiety illnesses“. The Clinic took its name from the Davidson Church in Eyre Place, where the idea for it had been formed by the minister. It practised what we would now call psychotherapy and had been established in the city in 1941 as a charitable institution. Under its lead doctor, GP Dr Winifred Rushforth, it took a pioneering approach to dealing with nervous and anxiety conditions.

Dr Winifred Rushforth (1885–1983) by Victoria Crowe. © Victoria Crowe. Credit: Museums & Galleries Edinburgh

The Davidson Clinic remained a charity and closely associated with the Church of Scotland for its existence. Never part of the NHS it relocated from Belleville in 1968 and was closed in 1973. Key members of this organisation, including Winifred Rushforth, would go on to find the similar Wellspring clinic. Belleville was now acquired again by the Usher family, this time by Thomas Usher & Sons, the brewing branch of the dynasty. Ushers successfully applied for a licence to turn it into a modern roadhouse type pub and restaurant. Despite local objections it opened as such in 1970 as the Commonwealth-games inspired Gold Medal Tavern. The Gold Medal found its way into the Alloa Brewery’s portfolio, who refurbished it in 1986 and renamed the restaurant to Waffles. With a trendy open plan dining area and kitchen, it offered “pizzas, pasta, hamburgers, steaks and chicken“. No mention was made of waffles, but traditional pub food could be had in the lounge bar.

Newspaper advert “We’ve pulled a fast one” on the refurbishment of the Gold Medal tavern. Edinburgh Evening News – 15 May 1986

Roll forward the clock to 1994 and the pub was acquired by the Firkin brand of Allied Domecq who renamed it The Physician & Firkin, despite it having no obvious connection to medicine. When that chain folded in 2001 it was passed to Bass who branded it as one of their yellow-liveried, sticky-floored It’s a Scream student discount pubs with the new name of The Crags. Come 2011, the pub was re-branded and repositioned once again, becoming the more upmarket Salisbury Arms.

This has all been a very long winded way to say that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930 and there was not a pub on the site of the Salisbury Arms until 1970! The original claim is demonstrable nonsense – he definitely never drank in, never mind frequented, this establishment. Furthermore, the association of the Bell family with the house ended in 1807 when it was sold to its first owner, some 30 years before the birth of Joseph Bell. So the chance that he or Conan Doyle have any further connection with it is slim to nil.

So why is any of this important? Am I just showing off about being right about something? Shouldn’t I be magnanimous and attribute this to an innocent journalistic error? Well, you’re probably reading this page because you have an interest in Edinburgh and local history, so I will try and explain why I think that it matters and why you too should be bothered.

Arthur Conan Doyle in 1914, photograph by Walter Benington. Via Wikimedia

The first problem is that despite the best efforts of their owning companies to try and destroy all trust in them over the last 20 or so years, faith is still put by many in local newspapers as they trade on past reputations and a lack of alternatives. They and their websites are still held as being reliable places to find things out and they still command a wide local reach; people will read what they write and there’s a good chance they will accept it. Why shouldn’t they? The Evening News even has a strapline at the top of every page which says “News you can trust since 1873“, it invites you to believe it. So when it publishes historical facts without substantiation, they will inevitably become accepted as facts. The irony is not lost on me that a lot of what you will read on this very website has been arrived at by trawling through previous generations of these very local newspapers. I too have to trust that what was being printed in the pages of the Evening News or the Scotsman at the time was an accurate and factual record.

But this shouldn’t be a problem I hear you say, people have the sum of the world’s knowledge at their fingertips these days and can just check a search engine to verify a fact. So let’s do just that and perform a quick experiment by doing what many people do these days to adjudicate a point: let’s ask Google “which pub did Arthur Conan Doyle drink in?”.

Oh, so it was The Salisbury Arms. Mea culpa, if it’s on Google it must be true, right? But give the result a second glance, that’s not actually a search result. That’s an answer automatically generated by Google’s AI Overview and presented above and before the actual search results. It’s what some might call machine generated slop, an approximation of what looks like a plausible answer arrived at by a statistical analysis of a very large data set. It is the year 2025 and the problem of the Evening News presenting theory as fact is no longer confined to the reach of its own readership. Local news websites are now constantly crawled and trawled as the training material for the Large Language Models that are commonly referred to as AI. Local news is the factual foodstuff, chewed, digested, reconstituted and regurgitated by the LLM. And as the old saying goes, if you put garbage in you’ll get garbage out.

Give the above result a third glance and you see a little vague link symbol at the end of the word soup of that first paragraph. Click that link and it will suggest to you the source from which it came to its conclusions. So I did this and what should we see but two “references”, the oldest of which is only a day old and is the very same article which got me started! The second is a copy-and-paste effort of the first, barely hours old on the internet at this time.

And here is the big problem I’ve been trying to get at. We’ve just got a complete worked example of Google inventing itself a new fact about an important figure in Edinburgh local history, and people will believe it, because it is Google and that is were a huge number of people turn to for information, and because it is substantiated by links to local news websites, which many people still put trust in. That fact is now out of the bag and once it’s out, it is very hard to put it back in. Check in on the above search in a few months, weeks, or even days and you will undoubtedly see the fact has replicated itself across multiple other sources like a virus. And those sources will now in turn be consumed once again by Large Language Models, which will spit out the same result in future with ever more confidence. We are all of us going to have to get used to accepting a lot less of what is presented to us as fact and doing a lot more of our own verification if we want to find a reliable answer…

Ouroboros, the serpent consuming its own tail, a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal

#ConanDoyle #House #Newington #pub #pubs #Southside #Usher #Written2025

Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh Jun 19

The thread about the Edinburgh Police Box; architectural Time Traveller but no TARDIS!

The year 2024 was celebrated as the 900th anniversary of the “foundation” of the city of Edinburgh and 2025 is also an important local commemoration; the centenary of the appointment of the wonderfully named Ebenezer James (“E.J.“) Macrae as City Architect. His twenty years of service was a time of great change in our built environment and his office was directly responsible for much of that, not without good cause has he been dubbed “the man who shaped modern Edinburgh“. His tenure is characterised by both the volume of public buildings and housing that was erected and also their distinctive style; at once both modern in form and function but also very sympathetic to tradition. A splendid example of that contrast is the Edinburgh Police Box; a mix of anachronistic classical styling and what was then the cutting edge of modern policing.

Former police box at corner of Waverley Bridge and Market Street. CC-by-NC-SA 2.0, Ian T. Edwards via Flickr.

The first police boxes with telephones were established in Chicago back in 1881, just 5 years after the unveiling of the telephone itself by a son of Edinburgh. In 1923, Chief Constable Frederick Crawley of Newcastle City Police instituted what would become known as the Police Box System to Sunderland and in doing so revolutionised British policing. He was looking to increase the efficiency of his his force and focused on trying to reduce time spent by officers walking to and from their beats; he estimated up to a quarter of each man’s time on shift was wasted in this manner. His solution was decentralisation. By placing many small, telephone-equipped police boxes at strategic points throughout the city, officers had shorter distances to walk and could devote more time to duty. Crawley recognised this would place the police more centrally within the communities they were expected to serve, creating a ready point of contact for the public – thus increasing the efficiency of reporting emergencies and also making it far easier for the police to contact and coordinate their own officers. Boxes could also be used as temporary lock ups for prisoners while transport was summoned, avoiding the long and often dangerous walks with them back to a police station. A final and significant attraction was that the increased efficiency also allowed the closure of most district police stations and therefore afforded a significant cost saving.

Wooden police box of the type instituted by Crawley for Newcastle City Police. Note the public-facing telephone and first aid boxes mounted to the left of the door. From The Police Journal, vol.1, No.1, January 1928

Police boxes soon spread across the country but Edinburgh, as is often the case, was rather slow to catch on. It was not until May 1928 that a deputation was sent by Chief Constable Roderick Ross from the Edinburgh City Police to inspect the system in Newcastle. This was at the insistence of the Scottish Office who refused to sanction an increase in headcount for Ross and instead wanted efficiencies. He submitted a strongly favourable report to the Town Council, which approved a box system for the city in 1929. Ross served as Chief Constable for the exceptional term of 34 years and it was towards the end of his long watch that his force would be wholly and rapidly modernised.

