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909 results for “GreenSide”
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https://www.fogolf.com/1218244/bryson-dechambeau-drills-patron-with-tee-shot-cant-escape-bunker-in-rough-first-round-of-the-masters/ Bryson DeChambeau drills patron with tee shot, can’t escape bunker in rough first round of the Masters #AugustaNationalGolfClub #BrysonDeChambeau #BunkerShot #GolfClubs #GreensideBunker
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✨🌆 Bienvenue dans l'Univers de Green Side! 🌆✨
Où chaque choix tisse le fil de votre destin... 🚀
🎭 Intrigues & Alliances | 🌍 Aventures sans limites
Devenez le héros de votre propre épopée urbaine. Plus qu'un jeu, c'est une vie parallèle riche en défis qui vous attend! 🌟
👑 #GreenSideAdventure | 🎲 #RoleplayRevolution | 💫 #CréezVotreLégende🚩 Votre légende commence maintenant... Êtes-vous prêt? 🚩
#CommunautéFR #JeuxVideo #ServeurFiveM #GamingFR #RoleplayFR #GTAV #FiveM
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The #giraffe statues in Greenside, #Edinburgh, are once again wearing traffic-cone-like hats, as per (originally #Glasgow) tradition. They seem maybe “official decorations” rather than cones placed by the citizenry, but the swirly patterns do rather resemble the #SNP logo and the flag of #Scotland… 🤔
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The #giraffe statues in Greenside, #Edinburgh, are once again wearing traffic-cone-like hats, as per (originally #Glasgow) tradition. They seem maybe “official decorations” rather than cones placed by the citizenry, but the swirly patterns do rather resemble the #SNP logo and the flag of #Scotland… 🤔
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The #giraffe statues in Greenside, #Edinburgh, are once again wearing traffic-cone-like hats, as per (originally #Glasgow) tradition. They seem maybe “official decorations” rather than cones placed by the citizenry, but the swirly patterns do rather resemble the #SNP logo and the flag of #Scotland… 🤔
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The #giraffe statues in Greenside, #Edinburgh, are once again wearing traffic-cone-like hats, as per (originally #Glasgow) tradition. They seem maybe “official decorations” rather than cones placed by the citizenry, but the swirly patterns do rather resemble the #SNP logo and the flag of #Scotland… 🤔
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The #giraffe statues in Greenside, #Edinburgh, are once again wearing traffic-cone-like hats, as per (originally #Glasgow) tradition. They seem maybe “official decorations” rather than cones placed by the citizenry, but the swirly patterns do rather resemble the #SNP logo and the flag of #Scotland… 🤔
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Closing alert -- Raffael's & The Greenside Grille at the South Shore Country Club in Hingham have closed. https://bostonrestaurants.blogspot.com/2024/12/raffaels-greenside-grille-at-south.html
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Closing alert -- Raffael's & The Greenside Grille at the South Shore Country Club in Hingham have closed. https://bostonrestaurants.blogspot.com/2024/12/raffaels-greenside-grille-at-south.html
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White Friars and Lepers: the thread about Greenside’s chapel and hospital
Apropos recent world events (at the time of writing in December 2021) I thought it was worthwhile taking a few minutes to spare a thought for Lepers in 16th century Edinburgh, who lived life according to incredibly strict terms that we we might now call “lockdown“.
A 16th century leper. The clapper, broad hat, cowl and cloak are a recurrent image of leprosy sufferers of this period. CC-BY-SA 4.0 Wellcome CollectionThere had been a leper hospital in Edinburgh since medieval times, but there is no positive record as to where it may have been. There is a story you sometimes hear that the placename Liberton derives from “leper town“, but that is easily debunked by the fact the place name predates the arrival of the word leper into Scots language by centuries. By the 16th century, after the reformation, the leper hospital was located at Greenside, outside the city boundary at the time and actually in the neighbouring Barony of Restalrig. The approximate location was between the junction of London Road and Leith Walk and Greenside Church. We know this not only because it was helpfully marked up on those old Ordnance Survey maps but also there are surviving records, a contemporary illustration and archaeological evidence uncovered during the interminable tram works.
OS 1849 town Plan overlaid on modern aerial imagery showing the general location of the Leper hospital / Carmelite Friary of Greenside. Drag the slider to compare. Highlighted are the site of the “Rood Well of Greenside” and the “Monastery of Carmelite Friars (1536) subsequently Greenside Hospital for Lepers (1591)”. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandThe use of this site goes back centuries before the hospital however and its earliest recorded use was as the site of the Rude Chapel. The Rude refers either to a Rood Screen – a feature of medieval churches – to an existing cross (or Rude) near the site, or to the nearby Augustinian Abbey of Holyrood (which refers to the Holy Rood or cross upon which Jesus was crucified). This chapel may have been founded around 1456 when King James II gave the valley of Greenside to the town as a “sporting” field, one for the medieval sorts of sports like jousting and open air theatre. In 1554 the Queen Regent Mary of Guise attended an open air production of David Lindsay’s epic play “Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, in Commendation of Vertew and Vituperation of Vyce“; all 9 hours of it.
A 2013 production of “A Satire of the Three Estates” in renaissance costume at Linlithgow Palace, by Staging the Scottish CourtLittle is known of the Rude Chapel, not even which saint it was dedicated to, and it had fallen fell out of use by 1518 when James Hamilton – Earl of Arran and Lord Provost of the city at that time – conveyed it to the Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel: the Carmelite order, also known as the White Friars on account of the colour of their cloaks.
