10,000 years
A new Board member shared that another Board they are on takes the vision of, “what will the world look like in 10,000 years because of our efforts?”
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Take the “High Line”: the thread about Leith’s unbuilt park through the rooftops
I found something very interesting hidden away in a cardboard file in a corner of Leith Library. The title – City of Edinburgh, Leith Local Plan, Draft Final Report, April 1975. Volume Two. Schedules and Appendices. – was so snappy that I couldn’t help but start reading it. This was the plan for a £90 million redevelopment and rejuvenation of Leith, which by this time was suffering badly from industrial decline, urban depopulation, poor housing stock and a general lack of public amenities. As part of this plan it was proposed that the Edinburgh Corporation as it then was (after 1975 it was Edinburgh District Council) would purchase the abandoned trackbed of the Caledonian Railway which ran from Pilrig Park to Seafield via Restalrig, over Leith Walk and Easter Road. This would be converted into a landscaped walkway through the area, what nowadays we might term a linear park.
Line of the Pilrig to Seafield section of the Caledonian Railway, traced over a 1971 OS land use survey map on a 6-inch to the mile base map, 1966 survey. CC-by-NC-SA via National Library of ScotlandThis section of railway, formally known as the Leith New Lines, was one of the last to be built in the city and did not open until 1903. Its purpose was to give the Caley access from its existing line into Leith Docks from the west to the expanding eastern portion of the docklands. It would cut its way through the dense industrial heartlands of Leith and Bonnington, serving these with large and convenient new goods stations.
Ordnance Survey 6-inch scale map of Leith, 1906. The North British Railway is highlighted blue, the Caledonian Railway in red and the Leith New Lines in green. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandOn paper this was a sound proposal but by this time the best potential routes through Leith were already well built on, therefore it had to take a winding and circuitous route requiring substantial and expensive engineering. There were numerous cuttings and viaducts required plus skew girder bridges over thoroughfares at Bonnington Toll, Leith Walk and Easter Road. As if that wasn’t enough, it also had to cross three different North British Railway lines, the Water of Leith and cut beneath Ferry Road.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/40040319893/
This railway never fulfilled its potential, a planned passenger service was never introduced and its twin tracks soon singled. The western section between Newhaven and Bonnington closed in 1965. In 1968 the low bridge over Bonnington Toll was removed and the goods station off Leith Walk at Stead’s Place (Leith Walk West) was closed. For a few years the eastern section at Seafield lingered on giving access to the Leith East goods yard at Salamander Street but this too closed in 1973, making the entire line redundant. British Rail gave notice at this point that it intended to demolish its monumental girder bridges over Leith Walk and Easter Road plus a smaller one over Halmyre Street to reduce their maintenance burden.
Easter Road #NowAndThen image overlay showing the Caledonian Railway bridge in 1974 and the modern Google Streetview background. Original from Edinphoto. This bridge was removed between January and February 1980.The 1975 path scheme saw the opportunity to purchase the route from British Rail before they proceeded with demolition and proposed to replace these large, expensive structures with lightweight footbridges and to retain the smaller bridge over Halmyre Street. This would give an elevated walkway from Pilrig Park, across the arches of the viaducts at Jane Street, Manderston Street and Gordon Street and from there along the embankments and cuttings all the way to Seafield.
Cover, City of Edinburgh, Leith Local Plan, Draft Final Report, April 1975. Volume Two. Schedules and Appendices.Proposal diagram for the Leith Walk Sawmills and Caley railway yard land off of Pilrig Park.The bridges at Easter Road and Manderston Street would be removed in early 1980, with that over Leith Walk following in September that year.
It have assumed that because the bridge over Halmyre Street was to be retained that the viaduct between there and Easter Road, which cut its way rudely through the back greens between Gordon Street and Thorntree Street would have been kept too.
