#Footscray #Bowls
From the Footscray Park Bowling Club Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/1379733163850356/posts/1466780321812306

🍔 Friday Night Dinners at Footscray Park Bowling Club

Orders must be in by tonight!

Kick off the weekend with our delicious Smoked Meat Rolls – loaded with slaw, cheese & crispy chips.
👉 Served hot every Friday 6–7PM

🍴 On the Night
Hungry for more? Bar favourites are ready to roll:
• Chips 🍟
• Nuggets 🍗
• Potato Cakes 🥔
• Dim Sims 🥟

📋 Menu & Pricing
•

#Footscray #Bowls
From the Footscray Park Bowling Club Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/1379733163850356/posts/1466009795222692

🎳 Canadian Pairs Competition
📍 Footscray Park Bowling Club

Join us for a fun and social game of bowls — perfect for all skill levels, from beginners to experienced players!

🗓 Starts Thursday 23rd April
⏰ 5.30 registration

Whether you’re looking to try something new or sharpen your skills, Canadian Pairs is a great way to get involved, meet new people

CAVA now open in League City

CAVA opened a new location in League City in mid-April, according to an April 16 press release from the company. Must-try menu items The fast-casual restaurant chain specializes in “build-your-own” Mediterranean bowls and pita wraps with protein options including lamb, falafel, chicken …
#dining #cooking #diet #food #MediterraneanCuisine #bowls #Cava #Mediterranean #mediterraneancuisine #Pitawrap
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2607764/cava-now-open-in-league-city/

CAVA now open in League City

CAVA opened a new location in League City in mid-April, according to an April 16 press release from the company. Must-try menu items The fast-casual restaurant chain specializes in “build-your-own” Mediterranean bowls and pita wraps w…
#dining #cooking #diet #food #mediterranean #MediterraneanDiet #MediterraneanFood #MediterraneanCuisine #bowls #Cava #Mediterranean #mediterraneancuisine #Pitawrap
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2607764/cava-now-open-in-league-city/

#Footscray #Bowls
From the Footscray Park Bowling Club Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/1379733163850356/posts/1465235235300148

🍔 Friday Night Dinners at Footscray Park Bowling Club

Orders must be in by Wednesday.

Kick off the weekend with our delicious Smoked Meat Rolls – loaded with slaw, cheese & crispy chips.
👉 Served hot every Friday 6–7PM

🍴 On the Night
Hungry for more? Bar favourites are ready to roll:
• Chips 🍟
• Nuggets 🍗
• Potato Cakes 🥔
• Dim Sims 🥟

📋 Menu & Pricing

#Footscray #Bowls
From the Footscray Park Bowling Club Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/1379733163850356/posts/1464594512030887

🌈 Footscray Park Pride Cup 🌈

📅 Saturday 18th April

The day was also full of fantastic entertainment, awesome raffles and dazzling drag performances 🌈

A big shoutout to our wonderful DJ, Rob, for keeping the music going and the vibes high all day 🎶

And of course, not to mention the delicious lunch — it definitely hit the spot! 🍽️

What an incredible

“In all time coming for the use of the public”: the thread about Leith Links

There was a Council consultation that closed on October 21st on the topic of an Activity Park for Leith Links, so what better time to have a quick thread on Leith Links and its history as a place of leisure? When I said this is quick, it’s actually going to be quite long, so if you’d like to jump to a particular section you can use the section links below.

So first up, what is a Links? Links (from the Old Scots Lynkis, from the Old English Hlinc) are the characteristic sandy, undulating, raised (usually) coastal beaches covered in scrubby and grassy vegetation that are commonly found on the east coast of Scotland (they are also found in other places too).

Links were often the common of the nearest town, as is the case with Leith, and it was as frequently called the Links of Leith as Leith Links. They are also inextricably associated with golfing, a game which goes back to late Medieval times in Scotland; as such, many Scottish golf courses are known as Links. Again, this is also the case with Leith.

Golf

So I’m sorry if you think golf is just a way to “ruin a good walk“, but you can’t do the history of Leith Links without also doing the history of golf… Indeed, one of the earliest good pictures we have of them is as the backdrop to a golfer! In the background of David Allan’s 1780s painting of William Inglis (click here to view it, and zoom into the detail) we see people at play on the undulating, scrubby Links above the beach of South Leith Sands. Beyond that we can see (left) South Leith Kirk and towards the centre the prominent cones of its glassworks kilns and some of its finer villas.