Roderick Ross, when Chief Constable of Ramsgate Borough Police c. 1898

The Edinburgh Evening News threw its editorial weight behind the scheme but also amplified significant local concerns that the appearance of boxes would have a detrimental effect on the city. As the system spread, there had been a plethora of different design styles before a utilitarian, standardised version was developed for the Metropolitan Police by the architect George Mackenzie Trench. Trench’s design is instantly familiar to generations of Dr. Who fans as the TARDIS. But “Cheapness has been obtained in England” wrote the News’ editor “by mass production, but Edinburgh has an architectural standard of its own, which the Cockburn Association endeavours to maintain.” The gauntlet was thus thrown down to the City Architect’s office that something altogether different and better was needed.

George Mackenzie Trench standard police box at the National Tramway Museum, Crich. Note the light on the roof, which would flash to indicate an officer was required to attend the box. CC-by-SA 3.0 Dan Sellers via Wikimedia

E.J. Macrae, along with his assistants Andrew Rollo and James A. Tweedie are credited with the design of the Edinburgh Box, with the signature of their colleague Robert Somerville Ellis on some of the drawings. The initial inspiration may have been taken from the barrel-topped box used in Sheffield which was used as an illustrative example by the Evening News. Two alternative designs were prepared and plans and models were put to the Lord Provost’s Committee in December 1929. The preferred option was then “submitted for the consideration of the Fine Art Commission“. After that a full-size wooden mock-up was erected on the corner of George Street and Frederick Street in October 1930 to test the practicalities of installing boxes and also to familiarise both the police and the public with the design.

The wooden prototype box, which differed in minor details from the final version, for instance lacking the decorative wreath on the pediment and the coat of arms on the entry door. Photo via Edinburgh World Heritage facebook.

The approved box was, dare I say it, an iconic piece of British street furniture design, unique to the city and instantly at home in its environment. It is described in architectural terms thusly:

Rectangular cast-iron police box with classical details, 6ft by 4ft on plan, 2-bay pilastered long elevations, one of which contains door bearing City Arms. Painted blue. Single bay short elevations surmounted by open pediments containing ribboned wreath paterae. Saltire patterned glazing to all elevations. Low-pitched roof.

Official description of the Edinburgh Police Box from Historic Scotland listing

Each box was constructed of prefabricated cast iron panels produced by the Carron Company in Stirlingshire and tipped the scales at over two tons. The understated classical styling was decorated only with a small cast iron castle motif from the city’s coat of arms on the door and on each gable a wreath; symbolising power or triumph. Inside they were equipped with a desk, flip-down seat, telephone, sink and a small wall-mounted electric heater. There was shelving, pigeon holes and notice boards on the walls to accommodate items such as logbooks and forms and hooks were provided for hanging coats, helmets and capes. Hooks were provided for “beat keys”, premises officers on duty were expected to visit and check, or need access to, during their duties. An unofficial but entirely necessary function of the sink was an ersatz urinal; 8 hours in a district with few or no public toilets was a long time for a beat officer to spend without spending any pennies! (This was apparently best achieved by balancing on the stool and taking careful aim. Each box was provisioned with a supply of bleach to keep things as sanitary as possible.) All of this came at a price however; £58 per box (before foundations and services were laid), far more than the wooden hut type which had cost £13 each in Newcastle or £43 for a reinforced concrete standard box as used by the Metropolitan Police.

Sketch design of the Edinburgh City Police Box, redrawn by self from a copy of the original in the Edinburgh City Archives. The original is signed RSE (Robert Somerville Ellis), 6th September 1928. From Dean of Guild Court of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Police Boxes, Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council of the City of Edinburgh, 26th August 1932.

On the outside of the box were small doors that gave members of the public access to a Speakerphone that would connect them to police headquarters and another containing a first aid kit. The Speakerphone was a hands-free system activated upon opening of its door. It was felt at the time that the general public were not familiar enough with the use of telephones to provide a handset, and it was also harder to accidentally damage or vandalise.

A police officer demonstrating the use of the Speakerphone unit. Opening the box door automatically connected the phone to the headquarters switchboard. Photo via Lothian & Borders Police WordPress.

Despite the best efforts of Macrae’s office to produce a design that was sympathetic to Edinburgh’s built environment, not everyone was pleased. “W.M.H.” wrote to the Evening News that the box at the foot of Drummond Street by the old City Wall was a “case of outrageous vandalism and should be prohibited.” They questioned who in the authorities was responsible for such “outrages” and challenged the city’s heritage watchdog – the Cockburn Association – to “get busy!“. In Portobello, the Communist party had a particularly niche objection; it charged that the boxes were “designed for use in a rebellion” and that “the master class knew that they were driving the workers to desperation, and they were preparing in advance to deal with rebellion“.

The police box at Drummond Street, immediately in front of the Flodden Wall. The photo dates from 1951 and the box still sports its white stripes applied during WW2 to make it more visible during blackout conditions. Records of RCAHMS, SC1164082. © Crown Copyright: HES

Boxes were installed throughout 1932 and a considerable public relations exercise was undertaken to get the public to understand how to use them. The Evening News maintained a regular stream of editorials on the subject, Chief Constable Ross gave numerous lectures, model boxes were taken around schools to show children how to use them and Boy Scouts were encouraged to learn the location of as many boxes as possible as part of their Pathfinding badge. In the final run-up to commissioning, public demonstrations of the boxes in use were staged and the press cameras invited.

Photograph showing a staged accident to demonstrate the use of the public call facility on the new police boxes, along with an operator of the switchboard at police headquarters on the High Street that received the calls. Scotsman, May 26th 1933.

The box system and “a new era in the history of Edinburgh City Police” was inaugurated in its entirety on Sunday May 28th 1933 at 6AM. This was a year later than intended, a delay that the Lord Provost blamed on the General Post Office which had been slow to install the necessary telephony infrastructure (500 miles of underground and 23 miles of overhead wire).

Bailie Rutherford Fortune places the first call on from a police box with Chief Constable Ross (dark coat and light hat, with moustache) and Mr F. J. Milne (light coat and dark hat, with umbrella) Secretary of the Post Office in Edinburgh.

The boxes were only one part of a greater overall system; policing of the city was entirely restructured at this time. The boxes were allocated to four divisions, each with its own headquarters – A at Braid Place, B at Gayfield Square, C at Torphicen Place and D at Leith – and were numbered sequentially and by division. A map of the all their locations as installed in 1933 can be seen here. Each division had a dedicated pool of motor vehicles for response and prisoner transport and was supported by a non-territorial traffic and mounted division (E) based in the Cowgate. At the same moment that the boxes were first unlocked for duty, the doors of nine district police stations (at the Pleasance, West Port, Abbeyhill, Piershill, Stockbridge, Waverley Market, Morningside, Gorgie and Newhaven) and eighteen smaller sub-stations closed for the last time. Most of these sites were disposed of, leaving only the four divisional stations, a sub-divisional station for Portobello plus city police HQ on the High Street.

The Leith Police. Relaxing on break time with tea and “pieces” at Leith Police station in 1930. Photograph by Photo Press Agency, CC-by-NC-SA via Thelma

The reduction in manpower required by the box system saw fifteen open vacancies for constables written off, three inspectors and five sergeants made redundant and a further five sergeants demoted to constables. Overall the changes reduced the running cost of the force by £5,800 annually.

Six or seven constables might be based out of a single box and would serve their entire 8-hour shift from it, returning after every half hour or hour long “turn ” of their beat to check in with base by phone, write up their logbook and take breaks. Check in calls were performed according to a strict timetable and if any officer missed one his absence would be noted and a colleague sent to investigate. Men on duty could expect a visit by a section sergeant once every shift. The boxes were accessed by a universal key, which each officer kept on his chain with his whistle. A blue light on the roof of the box would flash to let him know that there was a call waiting for him. Sometimes these lights had to be mounted on an extension pole to be better seen from a distance and in the case of the box outside the Tron Kirk on the High Street, it was a high-mounted “sky lantern” on the building on the corner with North Bridge.