“Conferimento della Regola del Carmelo” – Confirmation of the Carmelite Rule – a 1430 Fresco in Florence by Filippo LippiThe other friars in Edinburgh at this time were the Dominicans or Black Friars in the Canongate (see also Blackfriars Street) and the Franciscans or Grey Friars where the Kirk of that name now is. In addition, in Leith there were the Augustians at St. Anthony’s Preceptory, near the Foot of the Walk whose chapel still exists as a ruin on the slopes of Arthur’s Seat. The Carmelites were well established in the Lothians with friaries at Linlithgow and South Queensferry, which Greenside fell under the patronage of. George Hutton’s sketches of the late 18th century give us an idea of what the Queensferry Friary looked like before later repairs.
Carmelite Church at South Queensferry, from Hutton Drawings. CC-BY-SA National Library of ScotlandIn 1557 the Prior of Greenside, David Balbirnie, is recorded as being in office at Queensferry. This was perhaps as a result of Greenside having being left in ruins by the English Army in 1544 during the Burning of Edinburgh.
“A Coloured Plan, or Bird’s Eye View, of the Town of Edinburgh“, the English Army marches from Leith towards Edinburgh via the Calton Hill. A 1544 watercolour, probably by the military engineer Richard Lee.The cluster of buildings shown on the above illustration on the right hand side of the image, below the castle and on the reverse slope of Calton Hill, are probably the Greenside priory and its doo’cot. The friars probably ran some sort of hospital here in the medieval meaning of the word – spiritual care on a Biblical basis, to prepare the soul for the next life – rather than the sort of medical institution that we would now think of.
This collection of buildings on the northwest slopes below Calton Hill, in a walled enclosure with a dovecot is probably the Greenside priory. Credit: With permission, from the British Library archive, Cotton Augustus I. ii. 56In 1534 two Protestant heretics, David Straiton and Norman Gourlay, were condemned to be burnt at the stake, a gruesome sentence that was carried out within the walls at Greenside. The priory was out of use by the time of the Reformation when the only other contemporary image shows it a roofless complex of buildings on the 1560 map of the Siege of Leith – probably also by the same Rirchard Lee – which records its name as the Roode Chappelle. There is also a partial wall shown, but no dovecot.
“Roode Chappell” from the 1560 “Petworth House Map” of the Siege of Leith. PHA 4640, Reproduced by the kind permission of Lord Egremont and with acknowledgements to the County Archivist, West Sussex Record OfficeBy the 1580s the friary and chapel were both long abandoned and when the city was casting around for a site to locate a leper hospital their ruins were a potential candidate. St. Paul’s Work, a charitable house in the Waverley Valley next to the Trinity College Kirk, was also mooted but was found to be unsuitable and so in 1589 the Magistrates of the city approved that a Leper House was to be provided at Greenside. This was financed by John Roberstson, a wealthy merchant of the city, in response to his prayers for an act of mercy being answered.
The hospital provided for seven inmates, and inmates was the right word. Although they were admitted to the “care” of the hospital voluntarily, this was a hard bargain and the price of admittance was forfeiting nearly all rights as an individual. These first seven patients were Robert Mardow, James Garvie, Johnn MacRere, James Wricht, and Johnn Wilderspune. Also incarcerated (voluntarily) with them were two of ht men’s wives; Isobel Barcar (Mrs Mardow) and Janet Galt (Mrs Garvie).
No manner of Lipper persone, man nor woman, fra this tyme forth, cum amangis uther cleine personis, nor be nocht fund in the kirk, nor fleshe merket, nor no other merket within this burghe, under the payne of burnyng of their cheik and bannasing off the toune
1530 Act of the Scottish Parliament against lepers.The inmates had to abide by the strict rules of the hospital on penalty of death. To underline the seriousness of this threat there was a gallows erected on the gable end of the hospital and the keeper had power of carrying out that sentence, on the spot, for any infraction. The local name for the confines of the hospital wall was reportedly The Hangman’s Acre. The inmates were forbidden to leave the confines of its walls, all except the two wives (who were not Lepers) and who could do so only on market days to shop for themselves and the patients. The wives were strictly forbidden to do anything else outside the walls of the hospital. The doors of the hospital were to be kept locked from sunset until sunrise. The patients had the privilege during the hours of daylight to sit at the door, one at a time in turns, and shake “ane clapper” to attract the attention of passers buy to donate alms.
Late 15th century image of a leper begging at the walls of a town. Again shown with long cloak and cowl, wide had and leather clapper. “Leper with a clapper”, from Bartholomeus AnglicusLepers didn’t ring bells (metal and casting was very expensive), instead they had wood and leather clappers that they shook to make a loud noise. Such devices are commonly seen in medieval illustrations. The inmates at Greenside were forbidden from begging under any other circumstances and in any other manner than that which was prescribed.
Leper clappers.There were no holidays for the hospital and no visitors were allowed within its walls, apart from those “placit with thame thairin at command of the said Councall and Session“. The alms collected from the door were to be shared equally and declared to the council on a weekly basis when the appointed keeper made his visit. In addition to this a pension of 4 shillings Scots (4 English pence) was provided. The only comfort afforded for them beyond this (and it would have been an important one at the time), was the appointment of “ane ordinair reider to reid the prayeris everie Sabboth to the said lepperis“; every Sunday somebody would come to read them prayers.
It should therefore be clear that the Lepers and their wives were fundamentally locked inside the hospital on their own, to care and provide for themselves as best as they could and saw only the weekly visit of their prayer reader and council clerk. There is also every chance that not all of the Lepers even had that disease, any severe illness of the skin may have been described as such at that time and gotten you sentenced to Greenside.
