Problèmes à Gogo: the thread about the Bonnington Bridge Bar

If you take yourself along the Water of Leith Walkway then, where you meet Newhaven Road, you will come to the burnt out shell of a building. It’s been this way for the best part of a decade: doors and windows boarded up, now covered in graffiti; a roof open to the elements, now sprouting saplings. Look below the parapet of the adjacent bridge and you might notice a mysterious plaque for Uranus Art Garden. Perhaps this is a gentle joke at the expense of Jupiter Art Land? Who knows, but if you look down through the overgrowth you will see a tiered patio down to the river. Is, or was, this that art garden? If so, how did it come to be here? And just what is the story with this ruinous structure?

What you have been pondering was once the public house known as The Bonnington Bridge; a small, neat building – barely a single room – at 74-76 Newhaven Road. It was built around 1868 when an application for a licence to sell excisable liquors was made to the Burgh of Leith by the appropriately named Theresa Beveridge. The premises at this time were also known as The Bonnington Bridge. This appellation obviously refers to the adjacent bridge of that name, allegedly first built in 1812 but clearly marked in 1804 maps and referred to in newspapers of that time. They stand on a plot of land that had hitherto been the garden of a house called Bridge Place and were let from Mr Miller of Bonnington Old House.

Bonnington had long been a centre of milling and was progressively industrialised throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Its population was swelled by workers who provided a ready clientèle for an enterprising publican. In 1880 the licence transferred to Thomas Henderson then in 1890 to William Blyth. In the latter case it was granted on the proviso he “undertook to keep eatables such as sandwiches and bread and cheese and such like for the supply of customers“. In 1894 the vast Chancelot Mill opened nearby and the pub became a favoured haunt for its thirsty workers. Come the new century there license changed hands again; in 1902 to H. S. McKay and in 1904 to J. M. Clark.

Between 1902 and 1903 the adjacent bridge was rebuilt and widened at the joint expense of the Corporations of Edinburgh and Leith. The boundary between these municipalities ran down its centre (see the dotted line in the above map) and therefore each was liable for a half share of the costs.

The pub’s licence was taken over in 1909 by David Bennet, who would keep it for fifteen years. By this time it had become a tied house of George Mackay & Co., who brewed on the Southside at St Leonard’s Street. Post Office Directories list it at this time as trading under the name of the Bonnington Bridge Tavern. Bennet suffered an elaborate burglary in June 1913 when slates were removed from the pub’s roof and a hole 15 inches square was cut in the sarking boards below to allow entry into the bar. The thieves failed to gain entry to the safe but made off with 18 Shillings from the till.

The next licensee was Mrs Jane Macintyre Whyte who was granted it in October 1925. It then transferred in 1938 to William R. W. Whitson, who would extend the premises to the rear. By the time Durward Moncur took over in 1963 the brewery was New Mackay Taverns. This latter change was the result of Mackay’s being taken over by the English brewer Watney Mann two years previously. The new owners put their Scottish tied houses into this subsidiary and used them to introduce the novelty of keg beer into the country; Watney’s Red Barrel.

In March 1965 a loyal customer of fifty plus years, seventy three year old John Black, sued bar manager John Ward for £500 for loss of earnings. Black claimed he had been ejected from the premises – after cracking a joke about being overcharged – with such force that he required hospitalisation and seven weeks off work. The newspapers did not report if his claim was successful. Ownership changed again in 1969 when it was moved to Waverley Taverns (Scotland) Ltd, another Wattney Mann holding company. This was the result of a further takeover, merging the former Mackay’s premises with those of Drybrough’s of Craigmillar.

The decline of heavy industry in the district in the 1960s and 70s saw the pub’s demographic drift away from being a humble howff for the working man. By the early 1980s it had forged itself a new reputation as offering the latest opening times in Leith – 2AM every weekday – and always being good for a “lock in“. To keep the punters entertained there was live Jazz on Thursdays, country night on Fridays and a Golden Oldies disco on Saturday. And Go-Go dancers. Go-Go dancers every lunch time, late on weeknights and all day Friday and Saturday. Sunday was the Lord’s Day and therefore there would be no dancers and no drinking: the doors remained firmly closed.

When the author of 1987’s Leith Pub Guide‘s – the appropriately named Derry Beer – visited he recorded it being known locally as either The Bonny or The Bridge. In his opinion the place “really comes to life at night” and was a favourite spot for stag nights and rowdy bowling club celebrations. The landlord at this time was John Murray, who also ran a print shop over the road.