The High Street “sky lantern” is still in place on the corner with North Bridge, appropriately mounted next to a symbol of modern police surveillance, the CCTV camera.

Commencing in 1938, air raid sirens began to be installed on top of the roofs of many of Edinburgh’s boxes as part of the city’s ARP (Air Raid Precautions) measures. By April 1939, thirty two sirens had been installed, all controlled from master switches at HQ on the High Street and tests of the system were under way, helping to familiarise the public with the sound. In May 1940, a writer to the Evening News’ letters page using the pseudonym Tenement Warden and Old Contemptible suggested that police boxes be used to store “machine guns, hand grenades, ammunition and rifles” to deal with enemy paratroopers and “Hitler’s Fifth Column and Fascists all over Britain“. I cannot see that this idea was ever taken seriously!

Photograph of the type of air raid siren installed on the roof of Edinburgh police boxes. Evening News, 30th November 1938

In 1939, the annual Estimates of Expenditure of the Town Council reported that there were now 143 police boxes in the city backed up by 40 telephone pillars. Running costs were £3,350, not including £250 for maintenance, £800 for electricity and £3,350 to the Post Office for telephony. The authorised strength of the force was reported as 871, comprising 688 constables, 91 sergeants, 30 inspectors and one each “woman sergeant” and “woman constable“.

In practice the boxes proved to be stiflingly hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter; the issued heater was much too small and badly located, so boxes often sourced their own additional heaters to make them more habitable. On account of the metal structure they “sweated considerably” in damp weather as a result of condensation. The roof interior would eventually be insulated in 1956 to try and tackle this particular issue. All boxes were to have been provided with both electricity and a water supply but in the end economies meant only 86 of the 140 boxes were plumbed in. It was some time before enamel mugs, at 6d per unit, were issued from which the water could be drunk and it took until 1947 for the Town Council to approve an expenditure of £781 to equip each box with an electric kettle for making tea.

“For Bobby’s Cup of Tea”, Evening News, 5th June 1947

Uncomfortable they may have been, but the boxes proved to be immensely strong. This was demonstrated in November 1945 when PC John Anderson – on what was his last day of service of a thirty years police career – escaped with a fractured leg when a fire engine crashed into his box at the foot of the Canongate. In 1954, PC Donald Budge walked away from his box at Balgreen with only cuts and bruises after a two ton lamp standard, being installed nearby fell onto the roof of the box he was sitting in. The damage to the box was restricted to a cracked roof, a broken window and cracked sink. Also that year, two constables in the box at Murrayfield Avenue survived it being struck by lightning, although the interior lights, radiator and telephones were put out of service and the air raid siren on the roof activated itself.

It took the public some time to get used to the new system. In 1936, three years after its institution, Chief Contable W. B. R. Morren lamented that there was a general ignorance, particularly on the part of grown ups, as to the location and facilities offered by boxes. Boxes were always subject to interference and vandalism throughout their working lives. The authorities were keen to make an example of anyone caught in such an act and the first prosecution came in November 1933 when 19 year old Colin Gosschalk was caught breaking into the first aid compartment of the box on Prestonfield Avenue. His defence that a friend had dared him to do it was not accepted and he was fined 10s (the maximum being £2).

The system was not without its critics as evidenced in the columns of and letters to the Evening News – a particular but unfounded complaint was that constables were either never in the boxes when needed, or spent too much time sheltering within them rather than “on the beat” – a classic of the Schrödinger’s box genre! In an interview with the ‘News in 1946, Chief Constable Morren said that boxes “fulfilled and continues to fulfil a very useful purpose, but… did not develop that contact between the police and the public which was so desirable, and it had been proved that the system had not been the success in that direction that was anticipated”. Brigadier-General Dudgeon, HM Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland said that the box system had “proved to be of value to both the police and the public” but “the beat constable is the eyes and ears of the police, and be careful that the police box system is not overdone.”

Post-war, policing would begin to change again, with smaller district police stations re-established for the new suburbs. As was the case after its 1920 expansion, it was found once again that the city had “more or less outgrown the numbered strength of the police force“. This was particularly felt in the extensive housing schemes been built since the boxes were introduced and where petty crime and antisocial behaviour were an increasing problem. After the initial roll-out of boxes, too few had been added. For instance, in 1946 just one was approved for the West Pilton housing scheme at the junction of Ferry Road Drive and West Pilton Avenue. The peripheral estates were harder to police on foot as they had a much lower housing density than the inner city, so officers had a far greater distance to cover.

New council housing at the Inch, 1955, Dinmont Drive. Photograph by A. G. Ingram, © Edinburgh City Libraries

These issues saw a move in the 1950s away from the “box and beat” approach to policing the suburbs to more mechanisation (cars) and technology (walkie talkies). They continued in use for the centre of the city however, but the last box installed in Edinburgh may have been that erected in Davidson’s Mains in 1958.

It is all very nice to see policemen going their rounds, but in these days of radio telegraphy the greatly increased use of telephones and the system of 999 calls it is quite reasonable to expect that there should be some saving in the actual pedestrian work

Bailie Matt A. Murray, Chairman of the Progressive Group of Edinburgh Town Council

The air raid warning system was renewed and expanded in 1952 with 56 sirens refurbished, ten additional ones installed and the remote control system replaced. The signalling was replaced again in the 1960s and the sirens were replaced in the early 1970s. Just before 1pm on Thursday 5th June 1969, the air raid sirens sounded across Edinburgh as an engineer working at the city Police headquarters on the High Street accidentally activated the system. A similar incident occurred on August 1st 1986 when all sirens in the Lothian & Borders Police areas were accidentally activated at 7:30 in the morning due to a fault in the telephone system.

The interior of a Police Box in 1983. PC 64B, Alan Saunders, using the ‘modern’ telephone that replaced the original fitted instrument, which was situated in the corner to the left of the picture, where a dark wooden box protrudes. Photo via Lothian & Borders Police WordPress.

Just as Edinburgh had been slow to catch on to adopting police boxes, it was also slow to let them go. While the Metropolitan police started removing boxes in 1969 and demolished its last in 1981, those in Edinburgh were still nominally in active service into the 1990s. After 1984 however the Chief Constable wanted all officers to have a daily briefing at a station before they came on duty and so after then they were more rarely used and many that were found themselves relegated to providing shelter and storage for traffic wardens. In 1993 the air raid sirens were deactivated by the Scottish Office and in 1995 the Lothian & Borders Police Board deemed thirty five of the eighty six remaining boxes were surplus to requirements and put them up for auction, seeking to save the £500 per annum per box maintenance costs of the increasingly dilapidated estate.

Newspaper advert, Scotsman, June 13th 1995, advertising the sale of 35 surplus police boxes

These were the first boxes made available on the open market and generated much interest; a variety of proposals from public toilets to newspaper kiosks to air quality monitoring stations to removing the boxes entirely to install them as curios in pubs or people’s gardens were proposed. In 1990, the predecessor of Historic Environment Scotland listed thirteen boxes as Category B to protect them (there are now a total of seventeen) and the city’s Planning Convenor would issue guidelines requiring any changes to the boxes or their interiors needing planning permission.

Former lawyer Gordon Thomson purchased eight boxes and, as American-style coffee drinking swept across the nation, established a small chain of bijou “cappuccino kiosks” called the California Coffee Company. Thomson may not have realised it, but his innovation was very close to recreating a street scene once common in 18th century Edinburgh. A 2000 attempt by Feyzullah Marasli to emulate this success by converting a box on Princes Street into a coffee kiosk came to nothing when it was discovered that despite him refurbishing the box, changing the locks on it, paying £400 to have an electricity supply installed and applying for the necessary Street Trader’s Licence, he neither owned nor leased the box in question and it was still in operational use by the Police!