After its establishment the hospital seems to disappear from the record and it may have been that it only existed for what remained of the lives of its initial residents. The colony was likely abandoned by the early 17th century. Its last resident may have been Thomas Weir – the infamous Major Weir – in 1670, who was confined as a prisoner here untile his execution by garrotting and burning at the stake for witchcraft, bestiality, incest and adultery nearby at the Gallowlee (Shrubhill).
The Devil’s fiery coach, which apparently conveyed Weir to Dalkeith to hear of news of the defeat of the Scots Army at the battle of WorcesterThe 2013 excavations at what was the London Road roundabout in advance of the city’s notorious tram project uncovered remains of a graveyard in this area. The archaeological write up does not mention precise dating or any signs of leprosy on the skeletons, but pottery dated the interments to between the 15th and 17th century.
Report of the 2013 archaeological excavations at Greenside as part of the Trams projectThe Greenside Well is believed to date back to the time of the chapel / priory / hospital and may indeed have been the reason that these institutions had been established at this exact location. It existed as a public water source until the middle of the 19th century and is shown on maps of this time.
Ainslie’s 1804 Town Plan, showing the well and an adjacent washing house. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandIn a very odd hark back to the distant past of Scotland before the Reformation, until the 20th century the Catholic Church in Rome still had an official on its payroll who was “il Padre Priori di Greenside“; the Priory Father of Greenside.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
https://www.fogolf.com/1280618/greenside-bunker-dont-lean-your-shaft-golf-golfswing/ Greenside Bunker: Don’t Lean Your Shaft #golf #golfswing #AndrewCullen #bunker #dont #Golf #GolfCoach #GolfForBeginners #GolfForSeniors #GolfForWomen #GolfInstruction #GolfLessons #GolfSkills #GolfSkillsVideos #GolfSkillsVlog #GolfSkillsYouTube #GolfSwing #GolfSwingTips #GolfSwingVideos #GolfSwingVlog #GolfSwingYouTube #GolfTips #GolfYourselfToLife #golfswing #Greenside #Lean #pga #shaft
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https://www.fogolf.com/1280618/greenside-bunker-dont-lean-your-shaft-golf-golfswing/ Greenside Bunker: Don’t Lean Your Shaft #golf #golfswing #AndrewCullen #bunker #dont #Golf #GolfCoach #GolfForBeginners #GolfForSeniors #GolfForWomen #GolfInstruction #GolfLessons #GolfSkills #GolfSkillsVideos #GolfSkillsVlog #GolfSkillsYouTube #GolfSwing #GolfSwingTips #GolfSwingVideos #GolfSwingVlog #GolfSwingYouTube #GolfTips #GolfYourselfToLife #golfswing #Greenside #Lean #pga #shaft
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https://www.fogolf.com/1326676/open-championship-ryan-fox-cards-the-third-record-62-of-the-week/ Open Championship: Ryan Fox cards the third record 62 of the week #Golf #GolfNews #GreensideBunker #LucasHerbert #PGAChampionship #RoyalBirkdale #RyanFox #SamBurns #TheOpenChampionship
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Pretty busy by the Omni Centre & top of the Walk this evening. Awaiting my first @EdfilmfestE screening shortly
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Pretty busy by the Omni Centre & top of the Walk this evening. Awaiting my first @EdfilmfestE screening shortly
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https://www.fogolf.com/1218244/bryson-dechambeau-drills-patron-with-tee-shot-cant-escape-bunker-in-rough-first-round-of-the-masters/ Bryson DeChambeau drills patron with tee shot, can’t escape bunker in rough first round of the Masters #AugustaNationalGolfClub #BrysonDeChambeau #BunkerShot #GolfClubs #GreensideBunker
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https://www.fogolf.com/1162982/%eb%a7%9d%ed%96%88%eb%8b%a4-%ec%8b%b6%ec%97%88%eb%8a%94%eb%8d%b0-%eb%b6%84%ec%9c%84%ea%b8%b0-%eb%8c%80%eb%b0%98%ec%a0%84-%ec%9e%84%ec%84%b1%ec%9e%ac-%eb%a6%ac%ec%bb%a4%eb%b2%84%eb%a6%ac/ 망했다 싶었는데 분위기 대반전! #임성재 리커버리 #FlopShot #GolfHighlights #GolfRecoveryShot #GreensideShot #ImSungjae #LobShot #PGAOfficialWorldGolfRanking #PGARanking #PgaTour #PGAツアー #PGA투어 #ShortGame #SungjaeIm #TourProSkills #WedgePlay #イムソンジェ #ウェッジ技術 #ゴルフ動画 #ゴルフ神業 #ショートゲーム #プロゴルファー #フロップショット #リカバリーショット #ロブショット #골프기술 #골프리커버리 #골프하이라이트 #로브샷 #쇼트게임 #웨지샷 #임성재 #프로골퍼 #플랍샷
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https://www.fogolf.com/1158326/the-sergio-garcia-bunker-masterclass-you-need-bunkershots-sergiogarcia-golftips-golftechnique/ The Sergio Garcia Bunker Masterclass You Need #bunkershots #sergiogarcia #golftips #golftechnique #BunkerShots #GolfInstruction #GolfTips #GreensideBunkerShot #PGAOfficialWorldGolfRanking #PGARanking #SergioGarcia #ShortGame #ShortGamePractise #ShortGameTips
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https://www.fogolf.com/1158326/the-sergio-garcia-bunker-masterclass-you-need-bunkershots-sergiogarcia-golftips-golftechnique/ The Sergio Garcia Bunker Masterclass You Need #bunkershots #sergiogarcia #golftips #golftechnique #BunkerShots #GolfInstruction #GolfTips #GreensideBunkerShot #PGAOfficialWorldGolfRanking #PGARanking #SergioGarcia #ShortGame #ShortGamePractise #ShortGameTips
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Construction of a 35,000-square-foot “adaptive reuse development” in Houston’s Memorial City is expected to begin sometime next year.