1929 aerial photo showing the trackbed of the Leith New Lines between Easter Road (bottom right) heading west towards Leith Walk (top left). The large roof to the top right of the photo is Leith Central Station. That building along with the tenements along the line of Manderston and Gordon Streets have since been demolished. The large white roof belongs to the Capitol cinema, until recently a bingo hall. SPW027351 via Britain from Above.This ambitious urban realm scheme of course never came to pass. By the time an updated version of the Final Plan was published in 1980 it had been quietly dropped. One assumes this was because of the disruption caused to local government when the old unitary Corporation of the City of Edinburgh was replaced in 1975 and split up into the two-tier system of Edinburgh District Council and a combined Lothian Regional Council. Instead there was a cut back scheme to purchase the trackbed between Seafield and Easter Road and to landscape it as a pathway with funding from the Scottish Development Agency (SDA). While this at least did come to pass, the word “landscape” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and in reality this path was really just a strip of compressed dirt covered in dog mess and rubbish, with obstructive barriers to try and stop you cycling it without getting off and pushing. This would not be remedied until around 2010 when it was properly surface, the barriers were removed, new access points were added and lighting was provided.
Excerpt from 1980 report.Item 26 on the above list, the railway embankment through Pilrig Park, did also ended up being achieved although the link through to Leith Walk never happened. The viaduct from Pilrig Park to Leith Walk remains fence off, although recent redevelopment on the site of the former Leith Walk West goods yard means there is now a rather roundabout connection some 45 years later through an access road.
Looking along the viaduct above Jane Street towards Leith Walk on a very grey day in 2021. Photo © SelfItem 27, the second walkway which was planned in both 1975 and 1980, along the old North British Railway trackbed alongside the Water of Leith, from Coburg Street to Warriston, would come to pass. This opened in June 1982, making it the first old railway track to formally be converted to a foot and cycle path in Edinburgh, and the first of many more miles to come.
Line of the Coburg Street to Wariston section of the North British Railway, traced over a 1971 OS land use survey map on a 6-inch to the mile base map, 1966 survey. CC-by-NC-SA via National Library of ScotlandThe opportunity to do something between Pilrig Park and Easter Road is one that has never been properly grasped. In more recent times (although over 10 years ago now!) there was a semi-serious attempt to drum up interest in reviving the idea, with a connection between Pilrig Park and Halmyre Street achieved by building a show-piece timber and cable bridge across Leith Walk. How serious this actually was I do not know, I don’t recall any funding ever being in place even for planning, and providing level access to street level at the Thorntree Street end remains a difficult proposition. Even if it had been approved, like other schemes such as the section of Railway between Powderhall and Meadowbank, there’s a very good chance that it would still find itself in development limbo.
Renderings by Biomorphis of their engineered timber and cable bridge structure they proposed over Leith Walk.But if you happen to find yourself walking along past the garages which occupy the Manderston and Gordon Street arches, it’s easy to forget that there’s actually a railway station platform up there above your head, one which was built over 120 years ago but never actually opened. Although some lucky souls in the path have at least had the chance to get off a train there and head down its stairs to street level…
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After spending years working with neighbors and promising improvements to benefit disabled residents, elected officials are prepared to give away a 28-acre park in the poorest corner of the city for the use of billionaire investors.
The real story of the “Penny Tenement”: the thread about slum landlordism in 1950s Edinburgh
The story of the “Penny Tenement” is a (relatively) well known one; a slum tenement whose owner couldn’t give it a way to the City Corporation . Its very dramatic and well publicised collapse on November 21st 1959 seared it into the public consciousness, something that (just about) lingers on locally to this day. But its very nature also held the public gaze in a certain direction and meant much of the story got simply overlooked, its full details obscured. This thread is a valiant attempt at a fuller re-telling of the tale of the Penny Tenement; or Landlordism in 1950s Edinburgh.
The short, accepted version of the Penny Tenement story was that it was a condemned slum in the St. Leonard’s district of the city, so called because its owner tried (and failed) to sell it to an MP for that amount after the Edinburgh Corporation refused to take it off his hands. Everyone knew it might fall down – and then it did. Fortunately no one was badly hurt. And none of that is untrue, but there’s more to it than that. Much more. And while it happened over 65 years ago, it’s still remarkably pertinent to the city’s housing situation and the state of some of its old tenement housing stalk. So gather round, let’s start at the beginning shall we and see how the long version of the story unfolds?