‘A street coffee house Edinburgh’. Paul Sandby, 1750s, Royal Collection Trust RCIN 914503

Lothian & Borders Police attempted to rehabilitate some boxes in the late 1990s by installing touch screen public information points with a video-link to a police station within them. The first such box was unveiled to the press on Princes Street in 1998 at a cost of £10,000. It had 61,000 “hits” during its first year of operation and was judged to have been a success, with two further such boxes converted, however funding never followed through and the innovation was allowed to lapse.

Eleven more boxes were auctioned in 2001, advertised as “an exciting and unique opportunity to obtain a distinctive piece of cast iron street furniture with potential for a wide range of uses“. In 2002, the BBC successfully trademarked the London-style Police Box in connection with Dr. Who and the TARDIS, despite the Metropolitan Police contesting the application with the Registrar of Trade Marks. This did not apply to Edinburgh’s unique boxes, which are categorically not TARDISes, despite what some may say! From 2012 to 2013, the police box at Braid Hills Approach was restored to exhibition standard as a small museum by Angus Self, a great grandson of Chief Constable Roderick Ross. In 2014, fourteen of the remaining boxes were sold off, leaving just one in Police ownership.

‘SwimEasy’ Police Box Museum, Braid Hills Road. CC-by-NC SA 2.0, M J Richardson

The boxes may now be entirely operationally defunct, but they remain throughout the city and many are in daily use. In fact I’m just back from visiting one this afternoon, It may not be a TARDIS but an architectural time traveller it was!

Late night Brazilian crepes anyone? A police box has you covered… CC-by-NC 2.0, Joe Gordon via Flickr

#architecture #CityArchitect #EbenezerJamesMacrae #Police #PoliceBox #Policing #RoderickRoss #StreetFurniture #Written2025

Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh May 17

The thread about the Corstorphine Convalescent Home; “To the Glory of God, for the Welfare of the Poor”

Corstorphine Hospital may have been shut for over a decade, but it (briefly) made the news earlier this week as a result of a fire in the abandoned building. I had a front-row seat as I happened to cycle past on my way to work; by which time it was fortunately under the control of the Fire Brigade before it had a chance to have properly taken hold.

An ominous cloud of smoke rising from the former Corstorphine Hospital on 14th May 2025. Photo © Self

The building was first opened on 2nd August 1867 as the Convalescent Home for the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Five acres of the Meadowhouse Farm had been feud from landowner Sir William Hanmer Dick-Cunyngham bt. the previous year, allowing the institution to be set back from the road on a gentle, south-facing slope for the best sunlight and vistas across to the Pentland Hills.

1893 OS Map of Edinburghshire, centred on Corstorphine Convalescent Home

It was a fairly plain building to designs by Messrs Peddie & Kinnear. It originally had 44 beds in two wings, 26 for men and 18 for women, with a service block in the centre that extended to the rear. It was intended to accommodate patients from the Infirmary who were recovering after operations and treatment, for periods of around 3 weeks. It did not however deal with infectious diseases cases, as these were dealt with by separate hospitals. The extended natures of most stays, along with the fact that patients may be paying for the privilege, meant that the standard of accommodation was good; a mix of private rooms and small wards with two or three beds. Space per “inmate” (as the patients were termed) was also very generous in the name of airborne disease control. The decorative stone was brought from Dunsmore Quarry near Stirling with the infill from nearby Hailes Quarry. Heating was by open fires and there was as yet no piped water supply in the district of Corstorphine and so a well was sunk in the grounds.

Scanned elevation drawing of the original Corstorphine Convalescent Home. © Courtesy of HES (Records of Dick Peddie and McKay, architects, Edinburgh, Scotland)

The new Home allowed the variety of makeshift – and often inappropriate – convalescent houses in the city to be closed and all work centred on a modern building; well staffed by medical professionals, in a pleasant setting on the outskirts of the noise, smells and diseases of the city. It was funded to the tune of £12,000 by an anonymous philanthropic gentleman who did not want his name attached to it. It later transpired that this was William Seton Brown of Prestonpans, a wealthy London-based merchant who had made his money in Bombay and Shanghai. He came from a missionary family in East Lothian and his younger brothers, Alexander and Robert Ebenezer, were doctors who had died early in life in their 20s and 30s.

Brown family grave marker in Grange Cemetery.
“Also his sons: ALEXANDER BROWN, MD, Born May 29 1815, Died Nov 15 1839; and
ROBERT EBENEZER BROWN, MD, Born Oct 1822, Died Apr 10 1849″

The inscription above the doorway of the Home read, in Latin, “To the glory of God, for the welfare of the poor, and in memory of most affectionate brothers, the surviving brother caused this house of healing to be built“. This overlooked somewhat that the fourth and oldest brother and also a medical doctor – John Taylor Brown – outlived them all! In its early years the supply of fresh water was an obvious problem as the Home required 4,000 gallons a day, which clearly was a rather ridiculous proposition to try and source from a well. It took until 1878 for the Edinburgh & District Water Trust to pipe a supply in, which Corstorphine village also benefited from. By 1881 the Home had 50 beds, with an average occupancy of 37. 660 patients were being treated per year, with an average stay of 20 days at a cost of 13s 11d per head, per week. The institution was very efficiently run with only a 1.3% management overhead and it’s annual income of £4,491 exceeded expenditure.

In 1892 the Home was closed for a year and a half to extend it to a capacity of 100 beds and provide general improvements. This was made possible by a bequest from local engineer James “Steam Hammer” Nasmyth and saw the corner towers heightened and extension blocks added to each wing and the addition of south-facing balconies at 1st floor level. The original architects were employed, by now known as Kinnear & Peddie.

Coloured postcard of the “Convalescent Home, Corstorphine” in 1907 showing the hospital building set back above the lawn terrace. Patients sit in enforced recuperation on the the numerous deckchairs in the shade of the balcony, men on the left of shot and women to the right. via Edinburgh City Libraries. Thank you to Alistair Adams for providing the date.

For some, the quiet and regimented life of the Convalescent Home proved relaxing and recuperative. But it wasn’t to everyone’s taste: many found it an overbearing straitjacket and discharged themselves against doctors orders just to escape. Yet others were told firmly to leave on account of their lasciviousness and drunkenness; while it catered for both men and women, the sexes were kept strictly apart.

Black and white postcard of Corstorphine Home in 1912. via Edinburgh City Libraries

In the year 1912, 1,323 patients had stayed at the Home with 925 of those staying for more than 3 weeks. It was found that very few had to return to the Infirmary after their time in Corstorphine, proving the utility of such institutions in freeing up primary hospital beds and aiding in recovery. From 1923 onwards, Corstorphine was joined by the Astley Ainslie Institution in providing convalescent care for the Infirmary. This modern facility was to pioneer long term care, medical supervision and rehabilitation. Little changed at the Corstorphine Home, which remained focussed on the traditional shorter stay recuperation for patients before they returned to their lives. A nod to modernisation came in 1927 when wireless receivers were installed and £80 was raised to provide headphones for patients to listen to the programming. The following year – 1928 – 1,612 patients were treated and the Astley Ainslie fully opened.

Little else changed at the Corstorphine Home in the interwar period, but as the Infirmary found itself treating increasing numbers of older children, small numbers found their way to the Convalescent Home which opened a children’s ward. Those treated by the Royal Hospital For Sick Children were lucky to be sent to its seaside Home in Gullane.

Christmas 1932, Santa Claus hands out presents to the younger patients in the Home

During WW2, like many such institutions it became an Auxiliary Hospital for service personnel. Initially the City was told by the Government that 300 of its 1,000 hospital beds were to be reserved for the military, reduced to 200 later that year. As a public, but charitable, institution, the Home was brought into the fold of the new National Health Service in 1947, remaining attached to the Infirmary. By the 1950s however it was recognised as being hopelessly out of date, described as “resembling a poor law institution of the earlier part of the century“. In addition, its wooden floors were found to be suffering from rot: something had to be done.

1955 postcard of Corstorphine Convalescent House taken from the road, looking past the gates and up across the lawns and gardens. A painted signboard can be seen reads “Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh Convalescent House”. via Edinburgh City Libraries. Thank you to Alistair Adams for providing the date.