#Development #Houston #Local #News #Greenside #MemorialCity #MetroNational #RadomCaptial
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Construction of a 35,000-square-foot “adaptive reuse development” in Houston’s Memorial City is expected to begin sometime next year.
#Development #Houston #Local #News #Greenside #MemorialCity #MetroNational #RadomCaptial
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https://www.fogolf.com/1162982/%eb%a7%9d%ed%96%88%eb%8b%a4-%ec%8b%b6%ec%97%88%eb%8a%94%eb%8d%b0-%eb%b6%84%ec%9c%84%ea%b8%b0-%eb%8c%80%eb%b0%98%ec%a0%84-%ec%9e%84%ec%84%b1%ec%9e%ac-%eb%a6%ac%ec%bb%a4%eb%b2%84%eb%a6%ac/ 망했다 싶었는데 분위기 대반전! #임성재 리커버리 #FlopShot #GolfHighlights #GolfRecoveryShot #GreensideShot #ImSungjae #LobShot #PGAOfficialWorldGolfRanking #PGARanking #PgaTour #PGAツアー #PGA투어 #ShortGame #SungjaeIm #TourProSkills #WedgePlay #イムソンジェ #ウェッジ技術 #ゴルフ動画 #ゴルフ神業 #ショートゲーム #プロゴルファー #フロップショット #リカバリーショット #ロブショット #골프기술 #골프리커버리 #골프하이라이트 #로브샷 #쇼트게임 #웨지샷 #임성재 #프로골퍼 #플랍샷
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From “Rewards For Good Boys” to “Britain’s most unusual school”: the thread about the Davie Street School(s)
Preamble. The schools of the “School Board” era of public education (1872-1918) hold a particular fascination for me, one most profound where they have been “deconsecrated” and are either no longer in use as schools or have disappeared entirely. This thread began as a couple of lines for my own notes about the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” but soon snowballed into an alphabetical deep-dive into each.
The fifth chapter of our series looking at the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” looks at Davie Street School; with which I made the mistake of proclaiming “there doesn’t seem to be anything interesting about this one” before I had taken a proper look see. Naturally I proved myself completely wrong! And so actually what follows is the quite interesting story of the various schools that have called Davie Street home.
The first school at Davie Street was the Lancasterian School whose foundation stone was laid by the Lord Provost and Magistrates on Monday 12th October 1812. It replaced a temporary home which had been built on the Calton Hill, a “long, low, wood and brick erection“. The school was the work of the Edinburgh Education (Lancasterian School) Society, a charitable institution founded in 1810 by “several respectable Gentlemen…” to address the lack of education for the lower classes of the city by providing it at the “least possible expense of time and money“. It had been determined to use the educational system of Joseph Lancaster, thought it to be both the most economical and the most extensively tested system in practice.
Joseph Lancaster, portrait by John Hazlitt c. 1818 in the National Portrait Gallery, NPG99.Lancaster’s was a Quaker and early pioneer of education for the masses, his schools being highly unusual at the time in being reward-based and almost entirely lacking in punishments. Like the contemporary Madras System of Dr Andrew Bell (familiar to generations of Leithers as the Dr Bell), the Lancasterian System taught large classes in a single “school room” with one teacher supported by multiple pupil monitors. These were older children who relayed the instructions to the younger and kept an eye on their work. The contemporary engraving below shows the pupil monitors walking amongst the rows of younger children, helping them with their work, with the teacher seated on a podium at the front. On the wall a sign reads “REWARDS FOR GOOD BOYS” and the walls and ceiling are hung with toys such as kites, hoops, racket and shuttlecocks, balls and bats which the children could win.
Contemporary engraving of a Lancasterian School – the Royal Free School on Borough Road. The teacher sits on a podium at the front, the children are arrayed in ranks by age (and ability) and the older Pupil Monitors move amongst the rows, relaying the lesson and checking the work.Davie Street had two school rooms, boys and girls being taught separately, sufficient to hold 1,000 scholars and was one of the first steps on the route to a free, mass education in the city. For a subsidised fee of just 2s 6d per quarter, children over 6 years old were taught their Reading, Writing and Arithmetic with the only book in use for teaching being the Bible. However with its Quaker roots, the school was non-sectarian and counted amongst its founding directors in Edinburgh both Presbyterians and Episcopalians. Children were taught the Church of Scotland’s approved Catechism by rote but “the Directors, from respect to the rights of private judgement, do not impose it on children whose parents have conscientious objections to it“.
Davie Street showing the Lancasterian School, 1849 OS Town Survey of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandThe school was “the achievement of the Whigs and of the pious” and was well supported at the highest levels of Edinburgh and Scottish society, as evidenced by the titles of its presidents and directors in the below newspaper advert. It was not universally popular however and according to “Memorials of His Own Time” by Lord Henry Cockburn it was “cordially hated by all true Tories, who for many years never ceased to sneer at and obstruct it.”
Principal office bearers of the Edinburgh Education (Lancastrian Schools) Society in 1812 as published in the Caledonian Mercury.A report of the Committee of Council on Education of 1844 noted that the headteacher, Mr Robert Dun, had supplied “at his own expense, a considerable assortment of philosophical apparatus, with which he performs, before his pupils, the more useful and interesting experiments in Chemistry and Natural Philosophy“. Dun was praised as running an institution being representative “of a well conducted monitorial school“.
There is no educational institution in Edinburgh which does a more extended share of substantial good than the Davie Street Lancasterian School, now 25 years established, and none upon which the public spirited and philanthropic can, to better account, bestow their money.