Corner of Beaumont Place and St Leonards Street, Adam H. Malcolm, 1959. © Edinburgh City LibrariesNumber Six Beaumont Place, to give it its proper name, was part of a row of basic tenements built in 1812 and 1813, adjoining an existing 1780s tenement at 200-202 Pleasance. It is the four storey plus attic tenement to its right in the 1927 photo below. Post-WW1 slum clearances saw some demolition and rebuilding in the worst of the Southside. The demolition order for 200-202 Pleasance came in 1931, and it was for that reason it was part of a photo recording project at that time.
“2 Beaumont Place (Pleasance corner)”, A.H. Rushbrook, 1927. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe removal of this end block on Beaumont Place required those massive and dramatic wooden buttresses to shore up the party wall with no. 6 (no. 4 was the ground floor shop beneath the flats). So to be clear, in 1959 when the photograph was taken, these were old buttresses, which had been there 25 or more years. Ironically, this part of the building did not collapse! But they make a great photo and draw stark attention to the neglected condition in partially-cleared districts where progress had stalled and which had been left like this for decades.
Contemporary newspaper image after the collapse of the Penny Tenement. A dramatic, but frequently misinterpreted image.Number Six (and adjoining numbers) was bought by a local man, Donald Rosie, in 1952 for all of £50 (c. £1,190 in 2024). He owned similarly decrepit tenements in Leith on Bangor Road and had some in Union Place at Greenside too. One of the first facts that has been missing in this story is that Donald Rose bought Beaumont Place knowing full well his purchase was condemned “as unfit for human habitation” – he was a slum tenement landlord and speculator. In 1935, the gable end of a tenement in adjacent Carnegie Street had dramatically collapsed, but nobody was hurt and it was simply demolished. But many neighbouring houses, including those on Beaumont Place, were condemned at this time. But that didn’t really mean much; they could still be bought and sold and let out to tenants. There was still money to be made out of this sort of housing; rents to collect and repairs to ignore if you didn’t let the ethics of it get in your way. The photo below of the Carnegie Street collapse is sometimes mistaken for that of the Penny Tenement, but it was 100 metres to the north of it and 14 years earlier.
10 Carnegie Street gable wall collapse. Newspaper photo 13th August 1935.The valuation rolls for number 6 show that in 1940 it had 23 flats and brought in £222 a year in rents. By 1953 that was £266 (c. £5,700 in 2024( or just a little over five times what Rosie paid for it. In December 1952, the same year he bought it, Donald Rosie publicly tried to sell the tenement to the Labour MP for Camlachie, William Reid, for a penny. He told the Courier & Advertiser that the condition of the sale was “[William Reid] will maintain the property, as I am expected to do, on the clear rents only, execute all repairs, meet all owner’s obligations and prove to the public that this can be done on the rents“. This was a stunt; Rosie said he wanted to show MPs how hard it was for landlords to repair and maintain tenements on the rental income alone, with fairly strict rent controls still in place after World War 2. Reid naturally refused. The fact here is that Rosie wouldn’t put any of his own money into the property. Indeed, he is on the record multiple times in both print and in Court saying that the problem was the rents, after taxes and costs, wouldn’t not pay for any repairs. It must not have occurred to him to improve his building at his own expense. The position of the landlords was that they should be allowed to increase rents first, to allow for repairs and maintenance to be improved (rather than the other way around, as was the Government position).
Because of this stunt, the Penny Tenement name stuck in the press. Rosie now tried to simply give it away to the Edinburgh Corporation (a Progressive, i.e. Tory administration). But they too declined; taking the liability of decrepit properties on for themselves and repairing them or rehousing residents to allow demolition wasn’t part of their rather gradual slum clearance plans. Perhaps Rosie had overplayed his hand somewhat now with the city authorities as as in June 1953 the City Prosecutor took him to the Burgh Court for failing to comply with a repair order from the City Engineer that had been issued in February that year. Rosie didn’t trouble himself to appear before the Magistrate. He sent his lawyer, who said it was estimated the repairs would cost £600 to complete. The City Engineer told the court “Nothing has been done so far as the roof work is concerned and the position has greatly deteriorated… Within the last day or two the ceiling in one of the houses fallen down and children have been injured to a minor extent“. Rosie’s lawyer said his client would pay “every penny of free rent” into the repairs and asked for a 3 month extension, which was granted.