Various options were considered and eventually the institution was closed, had its floors reconstructed in reinforced concrete and was thoroughly modernised and refitted by the Regional Health Board into a General Hospital. Corstorphine Hospital, as it would now be know, had 112 beds in large, open wards and its balconies were now enclosed by glass curtain walls. A new nurses’ house was built in the grounds, freeing up internal space, and when it reopened in 1962 it was now certified to provide nursing training. A big change was a move to pre-ordered catering, with patients selecting their food in advance from a menu, rather than the old “take it or leave it” system which often saw it left, to the detriment of patients health. By 1974 changing practices saw it detached from the Infirmary and grouped in with other small district hospitals in the Lothians to provide specialist geriatric convalescent and rehabilitation care.

Corstorphine Hospital against blue skies, showing the boxed-in balconies added in the 1960s rebuild. Photo taken 2013. CC-by-SA 2.0, Leslie Barrie via Geograph

A threat to the Hospital came in 1990 when it was proposed to close the hospital and potentially use the site for a new Sick Children’s Hospital. It weathered this storm but changing patterns for the elderly in the following decades, which was increasingly provided in patients homes or pushed into the private sector, saw it slowly run down. In 1999 a modern nursing home, Murraypark, was built in the grounds and in 200 the old nurses’ home was demolished and replaced with 30 residential care flats by a housing association. Closure for the hospital finally came in 2014, its founder’s message of “To the Glory of God, for the Welfare of the Poor” long forgotten, with Murraypark following in 2016. Plans to demolish the site and replace it with a “care village” came to nothing and in 2019 a plan by Michael Laird Architects was approved to renovate it into 32 flats, with extensions and additions in the grounds for 44 more flats.

Architect’s CGI model showing planned additions and extensions in the grounds of Corstorphine Hospital. Via Scottish Construction Now.

Neighbouring Edinburgh Zoo objected to this on the grounds of it being adjacent to the enclosures of their prized pandas (which would later be moved, and later yet moved all the way back to China).
The added complexities of Covid and the economics of the construction industry has meant that nothing has yet come of the housing plans and the building has now lain abandoned for over a decade. That hasn’t stopped the Urbexers getting in though, and their videos show the interior has been thoroughly vandalised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9W2JjCMJeE

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.

#Corstorphine #Edinburgh #Health #Hospital #Hospitals #Infirmary #NationalHealthService #NHS #PublicHealth #Written2025

Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh Apr 9

The thread about Montgomery Street Park; a real boon to a very populous neighbourhood

In an area dominated by ranks of tall tenement housing, Montgomery Street Park is a welcome open space for play and relaxation. But long before it was here and long before there was even a street named for local landowner William Montgomerie, this district was the parkland surrounding Greenside House – itself located where you will now find the back greens of number 102 to 114 Montgomery Street.

Mural, Montgomery Street Park. CC-by-SA 2.0, Richard Webb via Geograph.

The street was first proposed by William Playfair in 1819 as one of the grand thoroughfares of his never completed Third New Town, but development was painstakingly slow on account of an economic slump and the difficulties of extending beyond the then city boundary.

W. B. Clark, 1834 Town Plan of Edinburgh showing Playfair’s “Proposed Extension to the City” with streets heading radially north as spokes from the hub of Hillside Crescent Garden. The shaded buildings show what little had been completed in the first 15 years of the scheme.

This lack of progress meant that by the 1860s Montgomery Street had progressed from its western end only as far as Brunswick Street, which was itself still largely incomplete. It was not until the early 1870s that development finally commenced at the eastern end, with (now-demolished) workers housing on West Thomas and South Elgin streets. The latter formed the northern boundary of what would later become Montgomery Street Park. But once again, development stalled, with the land between Montgomery and South Elgin Streets a barren plot which “no simoom in the desert ever produced a finer sand or dust… and to the people in [the] district it must be intolerable”, referring to was the especially sandy soils north of the Calton Hill being windblown (a “simoom” being a desert wind) off the empty building plots.

Comparison of the area around Greenside House on the 1849 (left) and 1893 (right) Ordnance Survey Town plans. Move the slider to compare. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

In 1887 the Town Council approached the landowners – George Heriot’s Hospital – to transfer two and a half acres of the undeveloped land to them on condition that it be maintained as a public space. This was agreed upon, the charge being a nominal annual duty to Heriot’s of five Pounds, thus making it probably the first land intentionally acquired for development into a public park in the city (previous acquisitions such as Princes Street Gardens and Castle Terrace Gardens had been acquired after they had been laid out as parks or were on land already possessed by the city). The following year, the Public Parks Committee agreed to lay the space at Montgomery Street out with bowling greens at its eastern end and a children’s playground to the west, making “the acquisition of this little park a real boon to a very populous neighbourhood“. £1,050 was budgeted for the work and the bowling greens were formally opened on Saturday June 22nd 1889. Mr Maclaren of the Parks Committee loftily remarked in his opening speech that it would be so much better if the people he saw going into public houses on his way to the ceremony “instead gathered at the green“. Bowling boomed in the city at this time as a mass-participation activity and did so especially at Montgomery Street. Returns from the Parks Committee published in the Edinburgh Evening News show it was soon the most popular green in town, a position it held for decades.

Members of an Edinburgh Bowling Club, c. 1910. CC-by-NC SA, Edinburgh Collected

The rest of the park at this time was simply an enclosed area of crushed cinders which quickly made the children playing there filthy and had no play equipment. The Town Council did not begin to experiment with such devices until 1893 when a set of swings was added in the Meadows. Montgomery Street got a sandpit at this time, the first in the city, although its contents were observed to be of dubious quality! When swings were finally provided for the park they were taken down each night by an attendant, who also performed this spoilsport duty on Sundays for the Sabbath and removed them entirely during the winter months; this latter practice was still reported as ongoing as late as 1969!

The rather industrial-looking swings at the East Meadows, 1908. From “Victorian and Edwardian Edinburgh : from old photographs” by C. S. Minto

Additional entertainment was provided at Montgomery Street from 1892 to 1910 under a scheme called Music in the Parks, with open air concerts held during summer months, usually featuring a military band – frequently the local Royal Scots. In 1909 the peace of the park was upset when a local conflict broke out over a proposal to add an additional bowling green at the expense of the playground space. The local bowlers however were apparently against the idea as were “the majority of the residenters in the district“. The issue rumbled on over the following bowling seasons and it was not until 1914 that it was resolved to add the extra green, with the reduced playground resurfaced with tarmac in compensation. World War 1 delayed this change and a decade later still nothing had progressed. It would not be until 1927 that the change happened at which time a new bowling pavilion was also added to replace a small structure dating from the 1890s.

By 1950 the park was reported in the Evening News to be in a sorry state with the swings and the benches removed and the surface covered in broken glass. It was duly refurbished with new play equipment including swings, a plane swing, horizontal bars, an ocean wave and a gym set. Such was the success of this improvement that children came from far and wide to enjoy it and there was soon an angry flurry of letters to the Evening News complaining about the noise of fun being had, “making a slum of the quiet residential district on [Sundays] too“. Someone signing themselves Disgusted claimed that the park was “lowering the amenity of the district and value of the houses” and another writing under the name Disappointed said it had “been converted into a fairground” which was “a great waste of public money which should have been put to some practical use!” A public meeting was organised to thrash the issues out and it was agreed to tolerate the park’s continuing presence on the condition that railings and gates were repaired and that it was locked overnight. The bowling pavilion was rebuilt the following year, a timber structure that cost £410.

Sub-heading from the letters page of the Edinburgh Evening News, October 6th 1950, complaining about the refurbishment and improvements to Montgomery Street Playground

The last major changes before the present day took place in the 1990s. Forty years on from its 1950 refurbishment, the council spent £40,000 improving the park. The bowling greens however would be closed in a round of council cuts in the late 1990s with the pavilion in the centre of the park removed and the area left as a grassy space. The playpark has continued to be “a real boon to a very populous neighbourhood” and has been upgraded more recently, the area for ball games being resurfaced and given new goals by the Friends of Montgomery Street Park in 2014 and the playground being completely rebuilt after falling into disrepair, re-opening in February 2024. Sadly the defining feature of the park, its helter-skelter slide, was found to be beyond repair and was not retained. After a period languishing in council storage, it was reported in November 2024 that it had been acquired by a local metal-working artist, Paul Meikle, to be converted into various artworks.