The school at this time was very much a family affair; it had 200 older boys taught by Robert and an assistant plus 100 infant boys by his father, Robert Senior. 250 girls were taught by John and Miss M. Dun – Robert’s siblings. Including evening classes, the total roll was 622 but it was noted that absence could run high, between 10 to 20 percent. The Duns had joined the school in 1826 and remained there for 35 years until Robert resigned in 1861 and received wide praise for their long-term efforts to educate and better the lot of the poorer children of the city.
Mr Dun, of the Edinburgh Davie Street School, decidedly the best Lancasterian teacher I have yet met, has introduced much useful knowledge into his plan; and, if the means were afforded him, would yet do much more.
James Simpson, “Necessity of Popular Education as a National Object”, 1834A notable alumnus of the Lancasterian School was George McCrae (1860-1928), later Colonel Sir George McCrae DSO DL VD. A self-made man in the textile and drapery trade, McCrae was knighted in 1908 for his services as MP for Edinburgh East. He is best remembered in Scotland for raising and commanding the 16th Battalion, The Royal Scots during World War 1. This unit, better known as McCrae’s Own, was composed of Edinburgh men and its ranks included 16 members of Heart of Midlothian Football Club as well as players from Hibernian, Raith Rovers, East Fife, St. Bernard’s, Falkirk and Dunfermline football clubs. Much of the rest were drawn from the supporters of these clubs.
George McCrae during his time as an MP, by Sir John Benjamin Stone, 1901At the time of the Duns’ departure the school was proving to be a financial liability for its directors. In that year its expenses were £147 14s 5d but they had raised only £98 9s 7d in subscriptions and fees; outgoings exceeded income by 50%. The Lancasterian School was being kept solvent only by the £900 proceeds of the sale of a bequeathed house. The trustees had therefore been looking to put the institution on a sounder financial footing and in 1857 had proposed to the Governors of the Heriot’s Hospital Trust that it be transferred to their care.
George Heriot’s Hospital (School) in 1966, looking towards the Castle. Edinburgh City Libraries, Edinburgh and Scottish Collection.The Governors in turn remitted the request to a sub-committee who reported favourably on the idea “when the state of funds admitted to an increase“. In the event it was not until 1874 – with the State’s financial support as a result of the Education (Scotland) Act 1872) – that Heriot’s were able to complete the takeover of Davie Street which was to be converted to one of its Outdoor Schools. These schools, instituted in 1838, were outdoor in the sense that they provided education outwith the walls of Heriot’s Hospital itself. They were run on the Madras System and financed by the surplus of the Heriot Trust to provided a free education for the “children of burgesses and others“: in practice this meant the poor.
In October 1874, temporary accommodation was arranged for the non-paying pupils of Davie Street while their school was to be demolished and replaced with a larger and more modern building for 650 children. The architect of the Heriot Trust, John Chesser, drew up plans for a two storey school in a Jacobean style, richly ornamented with the roses and stars from the coat of arms of George Heriot and mouldings and corner towers directly inspired by the mother Hospital School.
Davie Street school as rebuilt by Heriot’s in 1875The school reopened on Whitsunday 1875, the tablet on its principal gable now reading George Heriot’s Hospital School. Its first – and only – headmaster was to be Mr John McCrindle who held this position until his retirement in 1905. The infant headmistress was Miss Jane Johnston from 1877 to 1908, she herself having been educated at one of the Trust’s the Outdoor Schools at Heriot Bridge.
An engraved portrait of John McCrindle by the Edinburgh Evenening News upon his retirement, July 18th 1905In 1879 a tragedy occurred when a pupil, Ellen Bennet, died from burns she had received at the school; on a cold November day she sneaked unsupervised back into her classroom at lunchtime and climbed over the guard of the fire that heated the room to warm herself causing her clothing to catch fire. The following year there were 180 infants and 320 older children on the school roll and “almost all the children… are the boys and girls of parents of the strictly working and artisan classes. They all appeared scrupulously clean and very tidy at the examination“.
Davie Street showing the Heriot’s School, 1876 OS Town Survey of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandThe school’s life with the Heriot Trust was to prove short lived. In 1886 the Edinburgh School Board agreed to purchase it for £2,368 16s 8d. The Heriot’s schools at Stockbridge (later St. Bernard’s) and Abbeyhill (later Regent Road) were also acquired at this time, the Trust having decided to dispose of all of its Outdoor Schools and move its remaining day scholars to the Hospital itself. The Trust approved the sale and transfer in January 1887, part of the transfer arrangement being that they would continued to fund the free education of its existing scholars – the School Board charged fees, unlike the Outdoor Schools – any pre-existing arrangements for free education, so long as the beneficiary continued to pass the relevant exam standards.
The Board “were not at all satisfied with the internal arrangement” of Davie Street and so spent a further £2,379 2s 9d on expansion and alterations. Their architect, Robert Wilson, added an additional wing to the south with accommodation an additional 130 pupils, increasing its capacity to 690. By re-using the additional ornamental stonework this addition appears almost seamless, beyond the plainer style of the roof line. Despite the change of administration, the “Heriot’s Hospital” tablet remained on its façade, never being replaced by the School Board’s roundel.