Three months passed. Nothing happened. The Court summoned Rosie again for failing to comply. Again, he sent his lawyer along. The City Prosecutor said he “could not allow more latitude” and so a trial was set for October 2nd 1953. At the trial, Rosie tried but failed in a bid to call the Town Clerk, City Engineer and Housing Executive Officer as witnesses. The Magistrate Bailie Mrs K. Cameron found him guilty of “failing to comply with a Corporation order” but gave him another 3 months to make the repairs. those three more months passed. Nothing happened and Six Beaumont Place remained neither wind nor water right.
“Penny Tenement, Beaumont Place”, 1959. Adam H. Malcolm. © Edinburgh City LibrariesIn January 1954, the Burgh Court once again summoned Donald Rosie to appear for non-compliance. He sent them a letter instead and so in his absence a trial date was set for January 29th. At this he claimed to have made £74 of repairs but the City Engineer had made an inspection and told the Court no work had been done since 1953, and that residents had made two further complaints about the building to him while he was there. Rosie was found guilty (again) of failing to comply with the repair order. The Magistrate handed down a fine this time – of £2! Yes, that’s not a typo. Two Pounds. The landlord got a £2 fine for failure to carry out £600 of essential repairs. You can see now how landlords could and did act as they did with relative impunity.
Two months later, on 19th April 1954, Donald Rosie was in front of the Magistrates yet again. This time he was charged with failing to make repairs at a tenement he owned at 76 Bangor Road in Leith. At this time we now come upon another overlooked fact. One month after this, in May 1954, Rosie formed The Bangor Tenement Co. Ltd. with a capital of only £100, himself and mother as directors and himself as company secretary. Into this company the ownership of his tenements were placed. By doing this, he was cutting off his personal financial liability towards them. This was a smart financial move as he could probably see the Corporation and Courts were now intent on pursuing and making an example of him.
Newspaper notice of the formation of the Bangor Tenement Co. Ltd., Scotsman, May 29th, 1954One assumes Rosie finally made enough repairs to keep the City Engineer off his back for a while, but not for long. Two years later, in April 1956, the Dean of Guild Court ordered repair work to be carried out by the Bangor Tenement Co. after a petition by the Procurator Fiscal. But yet again, no repairs were made. At this time, Rosie claimed to have asked the Corporation to take 6 Beaumont Place off his hands or demolish it again. But if he did try this, again they didn’t want it.
It was around this time that Rosie now adopted a new tactic. He started “selling” flats at Beaumont Place to their residents. This was a clever scheme, it diluted Rosie’s ownership and liability and made the Corporation’s legal paperwork a lot more complicated. Instead of dealing with 1 owner, the Corporation were now dealing with a multitude of owners; it was top-level obfuscation. Except these “owners” weren’t really owners, even if they were entered as such on the Valuation Rolls – Donald Rosie kept the deeds. He admitted so much himself later in Court. Local councillor Pat Rogan, who we will meet further on in our story, described these “sales” as being conveyed on “scraps of paper” with transactions recorded in plain notebooks. This sort of scheme again was fairly common amongst slum landlords. The tenants stumped up a sizeable amount of their cash (from £14 to £100 was noted at Beaumont Place) and in return they got to lived in a slum rent free. But they owned it only at the discretion of their landlord and had no real security. Many tenants knew what was going on and entered willingly into such transactions; there was an attraction to the prospect of rent free living and there was hope that progress would come along soon and sort things out for them. Others also hoped – naively or cynically – that voluntarily living in a condemned slum would get them a council house sooner.