#Bowling #Leisure #Parks #Playground #Written2025

About – Pauly Pocket

Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh Mar 31

The thread about the Empire Biscuit, “all the sweeter” for not being German

“The Empire Under Attack”. An Empire Biscuit in the process of being eaten. CC-by-NC-ND 2.0, Trawets1 via Flickr

I usually write about Edinburgh and Leith local history, indeed that’s probably how you came to be here, but regular listeners will probably know by now that I occasionally like to foray into the realms of Scottish cuisine. Today’s topic is that quintessential teatime treat, the Empire Biscuit.
You probably have a vague inkling of its origins as the German Biscuit, but shall we get a bit more specific about its origins? Yes. Let’s.

In mid-1889 a recipe for German Biscuits were published in papers across the UK in a syndicated column called “Nice Dishes” – you’ll find it sandwiched between the Potato Cakes and a Cod Curry. With the exception of there being no cherry on top and the cinnamon in the dough, they are recognisable to us today; two softly-baked shortcake biscuits (not shortbread, they always include milk, egg and a raising agent) sandwiched with jam and given a sugar icing. They likely derive from the Austrian Linzer Auge, a similar shortcake and jam sandwich but one which has a hole in the top and is dusted with icing sugar. These weren’t the first British German Biscuit recipes however, the previous year the Eastbourne Gazette provided an altogether different sweet treat with much more egg and milk in the dough and served as a single layer flavoured with caraway seeds.

Falkirk Herald, 5th June 1889, the original recipe for the German or Empire Biscuit?

It is in 1896 recipe that we first find the glacé cherry being added as a decoration in the centre, in a Daily Record column called “Woman’s World (for ‘Fashion, Chit Chat and Home Hints’)”. But the cherry is not alone as a suggested garnish, this recipe also suggests pieces of candied angelica as an alternative. This recipe is repeated in London papers and over the following decade the garnish evolves to include chopped pistachios and the icing may be varied to include vanilla essence or cocoa powder.

Daily Record recipe for “German Biscuits for Afternoon Tea”, May 6th 1896

At this time there is nothing particularly Scottish about these German Biscuits, between 1889 and 1914 of the recipes for them which appear in the papers 66% are English publications and only 15% are Scottish. The popular story goes that it was the outbreak of WW1 that caused the re-christening of them to the Empire Biscuit in amongst the fit of patriotic pique to sign-up and de-Battenburg the county. And what do you know that’s actually true. Well, mostly. It is true that the papers were happily printing recipes for “German” biscuits right up until the declaration of war itself and only a month after the outbreak it fell to an unlikely source – the Campbeltown Courier – to announce the change of name for what another paper referred to as “a naturalised British subject“:

What’s in a name? The edible hitherto known as a “German” biscuit has been rechristened, and tastes all the sweeter as an “Empire” biscuit

Campbeltown Courier, 12th September 1914

So that part is true. But it wasn’t the only variant and in November the papers were also printing the recipe under the name Belgian Biscuit as a wave of national sympathy for the wartime plight of that country. “Lady Edith’s Household Column” of the Belfast Newsletter confirms in 1915 that Belgian Biscuits were “formerly called German Biscuits”. It also gives what seems to be a peculiarly Northern Irish variation on the recipe, with carmine-died sugar sprinkled in the centre of the wet icing to stain in. A key difference seems to be the Belgian Biscuit recipes never seem to include a cherry on top. They weren’t the only biscuit of this name on the market – in Glasgow, Macfarlane, Lang and Co. launched a “biscuit of short-eating character, moderately sweet, rich and mellow in flavour“.

Description of Macfarlane Lang’s “Belgian Biscuits” from “The Queen (The Lady’s Newspaper)”, January 1915

British bakers suffered during WW1 as imported wheat supplies dwindled and what was available was reserved for bread and heavily adulterated with the flours of other grains. As a result there is relatively little mention of biscuit recipes in the wartime press, but postwar they biscuits returned with renewed popularity and this is when they seem to establish themselves as a peculiarly Scottish delicacy, predominantly under the Empire Biscuit name. Of recipes printed in the papers post-WW1, 326 are in Scottish publications and only 13 are English. Looking at both recipes and the published results of baking competitions in Scottish print columns we can see the name emerges in the 1890s as the German biscuit, that Belgian and Imperial briefly replace it after 1914 but the Empire name is clearly dominant thereafter.

Line graph – Recipes and results of baking competitions printed in Scottish newspapers for various biscuits, 1880-1980.

Recipes in Scottish publications throughout the interwar period always give the Empire Biscuit as the shortcake and jam sandwich with water icing and glacé cherry garnish which we know today. English versions are rare but include adulterants such as mimosa or violet to garnish and coffee, chocolate or orange-flavoured icing! Back in Belfast, Lady Edith’s column was still going in 1938 when it printed the recipe under the heading “German or Imperial Biscuits“. By this time the entire icing was stained pink, not just the centre, and instead of a cherry she suggests a garnish of 3 slivered pistachios “to form a shamrock in the centre”. The Imperial Biscuit moniker was a rare variant; in 1921 December People’s Friend gives a recipe of that name in “Xmas Fare” section, complete with a cherry topping, and In 1925 Dundee Courier files it under “old Fashioned Recipes“.

Come World War 2, rationing and food control once again did for the availability of the Empire Biscuit. In 1942 the Midlothian Advertiser printed a recipe using dried eggs or “egg substitute” (I think this is a trick mentioned with respect to the Scottish Women’s Rural Institute of a teaspoon of custard powder) and had no jam, icing or cherry. These “war-time Empire Biscuits” are mentioned in occasional results for baking competitions in the papers. Post-war the SWRI, that bastion of the provincial baking competition and county show, included the Empire Biscuit as a staple in their cookbooks

The Scottish Women’s Rural Institutes cookbook, 6th edition, 1950. Cover.

The Empire Biscuit managed to escape from Scotland – there are recipes for it in a WW2 New Zealand rationing cookbook. In 1958 the Gourmet magazine in California describes it as a “jam-filled cookie, iced and cherry-topped” amongst what it called “Scotch baked goods“. American Betty Crocker cookbooks printed recipes for them in the 1960s but altered to suit American tastes and baking practice by using a vanilla cookie dough for the biscuit and a sugar cream icing. Canadian “Empire Biscuits” seem to be an altogether different, chocolate-based creation. In 1975 the Yorkshire Federation of Women’s Institutes lists it under shortbreads and describes them as being “called German Biscuits until the ’14-18′ war when the name was patriotically changed“

Cinnamon seems to finally die out in the recipes in the 1960s, the Aberdeen Press and Journal being the last to include it. Another regional Aberdonian peculiarity seems to be the alternative name of “iced double shortbreads“. Staying in the northeast, a 1984 recipe in the Grampian Cookbook by Gladys Menhinick is doubly interesting as it suggests the Empire name came from a push to use only imperial produce in the ingredients and – importantly – is the first I can find that includes a Ju-jube (or Jelly Tot) as garnish rather than a cherry. You’ll find this latter version is increasingly dominant these days. You can ignore the BBC version which uses a chocolate Smartie, that’s just nonsense.

Domestically, there must be a thousand and more variant recipes for Empire Biscuits that have handed down through the generations, with everyone swearing that it was their Granny who made the best! By kind permission, Heather Clark has allowed me to share her grandmother’s recipe from the mid 20th century here as an example.

Janet White’s well-used Empire Biscuit recipe, with kind permission of Heather Clark.