The 1990s saw a series of landlords come and go. In 1992 it passed to John Moriarty, who also ran the Alhambra Bar on Leith Walk (one wonders if he was a relation of the famous Mary Moriarty who ran the Port O’ Leith). In 1995 it was taken over by Michele Marr and in 1998 transferred to Gary Reid and James Gourlay. These latter owners changed the name to the Newhaven Inn, a somewhat odd choice given the fact it lies a kilometre south of that particular village. The name stuck despite the geographic anomaly and was retained when it was taken over in 2003 by Ian and Moira Brown. By this time the trading hours had moved with the times, the doors opening on Sundays but with the late nights pared back; midnight on Thursdays and 1AM on Friday and Saturdays.

In 2006 a further change came to the little pub when it found itself in the vast portfolio of national operator Punch Taverns. This was the result of an extended and convoluted series of takeovers in the pub trade. Wattney Mann was taken over by Grand Metropolitan in 1972, who sold their tied houses to Courage in 1991. The latter was bought by Scottish & Newcastle in 1995 who sold their tied houses to Punch in 2003. The new owners were granted planning permission to build a small extension for a new kitchen and add a raised outdoor seating deck overlooking the river. This was possibly a response to the ban of smoking in enclosed public spaces in Scotland year (has it really been 20 years?) At this time the name was also sensibly changed back to its original Bonnington Bridge.

The Bonny hit the news in May 2009 for the wrong reasons when a cannabis farm was discovered in its basement. Police officers searching for stolen property there found more than 350 plants, valued between £50-150,000, behind a series of locked doors in the cellar. They were being tended by an undocumented immigrant, 40 year old Ming Lee, who told them he had been paid £100 a week to tend them. Lee claimed to have been locked downstairs for two weeks and had only been allowed out once to buy food. At this time the owner was still Punch, who denied any and all knowledge of what had been going on.

Punch shuttered the pub and would never re-open it. Obviously deciding it was time to call last orders they put it up for sale later in the year. Planning permission was granted at that time to turn it into a fireplace showroom and that might have been that for our story had it not been for a company called Nocturnal Aviators Limited. Formed as Malsen Limited in 2001, the company was dormant until it bought the pub for £120,000 in April 2010. It planned to return it to its original use, having been granted planning permission to thoroughly expand and modernise it. Its goal was to take advantage of the position overlooking the Water if Leith and pivot the business from traditional boozer to a family-friendly, food-centric bistro. The man behind this was the company’s sole shareholder and director; former Scotland Rugby international turned publican and businessman, Norrie Rowan. After making a name for himself on the Murrayfield turf in the 1980s, he remade it in the 1990s by excavating The Vaults and The Caves out of the cellars and arches beneath South Bridge. In doing so he forged a reputation for doing things his way, digging first and asking questions later, repeatedly coming into conflict with city planners and engineers along the way.

Like his previous schemes, Rowan once again intended to expand downwards. In the basement he would create a restaurant and second bar, from where a new patio terrace on the river bank would be accessed through folding glass doors. Work began, but repeatedly appears to have stalled and never reached a conclusion. Once again one of Norrie Rowan’s schemes brought him into conflict with the Council and there are a series of enforcement actions and appeals detailed in official records (summarised in the table at the foot of this post). And yet again he also managed to upset the city’s Roads Engineers, who charged he had been digging into cellars beneath the bridge without permission. Rowan contended these were within the curtilage of his property and that they had not proved otherwise.

If one looks back using Google Streetview then – from the outside at least – it work appears to have been nearing completion in 2012. At that time however a full new planning application was taken that further altered and extended the place. The defining feature of this updated scheme was a large steel-framed, south-facing, glass dormer that sought to bring more daylight down into the building. It was somewhat at odds with the traditional masonry façade and wood-clad alterations at the side and was was initially rejected at planning. Rowan decided to build it anyway and managed to have it approved retrospectively on appeal.

Further complaints against him during this time were that we was flytipping on the riverbank – he claimed instead he was cleaning up the mess of others – and that his property was unkempt. Another claim was made that walls were being built on the riverbank without permission and there were two that he was undertaking unauthorised works beneath the bridge structure. No action was ever taken against any of these complaints. It should be noted however that the various walls that were built on the riverbank bare no relation to anything shown on any planning drawings. They do however denote this area as containing raised beds for “planting and sculpture“. Is this the Uranus Art Garden? One wonders if this was something of a wry joke on Rowan’s part after having so many unfounded complaints raised against his scheme.

By 2016 the pub had been closed for seven years and finally appeared – from the outside at least – to be approaching a state of completion (again). Disaster struck however on August 15th when the building was gutted by a fire, which was sufficiently intense to have been photographed by visitors to Edinburgh Castle. The Broughton Spurtle – self-described stirrer of local news – reported “when we spoke to Police Scotland on 18 August, the cause of the fire had not been established, and enquiries were ‘ongoing.’” They ended with “Let’s hope the owner was insured.” Planning documents submitted to the Council on his behalf in 2019 noted “a lengthy insurance case was being contested“.