Davie Street showing the School Board’s public school, note the large projection of the new wing to the south. 1893 OS Town Survey of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandThe peace of Davie Street Public School – as it was now known – was breached in October 1889 when a wave of excitement spread throughout British schools via newspaper reports of an attempt by schoolboys in Cardiff to institute a general strike. Their demands were a half-day Wednesday, no homework, shorter hours and no corporal punishment. The action spread contagiously and by the following afternoon the boys of Davie Street had organised themselves, marching behind a banner (reported to be “a handkerchief nailed to a stick“) to Castlehill and Dalry schools in an effort to instigate risings there too. Their demands – reasonable to modern eyes – were conveyed on a scrap of paper; “strike for short hours and no home lessons and free education for the whole school“. The action rumbled on for a few days more with “strikebreaking” pupils at some schools reporting being hissed at the gates by the holdouts before it petered out. Those who were judged to have been ringleaders found themselves punished for their efforts with the tawse – a short, sharp reminder of how things had changed since the days of the reward-based Lancasterian School.
Headline, Evening Mail, 9th October 1889Perhaps memories of the brief uprising of 1889 died hard as in October 1913, once again boys from Davie Street marched out of their school in spontaneous protest in an effort to get their compatriots in the district – at Causewayside, South Bridge and St Leonard’s Public Schools – to join them in resisting rumoured (and entirely spurious) plans to force them to attend school on Saturday mornings.
Life was harsh for many of the children in the Old Town and Southside and a particularly extreme case was reported in the Evening News in November 1908 involving children from Davie Street. Philip Lavin of 150 Dumbiedykes Road was sentenced to three months imprisonment at the Sheriff Court for ill-treatment and neglect of his five children, aged six months to 13 years. He had been repeatedly visited and warned of his conduct by the Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SSPCC) over the course of five years. Finally, Headmaster R. James Reith wrote to the SSPCC to inform them of bruising on the face of one of Lavin’s daughters which he suspected was the result of assault. Visiting the house again, they found the childrens’ “clothing was scanty and on [their] bed the only covering was an old quilt.” The hungry children had sometimes shared just two rolls between four for their breakfast or five potatoes for their dinner. Lavin earned good money as a painter, 30s a week, but spent it on drink and gave none to his wife, Marion Hewit. She instead had to go out to work for the upkeep of herself and the children and continued to do so when she became ill until collapsing and being sent to the City Fever Hospital suffering from acute consumption (TB). She died less than a year later, on 20th October 1909; her husband however lived until the age of 76.
Boys of Davie Street School in 1910, many barefoot, waiting for tickets for a day trip to Ratho organised by the charitable Courant Fund.In 1917 the School Board undertook an extensive reorganisation of education in the city to provide additional “supplementary education” – that for children over the age of 12 but who had failed to pass the qualification exams for Higher Grade schools. They recognised there was a demand for specialist commercial and technical education at this stage for children who soon be entering the workplace when they finished their compulsory schooling at the age of 14. It was therefore agreed to establish specialist institutes in the city and Davie Street was selected to become part of one of the city’s first specialised supplementary Technical Schools. In 1918, Davie Street closed without ceremony as a primary school and became an annexe for the nearby James Clark Technical School.
Former James Clark School with its remarkable corner tower.Initially Davie Street provided rooms for practical subjects such as art, home economics and science while these facilities were constructed at James Clark (which had been planned for elementary education and therefore was not originally built with them). In 1924 it was then taken in hand to be properly modernised (including being converted from gas to electric lighting) and converted into specialist technical workshops for teaching the trades of brassfinishing, tinsmithing, upholstery, plumbing, tailoring and printing. In this guise it provided centralised training in these crafts for the Southside, successful completion of its printing courses could lead to bursaries for a print qualifications at Heriot Watt College and entry into one of the city’s most prized blue collar careers.
An exhibition of work in the printing and allied trades by students of Davie Street in 1957 – a bookbinding for HMS Caledonia is admired.The specialist technical education at Davie Street was moved from the curriculum of James Clark School to those of Telford and Napier Colleges after 1966, its workshops being run-down and moved to those institutions shortly thereafter. James Clark school itself closed in 1972 as part of the citywide secondary education shake-up required to move to a fully comprehensive system; by this time its roll had declined steeply from an inter-war high of over 1,000 to just 300.
Davie Street School in 1959 from the Dumbiedykes Survey by Adam H. Malcolm © Edinburgh City Libraries L973BDavie Street sat vacant for a number of years until it started what was to be an altogether very different chapter in its life story. In 1969 it was turned into the Theatre Arts Centre, the brainchild of Edinburgh Corporation’s drama advisor Gerard Slevin. Slevin approached English teacher Leslie Hills, a self-described “newly minted teacher“, to run this project on the basis that she had upset her school establishment by abandoning the old “chalk and talk” methods and using instead the medium of drama to engage and teach her students. On her first visit to Davie Street she found:
The paintwork was ancient; the boiler was coal-fired and the toilets indescribable. I said yes. I was 23.
Leslie Hills, describing her first visit to Davie Street SchoolOn a shoestring budget, the school was converted to its new purpose which involved removal of a large quantity of old printing machinery, outfitting the hall as a drama studio and cleaning the toilets as best as could be done. With a drama teacher, art teacher and music teacher under Leslie, by the autumn of that year the centre was open for business: “It was an extraordinary position to be in. No-one knew what we should be doing, so we made it all up.”
Edinburgh Corporation’s Theatre Arts Centre sign (Art was a spelling mistake), rescued from Davie Street when it was replaced by a sign for Lothian Regional Council in 1975. Picture kindly provided by Leslie Hills.
Slum housing in Edinburgh, 1969. Marshall’s Court, Greenside, . S. G. Jackman photo, Edinburgh City Libraries, Edinburgh and Scottish Collection.