An earlier engraving by the landscape artist, surveyor and cartographer Paul Sandby shows a 1751 view of Leith from what is now known as Easter Road. In it, we can faintly but clearly discern characters on the Links amongst the hillocks with what appear to be raised clubs.

But golf goes back much further than the 18th century in Leith. Folk were so mad for it that in 1592 Edinburgh Town Council had to ban its playing on the Sabbath. The books of the Kirk Session1 of South Leith is full of offenders who golfed during the “tyme of preaching or tyme of sermons“. In 1608, John Henrie and Patrick Bogie were “accusit for playing of the Gowff on the Links of Leith everie Sabboth the time of the sermounes, notwithstanding of the admonition past befoir“. That means they were accused of playing golf on Leith Links every Sabbath at the time of sermons, despite being previously admonished for it. For their troubles they were fined £20 each and put under caution that any subsequent offences would get £100.

It wasn’t just the ordinary folk who golfed at Leith – the nobility, clergy and royalty loved it too. Both James VI and Charles I ordained that after church, people should not be prohibited or discouraged from their “lawful recreation“. Indeed Charles I is reputed to have been golfing on Leith Links in 1641 when he received news of the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion that would lead to the Irish Confederate Wars (part of the complex series of interlinked conflicts known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms that would ultimately see Charles lose his throne and his head).

Governments, wars and heads of state, came and went, but inevitably the people were drawn back to golfing on the Links. In 1682, the “first international game of golf” took place here, when a scratch pair representing Scotland beat a pair representing England. The Scottish twosome was composed of John Paterson, a cobbler in the Canongate and reputedly the best golfer in the City, and one James Stuart, Duke of York (Later James VII and II). They played a pair of English gentlemen to settle a wager over which country had a longer association with the sport.

Leith’s association with golf was very strong; an epic poem, The Goff, was written and published in 1743 by Thomas Mathieson detailing the story of a game on the Links. It was the first book published that is devoted entirely to the game, and describes the Links thusly:

North from Edina, eight furlongs or more.
Lies that famed field on Forth’s sounding shore.
Here Caledonian chiefs for health resort —
Confirms their sinews in the manly sport”

In the 18th century, the golfers of Leith Links were said to be “the greatest and wisest of the land… mingling freely with the humblest mechanics in pursuit of their common and beloved amusement. All distinctions of rank were levelled by the joyous spirit of the game…“. In 1744, the “gentlemen golfers” decided to organise themselves into a club under the patronage of the Magistrates of Edinburgh – The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. They were not the first such club in the city, but they were perhaps the most prestigious. The City provided a prize to the new institution, which was to be competed for on Leith Links annually, a silver club valued at £15. This is why David Allan’s painting of William Inglis, which we saw earlier in the thread, has the Links as its backdrop. The prize club was drummed through the city, carried by a Baillie (senior official of the City), to announce the competition, and Allan includes this scene in the painting (look to the right of Inglis) and also as one of his exquisite watercolours of the occupations of the city. The winner of the trophy became Club Captain (Captain of the Goff) and President for the year and was required to fix – at their own expense – a silver golf ball to the prize club with their name on it. These are the balls on the club we see in Allan’ s paintings.

The first winner and therefore captain was a surgeon, John Rattray, whose statue stands on the Links. The Goff describes him (thank you to Jan Barker for highlighting this to me):

Rattray for skill, and Corse for strength renowned,
Stewart and Lesly beat the sandy ground

In 1744 it was he who signed the first ever formal, written set of rules and regulations for the game – the “Articles and Laws“. This is used to substantiate Leith’s claim as “home of Golf” over St. Andrews and a statue of Rattray was recently place here. While rules and practices of the game were slightly different, the principles are recognisably the same. A big difference for instance at Leith Links was that there were 5 long holes of 400 yards each, which took around 6 or 7 strokes to complete. They were played 4 times for a full game, or 20 holes vs. the modern 18.

But as a course the Links was far from ideal – it was wet, windy and poorly drained. There was the ever present difficulty of encroachments by people exercising their right to the common – bleaching laundry promenading, or grazing their animals. The military too liked to use the Links, where wappenshaws (literally “weapon showings,” musterings) had long taken place. As a result, golf began to wane here in the early 19th century. Most of the Leith clubs and even the veritable Honourable Company folded for lack of interest and finance, although the latter reformed in Musselburgh in 1836 before moving to Muirfield. In 1867 the game was rejuvenated somewhat on the Links after a high profile national prize tournament of professional players was held here. The game played according to Leith Thistle rules, 4 rounds of 7 holes. Old Tom Morris, “the Grand Old Man of Golf” was there, but the £10 first prize was won by Robert (Bob) Ferguson of Musselburgh. But even though it continued to be played with some enthusiasm on the Links, golf would never again be as important or prominent a pastime as it once had been. It found itself being edged out by competing demands for the space, from newer and more fashionable sports crazes.