It’s not clear if a cause for the fire was ever established. Rowan wrote a letter of reply to the Spurtle in which he detailed his version of the difficulties encountered by the project. He concluded “these delays have led to the situation we now find ourselves in. What could have been an attractive and vibrant access point to the walkway looks likely to remain an eyesore for several more years“.

A less determined individual might have just given up after so much time and the disastrous fire, but in 2018 another of Rowan’s company – Termshield Ltd – sought a 5-year consent with a view to rising from the ashes. This rising was quite literal and involved extending upwards by two-storeys using six shipping containers, welded together. This proposal was refused and an appeal was rejected in 2019. The premises’ licence expired that year and given the site appear to all intents and purposes to have been abandoned since then, they have never been renewed. At this time Norrie Rowan decided to turn his hand to local politics, with limited success.

Seven years on from this last activity, if you manage to look through a gap in the rotting boards across the doors or windows you will see a sad site within; bare walls, burnt roof timbers and a filling of flytipped tyres and building waste being slowly overtaken by the Buddleia. Accounts for Nocturnal Aviators Ltd filed with Companies House indicate this ruin remains the company’s sole tangible asset. In its filings for 2025 they are recorded as a “potential development site owned by the company“. One imagines that after a catastrophic fire and a decade open to the elements, demolition and redevelopment might one day at last make a return on this troublesome investment.

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The Palace at the Foot of the Walk: the thread about the many lives of an early cinema

The Foot of the Walk pub in Leith has been in the news recently as its owner has put it on the market for sale, to much local indignation. These premises first opened on 1st January 1913 as The Palace cinema (in reference to the term “Picture Palace“, which was in use at the time to differentiate the upper end of the cinema market from the lower), showing a programme of illustrated nursery rhymes, a film about a gang of horse thieves and other “pictures of a humorous kind, which were greatly appreciated“. The cinema, as built, had a proscenium 32 feet wide by 22 feet high which gave it the largest screen in all of Edinburgh or Leith. It had a capacity for 2,000; 900 in the pit, 650 in the pit stalls and 450 in the upper gallery and a feature was that both the roof and balcony were cantilevered, with no supporting pillars to get in the way of the view of the screen. Great attention was paid to fire safety; the Brackliss Motiograph projector was installed behind the auditorium, within fireproof walls, there were 8 emergency exits from the auditorium and lighting was electric, rather than gas.

It cost the Leith Public Hall & Property Co. around £20,000 to build (around £1.8 million in 2023) and was part of a syndicate of cinemas controlled by theatre impresario Robert Colburn (“RC”) Buchanan; a man described by Scottish Cinema journal at that time as being gifted to the trade “by the gods“. Buchanan was for a time the managing director of the Gaiety theatre in Leith, which stood on th opposite side of Constitution Street from The Palace. The latter site had long been the premises of Bell, Rannie & Co., one of Leith’s longest established wine merchants, where brothers Robert and John Cockburn served their apprenticeships.

A fire at Bell, Rannie & Co.’s George Street shop in 1910 led to the sale of their Constitution Street warehouse and offices. It was briefly thereafter occupied by the Rev. John Findlater and the Leith Methodist Church, which had recently become homeless after its church across the road was demolished to allow the construction of Leith Central Station. Shortly after this, it too was cleared, to make way for the cinema which was built on top of Bell & Rannie’s old vaults.

The cinema was surrounded at ground floor level with shop units on both Constitution and Duke Streets and at this time the opportunity was taken for the former street to be widened and a corresponding portion of the latter narrowed, to improve the road layout at the Foot of the Walk. Upstairs, on the Duke Street side, there was a hall that was long occupied by the Leith Central Snooker Club.

One thing that wasn’t included in the demolition and rebuilding was an adjoining bonded warehouse, the property of Cockburn & Campbell, wine merchants at 15 Duke Street. This sad looking, long-abandoned old building is actually one of the oldest in this part of Leith – dating from at least 1804!

The Palace was designed around showing two programmes every night, at 7PM and 9PM, and so was laid out internally such that one audience could enter through the foyer while previous one exited through separate doors onto Duke and Constitution street, without any mutual disruption. The advert below shows the opening week’s programme, which described the venue as “a Lordly Picture House. The Largest. The Latest. The Best.“

The opening feature – “A Race For An Inheritance” (A Drama rushing from sensation to sensation) – was a Gaumont film that had only recently been released.

This wasn’t the only “Palace” cinema in the neighbourhood, there was Pringle’s Picture Palace at the other end of The Walk on Elm Row and they were joined by the Empire Picture Palace on Henderson Street in 1917. Further afield there was the St. Bernard’s Picture Palace in Stockbridge, which opened in 1911, The Palace on Princes Street, which opened on Christmas Eve 1913 and the New Palace on the High Street that opened for talkies in 1929. The Leith Palace was wired for sound in September 1930 to allow it to join that latest cinema craze. In 1931 the Cimarron with Richard Dix and Irene Dunne was one of the first such pictures being shown. Alterations were made at this time by renowned cinema (and roadhouse!) architect Thomas Bowhill Gibson, whose work includes the Dominion in Morningside and former George / County in Portobello. These may have included removal of the tower over the entrance that is seen in the first picture on this page.