The first pupils to attend came from the city’s Junior Secondary schools, those destined to be replaced by Comprehensives in the coming years. “Many came from difficult backgrounds, some from the surrounding housing soon to be flattened, where water was obtained from a tap in the yard. Many were underfed, ill-clothed for Edinburgh’s winters and, leaving school at 15, just too wee to be sent, bewildered, out to scrapyards and tyre depots with a bit of paper on which was written an address in a part of town of which they had no knowledge.“Up to 500 secondary-age children a week came through the doors of the Theatre Arts Centre from across the city, including from “List D” reformatory schools, those pushed to the very extremes of the education system. Leslie Hills takes up the story:
I talked to every class on their first day, explaining that we did not use the belt – still in use in schools – and that the rules were behave yourself and no graffiti – except in the toilets into which they were allowed to take felt-tipped pens which were in plentiful supply. The boys’ toilet became a wonder to behold – absolutely covered in intricate designs. I never worked out how they did the ceilings. The rest of the building remained pristine.
With its radical approach to learning through the mediums of drama, art and music, the laid back approach to uniform, lesson structure and timetabling and the lack of corporal punishment, the “school-in-a-theatre” was dubbed “Britain’s most unusual school” by the Daily Record. It was a fitting coincidence that Davie Street School had unwittingly been returned to its roots of education without punishment.
Drama teacher David Prince is “attacked” by his pupils at the Theatre Arts Centre in an exercise learning about the value of movement in drama. Daily Record, 2nd December 1970The initial success of the Theatre Arts Centre gamble allowed the facilities and services on offer to be improved. Finding out from the Corporation’s painters that they didn’t need to follow the official schools’ colour palette of mushroom and cream, re-painting made use of colour. One room was colour drenched in pale green and fitted with an epidiascope and light box for projecting and copying designs for poster; An in-house theatre company – Theatre in Education – was set up who undertook outreach visits to city schools; A technician and a van was acquired to run a stage equipment lending library; The curriculum was widened to include photography, printing and film; Evening drama clubs for teenagers were run and later, Edinburgh Youth Theatre found a home here and it was a regular performance venue during the annual Festival Fringe.
The reorganisation of local authorities in 1975, the Centre became part of Lothian Regional Council and the geographical remit expanded accordingly. Leslie Hills departed in 1980. Ten years later it survived a threat to its continued existence at Davie Street when the site was short-listed as a potential location for a new medical centre for the district. It was announced in 1993 that a central arts school for Lothian Region would be created in the former Leith Academy building on Duke Street, which would have seen Davie Street closed and relocated there. This plan never came to fruition, likely as the result of Lothian Region losing control of its further education colleges later that year. Having survived these threats, it was the Local Government etc (Scotland) Act 1994 – which abolished Lothian Regional Council in 1996 – that did for the Centre. It was closed by the new, unitary City of Edinburgh Council in 1997 when the Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Forsyth, refused to provide sufficient funding to the newly established councils. Dr Bell’s Drama Centre, the primary-age equivalent of the Theatre Arts Centre was closed at the same time. A “cheery wake in the rather battered studio” was held by staff past and present to celebrate its 28 year life, which also marked the end of 185 years of continuous educational use of the site.
Over the next three years the Council sought to dispose of the old school and it saw only intermittent use as a Fringe location. It was finally sold for redevelopment in 2000 and was converted into flats, a change which at the very least preserved its fine Jacobean-style masonry for the future.
Davie Street School in 2021, estate agent’s photo from the sale of one of its flatsThe previous chapter in this series looked at Causewayside School. The following chapter covers Dean Public School.
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When the brakes don’t work: the thread about runaway trams
On this day in 1918 (June 23rd when written) there was an “Extraordinary Tramway Incident” in Edinburgh as a result of which, miraculously, nobody was hurt. This was the days of cable traction, when the city’s public transport wound its way slowly and noisily around the streets hauled by an endless loop of moving cable beneath the setts.
Edinburgh Cable Car on route 2, Gorgie Road. Unknown photographer, 1920, © Edinburgh City LibrariesIt was just after 10 O’clock in the morning and an empty car (they were always called cars, never trams) was standing awaiting its next service at the Braids terminus, near where Comiston Road meets Braid Hills Road. The driver and conductor were on their break in the adjacent shelter (a replacement version of which is still there to this day). But the vehicle’s mechanical brakes had not been fully set and, imperceptibly slowly at first, the car began to creep away down Comiston Road towards the City.
The tramway shelter on Comiston Road, with a cable car waiting at the former line terminus.The driver and conductor gave chase as soon as they noticed but were already too late and were unable to catch it as it began to speed up. The cable which moved the tramcars when in service was attached to by means of a mechanical “gripper” and whizzed anything attached to it along at a rather sedate 9½ mph (to which it was limited by Board of Trade regulations). The downhill runaway quickly passed this limiting speed and quickly caught up with the car running in service ahead of it. Fortunately there were no passengers aboard. The conductress saw the approaching danger, called a warning to the driver, and sensibly jumped for it. The inevitable collision happened and the two cars became entangled together. Luckily neither derailed. Less fortunately the driver – who had heroically stayed at his post – found that the gripper which connected his car to the traction cable had become jammed; the conjoined wreckage was thus firmly attached to the cable and was being hauled inextricably towards busy Morningside at a slightly less than terrifying nine and a half miles per hour. The danger was still real however as this was where Comiston Road changed from rural to dense urban in nature and the driver now had no way to stop at any approaching junctions, for any other tram cars ahead of him or to slow for any obstructions such as pedestrians, cyclists, horses, children crossing or workmen carrying sheets of plate glass across his path like they did in the movies then.