Putting the use of the Links to one side, let’s look at the ownership and legal status of the them. The superiority of Leith and its Links had long been owned by the City of Edinburgh, but by 1833 the latter was broke, having greatly overextended itself by borrowing for building Leith Docks and imprudent financial management. In the words of the government, the city found its affairs “for some years past been in a state of great embarrassment” and in need of a bailout. Various conditions were attached to this, including some of the land set aside for docks being ceded to the Admiralty and the rest put into the trust of the Leith Dock Commissioners. The town of Leith also got the chance to buy itself off of Edinburgh under the provisions of The City Agreement Act (1838) – “An Act to regulate and secure the Debt due by the City of Edinburgh to the Public; to confirm an Agreement between the said City and its Creditors; and to effect a settlement of the Affairs of the said City and Town of Leith“. And so it was that Edinburgh’s long standing, jealously guarded and bitterly resented municipal control of Leith came to an abrupt end.

Section 33 of the aforementioned Act “requires the Town Council of Edinburgh to convey the Links to the former [Leith] for an annual payment of £25” and empowered it to buy the Links completely for £625, which it would do in 1856 after letting them for 18 years. It also stipulated “said Links… shall be preserved and remain as an open area in all time coming for the use of the public, as now existing and enjoyed“. For the first time, the Links was legally designated as – and protected as – a place of municipal leisure. A prominent citizen of Leith, Andrew Gibson of Middlefield, writing to the Leith Herald in 1890 made it very clear that in the opinion of the townsfolk, “the Links of Leith belong to Leith and to Leith only. The Town Council of Edinburgh have nothing to do with the proprietorship… The Town Council of Leith” he said “are the exclusive owners of Leith Links; but, by law they are bound to keep the Links up in a certain manner for the use of the public generally“.

After the purchase was made and the Town Clerk of Leith had the titles safely in his office, the Town Council set about transforming the Links by making provision for two of the up and coming, mass-participation sports of their day (1857).

Cricket

The first of these was cricket, a sport that had been played on the Links since at least 1806, when the first game is recorded as being 3 innings between “the Gentlemen who play on the Calton Hill” and the “Edinburgh University Club“. The latter won by 11 wickets and 32 runs and both sides agreed to meet again. A Leith cricket club was established on the Links in 1828, “it numbers about thirty members, including many of the most respectable and spirited young gentlemen in Leith” and played thrice weekly at 6AM. The Leith Franklin club was formally constituted in 1852 by workers from Fullarton & Co.’s printers on Leith Walk and was named for the inventor and printer Benjamin Franklin. The club is now Leith Franklin Academicals, having merged with Leith Academicals in 1988, and is still going to this day – there’s a good chance that it is Leith’s longest established sports club.

The new pitches were inaugurated by a match between Leith Caledonian and the Royal Artillery from Leith Fort. The Artillery won my 52-41 runs in a single innings game. Cricket, a sport not often associated with Scotland, was hugely popular at the time – there were 14 clubs on the go in Leith alone.

Bowls

The other up and coming game at the time was lawn bowls. This had long been popular with the nobility in centuries gone by. Leith had greens in the 16th century, from where West Bowling Green Street takes its name, and the Honourable Edinburgh Golf Club had one too adjoining their clubhouse on the Links. But now it was a game of the urban working class. Leith had purchased an extra strip of land to the north of the Links from Edinburgh and in 1857 opened the first public greens there. The annual opening of these greens was a civic event. They were, in the words of the Provost, “inferior, perhaps, to none in Scotland“.

Bowls went from strength to strength and at its peak in 1910, there were 7 greens on the Links. The original two on the north, 4 more at the western end which had been opened to accommodate demand in the early 20th century and the private club of Seafield at the east end (where my Nana used to bowl). The game was the mass participation sport of the urban working class and many big works had their own clubs. Many of these have outlasted their employers and names such as Ferranti, London Road Foundry and Fountain Brewery live on in them. Its popularity only really began to wane in the 1980s as an aging user base dwindled, and many of the public greens have shut including those on the Links, where only Seafield Club is now active.