“Corner of Dalrymple Place and Carnegie Street”, Adam H. Malcolm. 1959. © Edinburgh City LibrariesOver the following 2 years, Rosie managed to “sell” at least 14 of his condemned flats on Beaumont Place to their residents. But the City Engineer eventually lost patience with the repairs and had some of the basic essentials carried out themselves. In January 1958 they sued Rosie for £12 14/- to recoup the cost of these. No surprise, Rosie didn’t pay this and went before the Sheriff Court (the next step up the Scottish legal system from the Burgh Court). He contended that as the City had declined his free offer of Number Six and as they had refused him a “closure order” on it, they were obliged to acquire it off of him instead. He lost this case and the City got its £12 14/-.
Two more years passed, in which time Rosie managed to “sell” at least 14 of his condemned flats on Beaumont Place. The City Engineer lost patience with the repairs though and had some basics carried out themselves. In January 1958 they sued Rosie for £12 14/- for these. But the wheels of progress in the St. Leonard’s district by now were now (slowly) beginning to turn, interminably. In February the following year, 1959, the city issued Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) for the worst of the housing around Beaumont Place. This extended to 391 flats with 538 different owners, superiors, occupiers and holders of heritable security (in Scottish property law, mortgage lenders) to deal with. The Landlords had helped conspire to make the ownership of property in the Slums incredibly complex and it was now slowing everything down. All this legal paperwork was just for a few streets, with scores more like them in the neighbourhood. As a result, it took a full 9 months to sort the mountain of paperwork out for the “Carnegie Street areas A & B“. It was not until the 19th November 1959 that the CPO finally crossed the desk of the Secretary of State for Scotland, Rt. Hon. John Scott Maclay MP, and was approved.
“Carnegie Street from the East.” (looking towards the Pleasance, this is the street adjacent to Beaumont Place). 1959, Adam H. Malcolm. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe Penny Tenement would now be purchased by the Corporation for a lot more than a penny and demolished, and it would no longer be Donald Rosie’s problem. But there was a catch; CPOs did not become operative until 30 days after signing. So he had better hope nothing happened in the next 30 days. The tenement had stood for 145 years, surely it could manage one more month?
It started to rain.
It rained a lot in fact. It was mid-November in Scotland after all. It rained all the next day, November 20th. In the evening, local Councillor Pat Rogan was called to Number Six by concerned residents. He was well known and popular locally; “one of us“, a son of the district. Although he was a Labour councillor and the Progressives held power, Rogan was not content to just sit in opposition made and made slum clearance his personal priority. He was energetic about his duties and did what he could to help people in his ward. He was on good terms and first names with Corporation officials and workers and was able to swing many favours to not circumvent the usual channels and get things sorted for people. “Pat” was also a builder by trade and by his account had become something of an “out of hours” housing service for his constituents. On occasions where he couldn’t rouse a member of the City Engineer’s department to deal with an issue, he had been known to go to his own yard to get materials to make emergency repairs. So there wasn’t anything that unusual in the residents of Six Beaumont Place summoning a city councillor to their tenement one evening to look over something with his builder’s eye and to see if he could get anything done.
Pat Rogan (centre right figure, to the right of prospective PM Harold Wilson holding the pipe) when he was Housing Committee Chairman, showing Harold Wilson around the slums of Jamaica Street in 1964.At Number Six, Rogan took one look at the way the back wall of the tenement had stated to bulge and did not like what he saw. As it was late, he advised its occupants to sleep as close to the centre of the building as they could that night and that he would arrange for the City Engineer to make a visit first thing the following morning. Rogan went home to bed, but at 4AM the following morning received a call from the Parish priest to say the back wall of the Penny Tenement had just collapsed…
It was around 3AM when John Kernachan, 27, was awoken by his wife’s screams to find himself watching the back wall of his flat disappearing before his eyes. As he got out of bed, the floor beneath him gave way too. He managed to grab on to something, anything, and pull himself up and out to safety with his wife and young child. The Brocks family, on the third floor, were not quite so lucky. Five year old Catherine fell through the floor and landed in the flat of William Cranston below her. He was able to bundle her up and out the door before his floor too disappeared down with the rest. Catherine’s little sister, two year old Margaret, fell clean out of the flat and onto the pile of rubble forming in the back green below. Her mother, Betty, jumped after her and pulled her to safety before more came crashing down. The pair were bashed, cut and bruised, but miraculously otherwise unhurt and the only casualties.