The Palace quietly prospered in the 1930s and 1940s, although eclipsed by newer and larger and more modern houses (such as The Capitol on Manderston Street and The State on Great Junction Street, it remained popular. However by the 1960s, like many smaller houses it was beginning to struggle to compete with television and closed without ceremony on December 31st 1966, 53 years to the day since it opened, showing The Trouble With Angels starring Rosalind Russell and Hayley Mills.

The cinema went on the market and was purchased by new owners, Norwich Enterprises Ltd, trading as Palace Promotions. It was shortly thereafter converted to serve the new craze of bingo, still under the Palace name. A fire in 1968 destroyed most of the auditorium roof of the building on March 24th 1968, fortunately some hours after the 1,000 patrons who had been playing had gone home. It was repaired thereafter and soon back in business.

In 1978 the Bingo hall closed and was replaced by Cuemasters Snooker and Social Club and in turn the long established Leith Central Snooker Club upstairs closed in 1983. In 1992 a small church called “The Potters House” moved in to the latter space.

The old cinema was refurbished and reopened as the Wetherspoon pub The Foot of the Walk on 27th June 2001. Few of the original features are visible inside, but if you use your imagination you can get a rough idea of the original layout. The upper balcony still exists, hidden away, with its seats, carpets and wall coverings as they were when the last film was shown in 1966. You can view pictures of it here on the excellent Scottish Cinemas website. After over 20 years of security in the guise of a cheap, cheerful and popular watering hole, its future is once again uncertain. In its life it has spent 53 years as a cinema, 12 years as a bingo hall, 23 years as a snooker hall and a further 23 as a public house; like many former cinemas it has now spent longer not being a cinema than the time it spent serving its intended purpose.

As for the name “Foot of the Walk“? It’s a name for this locality that’s as old as postal directories are in Edinburgh and Leith, appearing in Peter Williamson’s first directories in the 1770s. And we can push it back 40 years more in the newspapers, an advert for one of the first houses built here appearing in the Caledonian Mercury on January 4th 1737.

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

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

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These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

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I have been keeping a list of pubs that I have had a drink in that have subsequently closed down. Last week I had to add four more pubs to my list. Two of them - both called The White Horse - have actually been demolished. On a happier note, tonight I can cross one of those names off of my list because The Ship in West Thurrock has reopened!

#PublicHouses #SaveOurPubs #CAMRA

1964 – Deramore Arms, 361 Ormeau Road, Belfast
Architect: Robert McKinstry & Associates

Wild exterior for a modern bar with upstairs lounge in Belfast - a bold relief sculpture wrapping around the corner at street
https://www.archiseek.com/1964-deramore-arms-361-ormeau-road-belfast/
#ArchitectureOfBelfast #LostBuildingsOfIreland #1964 #ArchitectureOfBelfast #DesmondKinney19342014 #LostBelfast #OrmeauRoadBelfast #PatrickMcElroy19232008 #PublicHouses #RobertMcKinstryAssociates

1917 – Former Mooney’s, Abbey Street, Dublin
Architect: McDonnell & Dixon

One of the chain of Mooney's bars across the city - this was known as The Abbey Mooney. Rebuilt by McDonnell & Dixon after the 1916 Rising. Badly damaged by fire in 1976, Now part of the fin
https://www.archiseek.com/mooneys-abbey-street-dublin/
#ArchitectureOfDublinCity #1917 #AbbeyStreetDublin #DublinPublicHouses #JGMooneyCo #McDonnellDixon #MooneysPublicHouses #Post1916Reconstruction #PublicHouses

1960 – McCabe’s Bar, Portadown, Co. Armagh
Architect: Ian Campbell

Interesting modern insertion into a traditional pub exterior. Also included a remodelling of the interior to include an off-license - the owner who had inherited the bar was more interested in wine. James E. McCabe & Co. went on to b
https://www.archiseek.com/2024/1960-mccabes-bar-portadown-co-armagh/
#ArchitectureOfArmagh #LostBuildingsOfIreland #1960 #CoArmagh #IanCampbell19252020 #Portadown #PublicHouses

The Tower Tavern on the corner of Clipstone Street and Cleveland Street stands next to the site of another public house that, according to some sources, had an unusual name.

“This was originally called the Bastard Arms in 1826 in honour of Henry Fitzroy (1663-1690), the bastard son of Charles II,” wrote Mike Pentelow, former editor of Fitzrovia News, in his guide to Fitzrovia’s pubs.