Unusual pursuits: Cock-fighting and Quoiting

There were other more unusual leisure pursuits that have had popular followings on the Links. One of the first recorded cock-fights in Scotland took place on Leith Links in 1702. The Leith Cock-pit charged 10d for front row seats, 7d for second, 4d for third. The Caledonian Mercury, Edinburgh’s principal newspaper in much of the middle part of the 18th century, is full of adverts for cock-fights in Leith, with silver cups offered as trophies. The proprietor of the cock-put was a Charles Liddell, and tickets could be had “at Mr John Mellegan’s, next Door to the Laight Coffee House… and at said Charles Liddell’s, at One Shilling each“.

Another popular game, particularly amongst dockers, was quoiting. It had been played on the Links since the 18th c. and was revived in 1839. A new quoiting ground was opened at the east of the Links in 1895 and it was one of the last holdouts of a once popular game in the 1930s. This was one of a number of traditional games which went under names such as quilts, skittles, kyles and 9-pin. Indeed, the 1980s housing development at the western end of Great Junction Street in Leith takes the name The Quilts after these games, as there had been a green for playing them here in the 16th century. A related game was Rowly Powly which was long a favourite on the Links (particularly betting on it) during the annual Leith Races. Walter Geikie was there to capture this scene for us:

With all this leisure use of the Links they were increasingly managed for the purpose and needed maintenance. The rough and hummocky ground was gradually levelled and tidied up and its pastures mowed to become a flat public park with formal paths set out that we are familiar with today. Grazing had finally been banned in 1862 after a woman was attacked by a cow and had to be rescued by two golfers who broke their clubs fending it off. Horses had been banned in 1839 on account of the boys who would torment them and make them stampede off.

The Leith Improvement Scheme of 1880 saw further wholescale changes, with the surface levelled again, ashes from the gas works used to surface the paths and trees planted. Leith Burghs MP Munro Ferguson provided 100 saplings from his own nursery and the Town Council enclosed the park with railings.

Football

The next popular pastime to take to the Links was that other “national game” – football. The first recorded matches go as far back as 1851, when the students of Edinburgh University played the gentlemen of the Veterinary College (thank you to Andy Mitchell for this information). The University won the first 2 games (which lasted 40 minutes and two hours respectively) and a third was abandoned. In 1866, 200 striking dockers congregated and “several well-contested games were played in the presence of a great many people.”

Regular league games did not start on the Links until 1880. In an newspaper report of one of these first matches, Edinburgh Caledonian beat Leith Trafalgar 5-0 and 1st Midlothian beat Leith Harp 3-0. But the game, particularly its popularity, was soon causing problems. The main complaint aimed at it was that it ruined the surface of the park, exposing the sandy soil below which blew away on the wind. But when the Town Council attempted to regulate its play, it found that it had no powers to do so. So in 1886, under the General Police Act 1862, they applied for and received a provisional order from the Scotch Secretary (as the office was then titled) allowing them to make bye-laws on the Links. In 1887 an attempt was made to ban football entirely, the petitioner’s hyperbolic claim stating it was “a very unnecessary and injurious game, and the town had suffered very much during the past years from it. The game did not command the respect of anyone outside those engaged in it and it had caused the death of many persons” (I have not found a record of any, never mind many, persons being killed in games of football on the Links). Another complaint levied against the footballers was “the language used [by them] was disgraceful, and besides they stripped themselves almost naked in front of the windows.”

Hyperbole aside, the issue of the game turning the Links into a “sandy desert” was felt to be real, and so football was confined to a designated western corner and was banned entirely in the summer (and on Sundays, of course). Parkies were charged with keeping footballs and footballers away, with the newspapers frequently reporting on boys being hauled infront of the magistrates for playing it. In 1922 a mother on Balfour Street complained to the Evening News that a parkie had taken her son’s new football off him and where were the children meant to play the game? By 1925, football was at crisis point, not just on the Links but in Leith as a whole. It was noted that the town had 86,000 residents and not a single official public football field, even though the terms of the 1920 amalgamation had obliged Edinburgh to provide one within 5 years. Leith Athletic, the “local” team, were obliged to move around, and played variously at Logie Green, Powderhall, Marine Gardens and Meadowbank.

In 1932 Baillie Young dismissed 6 youths accused of playing football in the streets of Leith and urged them to petition the Town Council for pitches. It was not until 1938 that the Council finally relented and allowed football to be played on the Links. Wartime games were a popular attraction but by 1944 the military had taken over the ground and they had stopped – Leith Victoria FC had to play in distant Gilmerton.