When the dawn broke it was clear quite what a catastrophe had been narrowly averted. Where once there had been a scrap of back green there was now a pile of four storeys of back wall, floors, windows, furniture and assorted possessions. There were 20 occupied flats (out of 23) at Six Beaumont Place and yet nobody had been seriously injured.
Sunday Post photo showing the aftermath of the collapse.All the adjacent flats on that side of Beaumont Place were evacuated on the spot; residents were advised to go to friends or relations, or offered emergency accommodation in the City homeless centre in the former City Poorhouse at Greenbank. A police guard was put on the street to keep spectators at a safe distance. The City Engineer’s men moved in to clear the worst of the rubble and shore up the back wall with scaffolding. The Housing Committee and Lord Provost came on an inspection, with the City Engineer pointing out the huge crack in the end gable of Dalrymple Place facing the disaster site.
Newspaper photo of the inspection by the Housing Committee behind No. 6 Beaumont Place, with the end gable of Dalrymple Place behind having an obvious crack in it.That crack was inspected closer. On November 27th, 22 families at the end of Dalrymple Place were given 2 hours to pack up and leave. Within days, 100 flats had been condemned in the surroundings streets and 250 people made homeless.
This was a huge headache for the city, but what is remarkable is that the day after the collapse of the Penny Tenement, 18 of the 20 families who had lived there found themselves in new council houses in Niddrie & Craigmillar, with the other 2 declining and making their own arrangements. A huge operation had swung into effect for the other displaced people. Vacant council properties were turned around in a fraction of the usual time.; the Housing Department’s key cabinet at City Chambers was literally emptied. “Let us have every key you can lay your hands on“, the City Architect’s department was told and new properties approaching completion were rushed to finish and made ready for occupation. The gas, water and electric board employees worked round the clock to make the necessary services connections. The Civil Defence sent a mobile HQ to St. Leonards to coordinate operations, communicating with the City Chambers by shortwave radio. The Women’s Voluntary Service sent their Meals on Wheels mobile too, to provide workers and residents tea, soup and sandwiches. The Cleansing Department provided lorries to move people’s possessions to their new houses. By 30th November, all 250 residents in the district who had been evacuated in the preceding 9 days were now in council homes where they wanted them, with 80% of them being kept in their preference of the south of the city.
The City Engineer leeds the Lord Provost and the Housing Committee on an inspection tour through the condemned flats on Beaumont Place.On December 1st, the Housing Committee went on another walkabout tour of the slums. They got short shrift: “Why don’t you drop a bomb on this place?” yelled one resident in Leith’s Kirkgate at them. “Come inside instead of walking about” another demanded from her window in Arthur Street in Dumbiedykes. At the “Grand Committee on Scottish Affairs” at Westminster, Edinburgh Central Labour MP Tom Oswald asked if the Secretary of State would intervene to help speed up Compulsory Purchase Orders and provide compensation to the evicted. He declined on both points. At the City Chambers, Labour passed a motion to try speed up city centre rehousing and slum clearance. The Progressive majority on the Housing Committee defeated it 8-4. Pat Rogan condemned the “procrastination” and stated certain houses were “crumbling and insanitary prisons“. He later gave an extreme example; when they were evacuating the tenements around Beaumont place, in neighbouring Dalrymple Place they found a windowless basement flat with no bed, only a mattresses on a stone floor. Living here they found two young women caring for two babies. Both were working as prostitutes, in shifts, with one out on the streets while the other was in the cellar with the babies.
On the 4th of December, the Edinburgh Corporation served demolition orders at 4 to 8 Beaumont Place. The principal owner was Donald Rosie’s “Bangor Tenement Co.”, but thanks to his “sales”, there were now were 14 other quasi-owners in total. To his credit, Rosie fessed up at the Dean of Guild Court that the others weren’t actually legal owners (despite them already telling the Clerk of Court that they thought they were!). He alone held the title deeds and he alone should be appearing. The owners were given 2 weeks to start demolition, and 6 weeks to complete it – at their own expense. The Compulsory Purchase Order would not come into action for 17 more days, until then they were still liable.