“Henry became the lord of Tottenham Court manor through marriage at the age of nine. Hence the area took its name from Fitzroy (meaning illegitimate son of a king).

“He packed a lot into his short life, killing two opponents in duels, kidnapping his sister-in-law, joined the navy and dying in battle, after being made the Earl of Euston and Duke of Grafton.

“By the 1840s the pub was renamed the more respectful Fitzroy Arms, until 1966 when it was knocked down as part of the building [by the Inner London Education Authority] of the polytechnic (now University of Westminster) and reopened in 1972 as the Tower Tavern, after the nearby Post Office Tower (now BT Tower).

“His mother, the Duchess of Cleveland (1641-1709) was said to be the lewdest of the king’s concubines and was reported to have bitten the penis off a recently exhumed bishop,” wrote Pentelow.

A photo taken in 1913 shows a row of terraced houses at 19-20 Clipstone Street, with part of the pub with the sign Fitzroy Arms visible on the left.

Another source says the original pub on the site was actually named after its one-time landlord, and much earlier.

“First licensed in 1776 as the Bastard Arms and named after the landlord, John Bastard. Renamed to Fitzroy Arms in 1826,” states the West London Pub Guide, by the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra).

This might well be true, but the historical record is unclear.

According to the Survey of London, in a chapter on the development of the area between Bolsover Street and Cleveland Street, one property developer in the 1770s “was the mason John Bastard, who moved from his previous base in nearby Suffolk (now Nassau) Street to build a couple of houses on the north side of Upper Marylebone (now New Cavendish) Street along with the Fitzroy Arms in Clipstone Street behind, all leased to him in 1776, two years before his death.”

Bastard built the pub, but was it ever named after him? I’d like to think it was.

The University of Westminster is the owner of the Tower Tavern pub which is currently closed and boarded up. The lease of the previous tenant of the pub expired and they chose not to renew it. The university is now exploring options in regards to this site, I’m told.

https://fitzrovianews.com/2024/03/17/history-notes-the-bastard-arms-clipstone-street/

#ClipstoneStreet #ddd #history #historyNotes #publicHouses #pubs #SurveyOfLondon #TowerTavern #UniversityOfWestminster_

The thread about Edinburgh’s roadhouses; when the glamour of art deco hostelries took on the Temperance Movement (and won!)

This thread was originally written and published in January 2024.

The pub in the picture below has been in the news for the wrong reasons recently but, despite its rather forbidding appearance these days, it’s a very important pub. It is a surviving example, serving its original purpose, of only a handful of such inter-war hostelries that were built in Edinburgh; the roadhouse. But these nine public houses didn’t just appear for no reason, they were the culmination of and response to a long political and social struggle around public drinking in the first half of the 20th century. Shall we unravel their story?

The short version of the roadhouse story is this: they are a blend of 1930s architecture and design glamour that were used by the licensed trade to entice a new generation of sophisticated, Holywood-inspired, upmarket, car-driving drinkers. That’s partly true, but is by no means the full story.

To understand how Edinburgh got its roadhouses we have to go back to 1913 when the Temperance movement was at the peak of its power and the Temperance (Scotland) Act was passed. This was also known as the Local Veto Act as it allowed localities to force referendums on going dry – although this only applied to public houses, not restaurants or hotels. The veto ballots could be called by 10% of registered electors in a burgh, parish or ward petitioning for it. There were 3 options on the bill:

• No Change, i.e. the area would stay wet
• Limitation – there would be a 25% reduction in licences in the area
• No Licence, i.e. prohibition

The No Licence option required a supermajority of 55% to pass, representing at least 35% of all electors in the area. If that hurdle failed to be passed, these votes were then counted towards Limitation.

The Act had unforeseen consequences though: the brewers and licensed trade circled their wagons and got organised, forming defence committees to coordinate their response. They also put off investment in their estates in case of an unfavourable ballot; why spend money with the threat of a loss of licence hanging over you? As a result the quality of pubs got worse, not better. But the Temperance Movement had to wait until the conclusion of WW1 before making their next move. This came in 1920 to coincide with local elections and they launched their Pussyfoot Campaign to coordinate mass petitioning for local veto ballots across Scotland. This was named after an American prohibition campaigner who arrived in the UK in 1919, who had a tactic of pussyfooting around pubs incognito to gather evidence against them. And so in December 1920, Edinburgh (amongst many other Scottish localities) held its first Local Veto ballot. The terms of the act meant that public houses had to shut during polling hours. The Evening News reported record trade in Musselburgh as the city’s drinkers fled to the sanctuary of the Honest Toun for the day. 