The Empire Biscuit has proved itself a convenient cultural touchstone for a number of Scottish authors and has entered the lore. Bill Paterson’s autobiography recalls Empire Biscuits from the City Bakeries in Glasgow and in Billy Connoly’s biography a sundae called a “McCallum” is described from the York Café in Hyndland that is made from vanilla ice-cream, raspberry sauce and Empire Biscuits. Any Scottish bakery worth its salt (the traditional ones that also sell pies, not the gentrified type that make you queue for a £10 donut) will sell you an Empire biscuit and they are made for shelf sale too. I’m also told they are popular in northeast England. So why not go treat yourself?

Modern industrially baked Empire Biscuits by Mortons Rolls in Glasgow and packaged for shelf sale

If you liked this deep-dive into Scottish popular cuisine then please check out my other threads about Macaroni Pies, Plain Breid, Morning Rolls, Lorne Sausage, Creamola Foam and more…

#baking #Biscuits #Food #Rationing #Written2025 #WW1

Food – Threadinburgh

Posts about Food written by Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh

Threadinburgh

Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh Mar 5

The thread about Wardie Playing Fields and the “absolutely scandalous” Lochinvar Camp

They aren’t in use any more, but on Granton and Netherby Roads in the north of Edinburgh there are impressive ornamental gates that lead to Wardie Playing Fields, where generations of local school children have loved or loathed playing cold and muddy games of football or rugby; have triumphed at their sports day or endured the dreaded “cross country” runs. The fields themselves are still in use, but there’s rather more their story than just 14 acres of windswept turf.

The former gates to Wardie Playing Fields on Granton Road on a cold and windy day. It always seems to be cold and windy in the middle of the fields… Photo © Self

The story of these fields begins when nineteen and a half acres of feuing ground of the old Wardie estate were purchased in late 1920 by the Leith Education Authority for use as a recreation ground for its schools. Few if any of Leith’s urban schools had any playing or sports facilities of their own beyond confined, hard playgrounds and one of the last independent acts of this Authority was to purchase this ground, and that at Bangholm, for school use.

Bartholomew Post Office directory map of Edinburgh, 1888, showing the Wardie Feuing Grounds. The Playing fields occupy the space east of Granton Road and west of Trinity Nursery. Wardie House is at the north end of the map. Notice the dotted lines of streets that would never be built. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Within a year, the shotgun wedding that amalgamated Edinburgh with Leith saw the fields pass to the former Education Authority, which had a lucrative sideline in leasing it out as sheep grazing well into the 1940s. Edinburgh had also purchased at this time the rest of the undeveloped Wardie feuing grounds west of Granton Road for a public housing scheme (but that’s another story).

The Scotsman – Saturday 12 April 1924. Advertisement for the letting of grazing rights to certain playing fields of the Edinburgh Education Authority, including 8¼ acres at Wardie

As it so often was, the city Corporation was slow to catch up with the population growth of its own housing schemes and the little old village school at Granton was soon at bursting point. But it was not until 10 years later, in September 1931, that a new “sunshine school” – constructed on open-air principles –was opened at Wardie for the district, taking up the southern portion of the playing fields in the process.

Our story so far has been an unremarkable one but all that was to change in 1943. That year the “stone frigate” (the Navy’s nickname for a shore base) of HMS Lochinvar – the Royal Navy’s principle school of minesweeping – found itself evicted from its base at Port Edgar along the coast and displaced to Granton Docks instead where there was already a shore training facility called HMS Claverhouse. Lochinvar had to move to make way for the pressing task of combined operations training in the run up to D-day, but it too had a vital role to play in that campaign; it trained the thousands of men to man the little ships that would keep the approach lanes and assault beaches free from sea mines.

Commissioning two Danish motor minesweepers at HMS Lochinvar, Granton, on March 12st 1944. These were the first all-Danish ships fighting with the Allies in the war. Count Eduard Reventlow, Free Danish minister in London, makes the address. On the left is Commander H. F. Hackett RN, Commander of Minesweepers. IWM A 22099

There was plenty space in Granton Docks for the vessels of Lochinvar, but precious little for surface buildings. And that’s where the playing fields came in – an expanse of undeveloped ground just up the hill from the busy harbour and large wartime camp of Nissen Huts was quickly erected, providing everything from accommodation, catering and recreation facilities for personnel to offices, stores and workshops.

Nissen hut at HMS Lochinvar on Wardie Playing Fields. The sailor gives scale to the 15ft long “Oropesa float”, the device towed behind a minesweeper to support the sweeping gear under the water. IWM
A 30283

New minesweepers came up to Granton where they were allocated to a crew of largely green recruits who were then given an intensive but short period of training in the dangerous art of clearing the sea of mines and then after a few weeks they were then packed off to war. But Lochinvar wasn’t just a man’s world, there was a significant contingent of Wrens (WRNS – the Women’s Royal Naval Service) whose job it was to run the place and make sure everything from sweeps to guns were maintained in good order and would work first time, every time. In the below photo we see two Wrens in overalls – Beryl Lyster from Largs (left) and May Groosjohan of Glasow (right) – showing HRH Duchess of Kent – the WRNS Commandant of the inner workings of the Lewis and Browning Guns and Oerlikon Cannons that they are stripping and servicing for the minesweepers at Wardie. A rather pompous looking male officer looks on.

The Duchess of Kent watching gun repairs at HMS Lochinvar. IWM (A 26072)

Lochinvar‘s spell at Wardie was relatively short and less than two years after it opened, at the end of the war, the complex found itself surplus to military requirements. The city’s Education Committee was raring to get the ground back, remove the huts and return the fields to school sports once more: but there was an outcry. You see it’s often forgotten that there was a critical housing crisis at the end of the war. There had been six long years of no new building and few repairs to existing stock, there was a flood of men (and women!) being demobbed and returning home and six years of pent up demand to settle down and start families. Edinburgh was no exception. Anything that could be lived in was being lived in, including properties condemned as slums pre-war. The city faced a homelessness and a squatting crisis and many families simply had nowhere to go. The Housing Committee turned its gaze to the surplus military camps to try and ease this immediate pressure. Its chairman, Councillor J. J. Robertson, said “there was no more pressing claim than the needs of the people for housing” under the headline “School Football or Housing?” in the Evening News on 18th Setpember 1945, just a month after the war’s end.

Wrens parade at Lochinvar, Wardie, during the visit of the force’s commandant HRH Duchess of Kent. 21st October 1944. IWM A 26073

On 29th August 1946, fourteen homeless families in Edinburgh took matters into their own hands and made a night time “seizure” of the recently vacated Anti Aircraft Gunners’ camp at Craigentinny, which they took possession of as squatters. The group formalised themselves as the “Edinburgh Houseless Association” and began to take applications from other homeless families to join them. While the police investigated alleged vandalism due to stripping some huts of their interiors to improve those that were to be lived in, the residents got on with trying to better their lot and applied to the authorities to have the water and electricity supplies turned back on.

Families at Craigentinny read all about themselves in the Evening News, 30th August 1946.

In November, the Corporation relented and the Housing Committee authorised the spending of £4,500 to put the camp in order and take over its administration – crucially, charging rents. They soon widened this action and a Prisoner of War and gunners’ camp at Craigentinny, the Cavalry Park camp in Duddingston and the Nissen Huts of HMS Lochinvar at Wardie were all taken over as housing labelled as both “emergency” and “temporary“. This was despite all of these sites all being totally inappropriate for family living – but there was nothing better and the post-war New Jerusalem would have to wait in the meantime.

Children playing amongst the bins at the former Sighthill PoW camp in 1954. Picture credit “Muriel from St Nicholas Church and Bill Lamb” via Edinburgh Collected

Families at the optimistic renamed Lochinvar Camp at Wardie paid 12s a week for half a corrugated iron Nissen Hut, but life here was no holiday camp. Each hut had a thin internal partition dividing it up into two houses, with further thin partitions for bedrooms; this gave people only the idea of privacy. A small coal stove was provided to try and keep the place warm, but with no insulation the thin metal walls were always cold and ran constantly with condensation. You can see some photos of hut interiors here at the Edinphoto website of the late Peter Stubbs. Electricity was provided but only enough for basic lighting, residents found their wireless sets or any other electrical appliances being impounded by the Corporation’s electricians. Toilets and washing facilities were shared between six to nine families. Vermin were a constant problem and they, and the damp, ruined people’s furniture, clothing and posessions.