It was as if the slums themselves were now trying to keep up the momentum that had finally driven the city authorities to action. On December 16th the same day (and in a scene oddly reminiscent of recent happenings in Edinburgh) 21 families were given hours to evacuate from 2 tenements in Greenside Row when cracks appeared in the building and the road was closed off by the police…
BBC News Website, 27th January 2024. A tenement in Leith is evacuated after mystery structural cracking appears in its walls.They needn’t have bothered; the tide had now thoroughly turned in Edinburgh against the slums and their landlords. The Scotsman’s editorial drew parallels to the “Fall of Heave Awa Land” back in 1861 and wondered aloud as to how this was happening in the “age of Dounreay and Chapelcross“. The wheels of civic machinery had been set in motion. On December 19th 1959, the Dean of Guild Court petitioned the owners at Beaumont and Dalrymple Place and also Bangor Road in Leith (where Rosie was an owner) for repairs that had not been made. Ten days later, more demolition orders were served for demolition around Beaumont Place where owners were refusing to make properties. A week later, January 6th 1960, Donald Rosie – true to form – appealed to the Court of Session against demolition orders served on him.
The Scotsman, January 6th 1960.He wanted a delay of one month; this would allow the Compulsory Purchase Order on his properties to come into force before anything had to be demolished – he feared that once the bricks and mortar of his “assets” were gone, he’d have no bargaining position regards the price. Dragging his heels in the courts was the only thing he could do here. The Court have him 2 weeks instead. This seems to have sped things up and the CPO went through; the city bought up the slums of Dalrymple Place, Carnegie Street and Beaumont Place and demolished the lot. The owners didn’t get what they wanted, but they got shot of their demolition liability. A year later, the Evening News printed a stark photo (below) of these streets; Beaumont Place is in the foreground, the roadway of Dalrymple Place runs into the distance on the left. In the distance beyond the fence is Carnegie Street and further beyond that on the left is the Deaconess Hospital. On the right we can see numbert 1-23 St. Leonard’s Hill.
Evening News photo of the Carnegie Street CPO area, 5th October 1961The end was nigh for most of St. Leonards and Dumbiedykes. In 1962, tenants were warned not to clean their windows in case the frames fell out of the walls onto the street. One woman narrowly avoided being killed by falling masonry as she stepped into a corner shop. Housewives reported hoarding boxes in case they had to flit in an emergency. Roofs leaked, walls gaped. “HERIOT MOUNT TENANTS ARE AFRAID HOMES MAY COLLAPSE” said the headline. But by now, Pat Rogan found himself chair of the Housing Committee due to local political deadlock and it being a difficult job nobody really wanted. He set about this immense responsibility with his usual single-minded determination and practical approach. His policy was simple (simplistic, even); demolish thoroughly, build quickly. Construction land for council housing was freed up quickly by prioritising the replacement of the low-density, postwar prefabricated bungalows and a crash-building programme of tower block construction was initiated. By 1964, 1,500 houses had been demolished in the St. Leonards and Dumbiedykes area after it was designated a Comprehensive Development Area.
Scotsman Photo, 3rd August 1964 showing the clearance of Dumbiedykes and St. Leonards.On the site of the Penny Tenement, an award-winning new development by Ross-Smith & Jamieson of 63 houses for 200 people was erected from 1964-67 called Carnegie Court (after Carnegie Street). The rest of Beaumont Place wasn’t redeveloped until 1989. At this point, the District Council decided that the street name had been spelled wrong since 1815 and should actually be Bowmont after an ancient landowner here, Robert Ker, Duke of Roxburghe and Marquesses of Bowmont. And so they changed it.
Carnegie Court, looking down Bowmont Place to Salisbury Crags.You may well have got to the end of this thread and yet are still thinking “just where on earth actually was the Penny Tenement?” Well, this composite overlay image might just help answer that:
No 6 Beaumont Place in 1959 overlaid on modern Bowmont Place, looking towards Heriot Rise and Arthur’s Seat. Original image © Edinburgh City LibrariesNote to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
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