But after the last pint glasses had been emptied, the last drams downed and the ballot papers counted, the Temperance Movement were in for a disappointment: Edinburgh voted firmly for No Change in every ward – 68% overall. No Licence got 29%, less than half of what was needed, with a small minority voting for Limitation. The city would stayed wet. The Movement tried again in 1923 and although the polls shifted a few percent, once again every ward voted for a majority of No Change. Things were closest in Morningside where it was 51:46% between status quo and prohibition. You can spot something of a definite inner city / suburban and social order based split in the numbers.

So it was now 1923, 10 years since the Temperance Act was passed, and neither the Movement or the more moderate Reformers were any further forward in the city and the trade still refused to invest in their estates. And so the quality of pubs continued to deteriorate. Many in the trade did recognise the need to improve, however they wanted the threat of the 1913 Act pulling the rug from under their feet to be gone before they put their money where their mouths were. They were supported politically in this by reformers, led by Lord Novar in the House of Lords and Lord Salvesen of the Scottish Public House Reform League. The Reformers took as their template the New Model Inn developed by Harry Redfern for the Government in the Carlisle district after WW1 which aimed to use better design and an improved service offering to reduce drunkenness.

Despite the deliberately anachronistic appearance, these were a modern ideal of a public house, full of design innovations that we now take for granted. These included the practice of seated drinking around tables in open saloons where all corners and entries and exits could be viewed from the bar line; traditionally most pubs indulged in drinking standing around a small service bar, or in small rooms where what happened in the room stayed in the room. Public bars were accompanied by relaxed lounge bars, where women were tolerated in the company of their husbands, hot food was served and other wholesome diversions such as reading, writing and games rooms were included. The Scottish Reformers called these the Improved Public House on the Carlisle Model. Interestingly, they declined to follow a different but more local and established form of reformed public house; the Gothenburg. The Goth movement grew out of that city and had been established cooperatively across Scottish mining communities, but particularly in the Lothians and Fife. It is likely that the Goth principles were too Temperate and too verging on Socialism for the trade to accept.

Reform was all well and good in practice, however the trade still had to get through the Licensing Courts, which were stuffed with conservatively-minded councillors who were frequently aligned with the Church and were heavily lobbied by well organised Temperance campaigners and their lawyers. The Courts were able to make it very difficult for new licenses to be obtained and all too easy for old ones to be lost. Over time they managed to reduce the overall numbers of licences in the City by granting fewer than were removed or expired.

The end result of all this was that there was a period of almost 20 years when no new pubs were built in Edinburgh. Things came to a head in 1933 when the President of the Edinburgh Local Veto Defence Association petitioned for a licence for a new inn in the new district of Balgreen. Robert Russell Hogg had kept a pub next to the City Chambers for 21 years, which the Corporation now wanted him to give up to allow them to extend that building. He pushed a test case to allow an Improved Tavern in an otherwise dry district as a direct challenge to Temperance – stipulating he wanted to be out of the city centre and in an area where he would not have to compete with established trade. Hogg was a keen reformer and stated he wanted “an inn after the English type, something the trade would be proud to have in Edinburgh“.

The Temperance Movement had thus far managed to keep all of Edinburgh’s new peripheral council housing schemes effectively “dry” by preventing licenses for pubs and off-licence grocers. They had a lot to lose here and rallied their troops; a petition of 181 owners and occupiers in the district against Hogg’s application was organised. The ministers of Saughtonhall Congregational Church, the Cairns Memorial Church and Stenhouse Church of Scotland all lodged protests. But lose lose they did, by 9-1 votes at the licensing court. And so on December 24th 1934, Edinburgh’s first newly built pub in at least 20 years opened; The Wheatsheaf Inn on Balgreen Road. It was in an Scottish interpretation of the Arts & Crafts style by architects Lorimer & Matthew. Hogg took out adverts calling it “Auld Reekie’s New Modern Inn“.

When it opened it was almost 1/3 mile from the nearest house. It was spacious, with a large, open “tap room” with no corners that could not be observed from the bar line, a kitchen and dining room, a garden, car park and a flat for the landlord upstairs. To cock a snoot at the Temperance Movement, Hogg had an ornamental sculpture added with a legend taken from Omar Khayyam installed above the front door: “AND AS THE COCK CREW THOSE WHO STOOD BEFORE THE TAVERN SHOUTED OPEN THEN THE DOOR“.

The Lord Provost was supportive of the new initiative, and hoped it would help put an end to the scourge of Vertical Drinking (or Perpendicular Drinking as he particularly called it). This was the practice of drinking standing around a serving hatch or bar (which many howffs at the time basically were), rather than seated politely around tables. The Improved Public House genie was now out of the bottle, but others in the trade held back a bit to see how Hogg got on. When it was clear he wad a success on his hands, others decided to join in on the action. The Licensing Courts sat twice a year and so the next two applications had to wait until April 1935.