Elizabeth Kennedy with her big brother John and little brother Jimmy, standing outside the family’s Nissen Hut at Lochinvar camp. Photo credit Elizabeth McArdle via Edinburgh Collected.

There was a wash house, but there were only three sinks per 50 families and no stoppers for the sinks. Cooking and cleaning facilities were communal too and centralised; mothers may have to walk hundreds of metres to and from them multiple times a day to feed their families. This would cause a heartbreaking tragedy barely a few months after opening. On October 21st 1946, Mrs Watson made one of her many daily trips to the kitchens and left 18 month old Ann and 3 year old John playing in the hut. This was not unusual and was a simple practicality of life. She was drying clothes on an airing horse by the stove which was somehow knocked over by the children and quickly caught fire. Almost everything within the hut was flammable, it had only a single door, the windows set too high for the children to reach and there was no running water. They were quickly trapped by the flames and there was nothing their mother or the neighbours could do. First the Police and then the Fire Brigade arrived, but all were beaten back by the red hot metal.

The Scotsman – Tuesday 22 October 1946 – headline

There was an outcry in the papers; the letter writers pointed the blame at the mother, the authorities, the fire brigade. The tragedy further stigmatised residents who already felt looked down upon by many. One hut dweller, Mrs Thompson, wrote in her defence to the Evening News on October 28th about the reality of life in the camp;

I am the mother of two young children and I have to go about 100 yards to cook, wash up, and clean in a communal kitchen. When I went to Castle Terrace and told them I was unable to do this, I was told the alternative was to find other accommodation.

The authorities were compelled to act and fire guards were provided for the stoves until gas and water could be laid to the huts to allow cooking and domestic tasks to be done in the home with children under supervision. The city Corporation formed a “special sub-committee to deal with the prevention of accidents in the home” and in recognition of the unsuitability of these sites for housing it cancelled plans to takeover similar camps at Muirhouse and Alnwickhill.

Ordnance Survey map of Lochinvar Camp showing the arrangements in the playing fields. 1949 survey published in 1950. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

But although Edinburgh was one of the most enthusiastic local authorities when it came to building postwar prefab housing, it couldn’t keep up with demand for housing and the camp found itself in demand with a long waiting list. In July 1949 it was estimated that the temporary camps could be filled four times over, and one family had even taken up residence in the corridors of the city’s Social Services offices in Castle Terrace in protest. Many residents found themselves stuck in the “temporary” camps for far longer than they thought they would be – three years or more instead of six to nine months – and began to organise themselves. A Lochinvar tenants association had been set up in 1947, making an appeal in the classifieds for the donation of a typewriter to help with their secretarial burden. The Corporation set up nurseries to help watch the children while their mothers were busy or out working and social workers were sent in. Mrs Bell, one of the residents, organised sewing classes and Christmas parties for the 36 girls who called the camp home. But others had a more individualistic streak and prouder spirit and had a different response, a resident calling herself “Indignant Mother” wrote to the Evening News, outraged at the insult of being offered “public charity“.

Inside a Nissen Hut nursery at the Sighthill Camp. Note the stove in the background behind its protective screen. Photo credit Walter Allan (who is one of the children featured), via Edinburgh Collected.

Tensions were further stoked in the camp in 1948 when a group of German workers were installed in some huts. They were young women from the Allied Zones who had found themselves separated from families trapped in the Soviet Zone and had been brought to Edinburgh to work in mills at Musselburgh to help address a labour shortage. There were soon accusations that the Germans had gotten better huts with better heating; but this was not the case. They slept 10 or 12 to a room in dormitories and lived a regimented life of work, rations and few personal possessions. But despite the resentment, some reached out to the incomers; they found their new neighbours to be young and frightened, alone in a strange and foreign land where few spoke their language. There had little in the way of home comforts and many had no idea what had become of their parents in the Soviet Zone.

But one thing that all could agreed upon was that the camp was no fit place for housing. It was “a disgrace to the city of Edinburgh. The decent, hard-working people who have to live here surely deserve a better lot” wrote one resident to the papers in 1947. Another, calling themselves Grantonian said the site should be given instead to the newly formed National Coal Board for use as offices. In October 1949 there was a further fire at Lochinvar that left five families, eighteen people in all, homeless when a gas grill in a hut set fire to the wooden partitions. Fortunately on this occasion nobody was injured. The Evening News described the camp as “shanty town squalor” for 150 families and that conditions there were “not British“. By the 1951 the huts were well past their expected lifespans but the housing demand was such that even though the Education Committee wanted its playing fields back, it was told “no” and the camp was to remain as housing.

Edinburgh Evening News – Monday 10th December 1951

This was in spite of the fact the Corporation could barely keep up with the basic maintenance, never mind make improvements. In the preceding year the Lochinvar camp had an average of 176 families resident and was costing the city £4,997 for gas, £68 for coke fuel and £824 for electricity. In two years the city had run up a £19,289 deficit for fuel costs alone across its emergency camps. This was before they outlay of £55 per household (at Lochinvar) for maintenance, almost twice what each was paying in rent. Residents claimed the authorities were trying to force larger families living in huts laid out inside as one large apartment into the same sized space divided into more apartments, for which they would have to pay higher rents. Sickness rates amongst children were high and dysentery was becoming common. Vandalism was endemic and there were worrying cases of child neglect reported. Residents said that they had stopped giving out their address as being in the camps when applying for jobs as it usually saw them turned down and a case brought before the Burgh Police Court as a result of a fist-fight heard that it was brought on by the overcrowded conditions in the camp; it was “the kind of place that would make you fight with your own shadow” according to the witness.

Enough was enough. The secretary of the camp’s residents association said conditions were “absolutely scandalous” and protests were organised in conjunction with residents of the other camps and an organisation called Housing Crusade. Placards were carried with messages such as “We Want Houses, Not Promises“, “A Camp Is Not a House“, “Homes Before Festivals” and “Edinburgh – Build Your Allocation“. Residents at Duddingston Camp reported the police removed posters they had put up on perimeter fencing as a tourist bus route went past it.

Evening News photo, 17th August 1951, camp residents (probably at Duddingston) stand in front of a Nissen Hut holding a hand-lettered protest poster

At last it seemed that the city was listening and in December 1951 laid out a plan to deal with the problem of the camps. It would close down Craigentinny as soon as possible, huts in the worst repair in the other camps would be closed too and to deal with the fuel costs the huts would be fitted with coin-operated gas and electricity meters. But such was the drawn-out nature of the UK’s post-war economic malaise, in 1954 the camps at Duddingston, Sighthill and Lochinvar were still being used even though in theory each hut would be closed down when its residents left for permanent housing. It was agreed in March that year that Sighthill and Duddingston camps would be exited expeditiously by preferential allocation of new houses to tenants. But the long suffering residents at Wardie found they were overlooked, even though the place was ever more decrepit the city judged their camp to be in the best condition of the three and so they would have to stay put. Indeed, some huts that should have been permanently closed down were even brought back into use, even though it was normal practice for the resident children to commandeer the empty properties as gang huts and thoroughly trash the interiors. A similar fate befell the Wardie sports pavilion, leaving one local councillor to go on the record that it wanted a “good fire” to help improve it.

It was not until December 1955 that it was announced that they would get permanent homes and even then it took a further year for the last 71 families at Lochinvar to be moved from their “temporary” accommodation; a full ten years after it was taken over for “emergency” use. Within a year the hut bases were ploughed up and the Corporation’s groundskeepers were finally allowed back in to returf the pitches. There is nothing to be seen on the ground these days of what was – for over a decade – hundreds of houses with thousands of families passing through them.

1957 aerial photo of Wardie Playing Fields, showing Wardie School top right. The playing fields are covered in concrete foundations from the Lochinvar Camp, which stood in stark contrast to the pleasant middle class villas and bungalows that surrounded it. BritainfromAbove SAR029103

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