The Bandstand

Proposals in 1847 for skating and curling ponds came to nothing, as did an 1895 proposal for a model boating pond. A bandstand was proposed in 1887 but was not erected until one was gifted to the Town in 1898 by an anonymous local donor to mark the coming of municipal mains electricity.

The bandstand brought controversy in 1904 when an open air Sunday concert was organised of the band of the Life Guards by the Edinburgh Sunday Society – a secular organisation to “promote the rational observance of Sunday” – they were Sabbath breakers! It incurred the wrath of the sabbatarians as a result, who wrote to the newspapers that this was “a new departure, which will, it need not occasion surprise, awaken genuine grief and pain to all who have contended for the maintenance and sacred character of our Christian Sabbath… [it] appeals to men who are asking for bread, but only offers them stone. It is the thin end of the wedge.” The Town Council enacted a hasty resolution “forbidding the playing of music on the bandstand during recognised church service hours“. The concert went ahead nevertheless, later in the afternoon, and 10,000 people gathered to hear the “pleasant, healthful and harmless Sunday recreation“. The City voted to spend £100 in 1966 to dismantle the neglected bandstand.

Putting and Tennis

By the turn of the 20th century, the Links were so busy that Golf had “become a public nuisance” and was banned in the summer months and during the middle hours of the day. In 1904 it was prohibited entirely and had to wait until 1908 for the new municipal course to open at Craigentinny on the former irrigated meadows. It made a partial return in 1925 when the Council opened an 18-hole putting green. Lord Provost Sleigh, Councillor White, convenor of the Parks Committee and Judge Keddie of Leith North Ward had the inaugural game. The Lord Provost won by 3 strokes.

On that same day, the Lord Provost also opened the Links’ tennis courts. These were first proposed in 1913 but war intervened. Tennis had become incredibly popular, by this time there were 74 public courts in Edinburgh with 150,000 players bringing an annual profit of £2,000. The courts were grass surfaced and for summer use only but in 1955 they were converted to an all weather blaes surface (crushed shale waste). It was not until 1964 that Sunday tennis or putting was allowed. The old tennis courts are now home to the Earth in Common Community Croft and the tennis courts are on some of the former bolwling greens.

Playparks

In 1935 the park Superintendent, John G. Jeffrey, reported that on the Links there were 2 cricket pitches, 4 bowling greens, 6 tennis courts, a putting green, childrens playground and a sand pit. However the latter was felt to be unhygenic and was to be removed. In its place the council opened a paddling pool; six inches deep at its edges with a deep end of nince inches. It was an instant success, in 1936 the Evening News wrote “delighted boys and girls… ‘from early morn till dewy eve’, disport themselves at the Links pool for hours on end“.

The year 1938-9 was probably a peak of the most sustained public investment in the Links – with a tramway shelter and public toilets financed, £880 set aside for painting the railings and tarmaccing paths and a shrubbery and rockery planted around the bandstand. The park has seen investment here and there, but its public facilities have been in long term decline. There are no public toilets, the bowling greens have been abandoned almost a decade and the pavilion locked.

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#Footscray #Bowls
From the Footscray Park Bowling Club Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/1379733163850356/posts/1464472775376394

🌈 Footscray Park Pride Cup 🌈

📅 Saturday 18th April

What a fantastic day of lawn bowls, community and celebration!

🎳 A great day of lawn bowls
💃 Dazzling drag performances
🎟 Awesome raffles
🍻 Cheap drinks
🍽 Delicious lunch

An incredible day bringing people together, celebrating pride and supporting a great cause. Thanks to everyone who came along and

#Footscray #Bowls
From the Footscray Park Bowling Club Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/1379733163850356/posts/1464534282036910

🌈 Footscray Park Pride Cup 🌈

📅 Saturday 18th April

What a fun day of bowling we all had! The sun was shining and the atmosphere was fantastic from start to finish ☀️🎳

Congratulations to all the teams who entered — it was a great day of competition, community and pride.

A big well done to our winners on the day, but truly, we’re all winners for being

first cookout of the season

dreaming… a random bit

** in the ending of The Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenges from WordPress, here’s your Sunday Weekly Photo Prompt: travel **

medicine buddha mantra: Tayata Om Bekandze Bekandze Maha Bekandze Radza Samudgate Soha

health, wealth, and prosperity: Om Vasudhare Svaha

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