First up was a widow, Mrs Johan Thom, who kept the Stenhouse Inn by Liberton. She wanted an Improved Pub to replace this old country tavern which she had run with her late husband and her application was successful. The Arts & Craft style Greenend Inn opened on Gilmerton Road on March 23rd 1936, but it has always almost been known by the nickname of its predecessor, The Robin’s Nest. You can see that particular bird on the prominent external sign. These elaborate, painted tavern signs were an import from England where the brewery trade had been trying to revive their ancient art. Mrs Thom had gone all out on the latest facilities, with lounge and public bars, a tea room, restaurant, “parking and accommodation for cars” and a skittle alley! The skittle alley (or space devoted to such other such traditional, wholesome games) would become something of a feature of the roadhouses.

The other application made at this time was something altogether different from these Arts & Crafts reinterpretations of the traditional Olde English country tavern, something instead inspired by the glamour of Hollywood and the ocean liner. This was the Maybury Roadhouse; “Scotland’s premier commercial establishment of the 1930s“.

Gone here were old world comforts of wood and the fireplace and in were sleek Streamline Moderne architecture (by Paterson & Broom) and the glitz of neon lights and jazz bands, the cocktail bar, the grill restaurant, the ballroom, balconies and a mezzanine gallery to watch it all from. As a nod to its ocean liner-influenced architectural styling, there was a rooftop garden complete with a quoits deck . The Maybury opened on 19th November 1936, despite 260 objections by the Temperance Movement and the usual protests of local ministers. Its licensees were Messrs P. McDougall, who had been in the trade for over 40 years, and it cost them £10,000 to build (c. £584k in 2023). Although sometimes referred to as a “roadhouse hotel“, actually a defining feature of the roadhouse was that they were not hotels, the Dundee Licensing Court defined them in 1937 as “a house which supplied all the services of the hotel without sleeping accommodation“. Certainly it was the ultimate expression of the roadhouse concept in Scotland, and endures (as a casino) as one of the finest monuments to Art Deco in the country. During WW2 it was a popular hangout for the officers from the nearby RAF base at Turnhouse and during renovation work in 1988 it was found that the roof structure had been damaged by gun emplacements fitted for the protection of that airfield during that conflict.

The scale and ostentatious glamour of the Maybury was a one-off, but it influenced subsequent applications in the city. Six months after its licence was granted, in October 1935, Mrs Jemima Hood Gair petitioned for a new roadhouse on Niddrie Mains Road to serve the housing estates there with all the latest features, including a billiards room. She had been in the trade herself for 11 years after the death of her husband and kept a licensed grocer at West Adam Street and a pub on Couper Street in Leith. The Temperance Movement were furious – this was a blatant attempt to introduce the public house to a housing scheme they considered to be dry (even though men who wanted to just went into town to drink) and sent in their lawyer, Duncan Maclennan SSC, to lead the objections. By 8 votes to 1, she prevailed, on the condition she relinquished her two existing premises, a compromise position that resulted in a net reduction in licences of one in the city. She was also obliged to serve hot meals as had been proposed. The White House opened on 18th October 1936, in an Art Deco style by Leith architects W. N. Thomson. It featured two public bars, a saloon, cocktail bar, a lounge bar, a skittle alley and billiards and darts rooms, as well as a cafe-cum-restaurant.

The April 1936 licensing committee takes us back where we started, the Anchor Inn on West Granton Road. This application, by James Birrell Rintoul, was approved that year to an Art Deco design by Thomas Bowhill Gibson, better known as a cinema architect (including The Dominion in Morningside). The Anchor is probably the furthest from the model of the Roadhouse of the lot; in reality it was just a modern and vaguely upmarket public house decorated with contemporary architectural details. The Temperance Movement were probably right to see it as merely a way to get a public house into an otherwise dry estate. They managed to make it a close run thing at the Licensing Court, again Duncan Maclennan SSC opposed, as well as all 36 church ministers in Leith. Rintoul relied on the casting vote of Lord Provost Gumley to get it through and was obliged to provide “hot luncheons, high teas, cooked food“.

The year following The Anchor, three roadhouse licenses were granted. The first to open was the Hillburn Roadhouse which was the project of John Maclennan Oman and his wife Nellie who kept a number of pubs across the city and been in the trade over 40 years. Despite it being, then, well away from anything else, they still struggled to get a licence and had to have it granted on appeal.

It featured all the usual roadhouse facilities, with three bars, a “first class restaurant” (serving luncheons, snacks, afternoon teas, grills, dinners, suppers etc.), an off-licence shop, car parking and “commanding a fine view of the Pentland Hills“. Latterly run as the Fairmile Inn and suffering the indignity of a Scottish & Newcastle ski chalet-themed 1970s refurbishment, the Hillburn sat empty for a number of years, unloved and unwanted, and was demolished in 2013. It’s the only Edinburgh roadhouse to suffer this fate.

Johnnie Oman died in 1942. Nellie continued to run the Hillburn, living in the flat above, until retiring to the Grange in 1956. One of their other bars, the Duddingston Arms in Craigmillar, has long been known as Oman’s in their honour. It’s proximity to The White House can’t just be a coincidence, the Omans can’t have missed this new establishment along the road from them and were undoubtedly inspired by it.

The following month after the Hillburn opened, James Daly opened the Abercorn Inn on the Portobello Road, near the Northfield and Piershill housing schemes. He too had to go to appeal to get permission for it. His establishment was back to the Arts & Crafts Style of the Robin’s Nest (and although I can’t find an architect name for either, I’d put money on them being one and the same)

It opened “in the Old English Style” on September 16th 1938 and had almost exactly the same facilities as its lookalike. The opening announcement proudly concluded that “Only First-Class Ales and Finest Whiskies and Wines Stocked“.

The last of the trio of 1937 roadhouses opened on 11th October 1938, the House O’ Hill on the Queensferry Road at Blackhall. The licensee was Edward Cranston, a wine and spirit merchant whose premises included that now known as The King’s Wark on the Shore in Leith. Again it followed the Arts & Crafts style, but contrary to some sources was a new building and not converted from an older tavern or coaching house.

It too proved controversial, not because it was in a dry scheme this time, but because of its genteel surroundings. Lord Provost Gumley struggled to be heard over cries of “No!” and “Shame!” when announcing the granting of its licence. The 238 objectors claimed it was not Temperance that was their objection, but that the Queensferry Road was too busy during the day and too quiet at night to be acceptable for the motor car traffic “of the young and gay” that such an establishment would undoubtedly attract. But once again they failed to block it, and it opened with a mock-Tudor main bar with an “Old English style brick fireplace” and equipped with “small tables and comfortable modern chairs“. The “high-class restaurant” could seat 100, there was a games room with its own bar and a cocktail bar with feature lighting. Outside there were decorative gardens with fir trees and Japanese shrubs, and a car park for 25 vehicles. For as many years as I can remember, the place has been used as offices, but still retains its Olde English style pub signboard out front

Not all roadhouses got through the Licensing Court however, and the objectors were able to stop a few. One on East Milton Road was declined due to its proximity to two boarding houses for girls. Another at Stenhouse Road was knocked back, as was one on Northfield Broadway. The latter would eventually be built post-war, with the curious name of the Right Wing. This came from its landlord, Hibs’ legendary “Famous Five” right winger, Gordon Smith. It was demolished in 2018 for a speculative development which has yet to be built five years later.

But that’s a postwar roadhouse, and we’re here to talk about inter-war roadhouses. The last of these was approved at the licensing court of April 1938 and was one of two competing schemes on opposite corners of Parkhead Gardens at Sighthill, then a new and somewhat upmarket estate of privately rented houses and flats. Messrs. Mitchell, caterers, were successful in their application, but the opening was delayed until February 1st 1940 owing to the outbreak of war. The named it the Silver Wing in connection with the glamour of aviation. The green-tiled pagoda tower over the entrance is distinctive, but it’s not an early prototype for an all-you-can-eat Chinese Buffet! No, one of the directors of Messrs Mitchell & Co. had a pilots licence, and wanted the place to have an aeronautical theme. That pagoda is actually a control tower! The main bar floor was laid out as an aviators compass, the cocktail bar was called “The Cockpit” and painted panels and engraved mirrors around the bars represented flight-themed scenes, including of the Luftwaffe bombing raids over the Firth of Forth in October 1939. As well as a skittle alley it had a ballroom with capacity for 200 dancers.

The Silver Wing was a forces favourite for dances during WW2 – being conveniently close to the RAF at Turnhouse (the officers preferred the Maybury) and also a prisoner of war camp a bit along the Calder Road.

Although only nine roadhouses were built in Edinburgh in the inter-war period, they did a fairly comprehensive job at positioning themselves on the principal approach roads from the city; staying true to the roadhouse ideal, even if some were really just glorified local pubs.

The Temperance Movement and the Local Veto polls never went away despite these reformist pubs, indeed it may have galvanised some in the movment. The last such referendum in Edinburgh was in Corstorphine & Cramond ward in 1938 where 76% voted for No Change. Polls continued in Scotland into the 1970s, before final abolition in 1976. You can still drink in the Anchor Inn, Robin’s Nest, Silver Wing and the Maybury (although the latter is a Casino, so you need to join first). The White House is looking good, but is a (dry) community facility. The Abercorn, House O’ Hill and Wheatsheaf are commercial premises.

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What kind of place and atmosphere comes to mind when you see or hear the phrase "community asset" in relation to pubs, brewpubs, taprooms etc?

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