1918 Post Office map of Edinburgh, rotated to align Comiston Road on the long axis (it actually points north:south). The Braids terminus is on the left where the line representing the tramway peters out, Belhaven Terrace on the right at Morningside Station. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandAt Belhaven Terrace, just one mile from where the runaway had started, there was a set of points manned by a pointsman for switching the cars which had terminated at Morningside Station between tracks. The driver managed to call out his predicament to the pointsman as he sailed helplessly past. The pointsman’s hut had a telephone connection to the winding house at Tollcross which was powering the cable and after a brief call the winding engine was stopped. This brought the runaway – and half of the tramway network in the south and west of the city which shared that cable – safely to a halt. It took time to untangle the damaged cars and extricate the gripper from the cable but within an hour and a quarter from the start of the incident the network was back up and running again as if nothing had ever happened. Sadly no further details were reported in the papers
West Tollcross – showing Central Halls on the right and to its left the Tramway Power Station. J. R. Hamilton, 1914. This is a photograph by a member of the Edinburgh Photographic Society © Edinburgh City LibrariesRunaways tramcars were fortunately very rare, but not unheard of. In April 1890 a horse-drawn vehicle had ran away down Montrose Terrace in the east of the city. One of the animals fell but its panicked companion dragged it and the tramcar along the ground a further 1,000ft before coming to rest outside the Abbey Church. “The passengers, who were greatly alarmed, were not, however, injured”. The same cannot be said about the poor fallen horse, as “on examination it was found… [to] not likely be of any more use.” Sadly it was probably a one way ticket to Cox’s Glueworks in Gorgie for that victim.
Horse tramcars on Princes Street, late 19th century. The lighter coloured car is heading for Morningside © Edinburgh City LibrariesOn September 30th 1909 a cable tramcar was involved in a potentially much more deadly accident at Waterloo Place. The car approached the terminus from the direction of Abbeyhill to pick up passengers from a large crowd intending to travel to Musselburgh for the races, but failed to stop in the right place. The driver brought it to a halt further on at the top of Leith Street – outside the General Post Office – and got out to inspect why it had failed to stop in the correct place. The curious and frustrated crowd naturally gravitated towards the vehicle to see what the problem was and if they could board it.
The Waterloo Place tramway terminus for cars to Portobello and onwards to Musselburgh, decorated in 1903 for the coronation visit of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra © Edinburgh City LibrariesPerhaps the driver prodded around underneath too hard, or perhaps an onlooker knocked something they ought not to have, but in an instant the car suddenly lurched back in the direction of Waterloo Place – and the thronging crowd – seemingly attached to the return cable by forces unknown. The vehicle ploughed through the crowd resulting in six people (including three police men) being injured. Again it was lucky that cable haulage did not work at faster speeds. But all was not yet over; “just at that moment a motor car.. appeared on the scene“. The motor became entangled in the front of the tramcar and was dragged along the road by it for thirty yards. The driver jumped clear, narrowly avoiding behind run over by another tramcar coming up Waterloo Place from Regent Road. And then, as soon as it started, the excitement was over: the tramcar released its unexpected grip on the traction cable and the tangle of public and private transportation ground to a halt.
Laurel and Hardy come off worst from an interaction between motorcars and tramcarsOf the four hospitalised, three had been in the car; the driver Archibald Carmichael and his passengers John McArthy and James Paton, through for the day from Gourock and Port Glasgow for the races. The fourth was a pedestrian, Mrs Mathieson of Gayfield Square. This wasn’t the result of black magic or enchantment however as a simple explanation was soon found. As the tramcar had approached Regent Road it had to switch between traction cables by releasing one cable with the rear gripper and grabbing the other with the front gripper (each tramcar had a front and rear gripper to attach itself to the cables.) At it had moved across the junction where Montrose Terrace branched off London Road the gripper had damaged the cable running in the slot between the rails. This had cut into some of the wire strands which had came started to unravel, preventing the gripper from releasing properly when the driver tried to stop on reached Waterloo Place. The fraying cable meantime had run around the pulley and come back towards the now stationary tramcar from the opposite direction and when the tangle of loose strands passed through the released gripper they quickly became tangled in it and enough unravelling wire built up to suddenly start the car in motion again in the return direction.
1907 Post Office map of Edinburgh. Waterloo Place is on the left above Waverley Station. The tramcar had approached from the east (right) and had damaged the cable when it diverted off London Road at Cadzow Place up Montrose Terrace towards Regent Road (the junction is at the right of the map, near where Abbehill Station is marked). Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandIt would prove to be a bad day for the Edinburgh & District Tramways Co. and there had already been an accident earlier that morning when at 11:40AM a car overshot a set of points and collided with the pawl near the Abbey Church between Abbeyhill and Meadowbank. This was an emergency stop device mounted in the traction cable slot beneath the road surface which, if it was hit by a tramcar gripper, detached it from the traction cable and brought the tram to a very instant stop. The pawl was a violent but important measure which prevent the gripper from entering and becoming entangled in the large underground pulleys around which the cable ran. The shock of hitting the pawl in this case was severe enough to snap the car’s front axle. But these were different and more efficient times; the tramway depot at Shrubhill simply sent out a gang with a complete new bogey, which they swapped out at the side of the road in Abbeyhill before getting the car quickly back in service.
Cable tramcar No. 150 passing the Abbey Church in Abbeyhill, c. 1900. It is heading east down London Road towards Meadowbank. SC1592743 via Trove.ScotThe return to service lasted just 15 minutes following the accident before the network had to be stopped again! A tramcar going from the Bridges to Leith Street had collided with another motor car and once again the pair became entangled and took some time to clear. This was the third and final accident of the day.
An altogether more tragic runaway accident took place on Saturday 17th October 1925 when an electric tramcar proceeding down a single line section on Ardmillan Terrace ran away and jumped the points at the foot of the hill, crashing into St. Martin’s Episcopal Church. Young Edward Stirling, aged just 8, had been out to buy a toy train for his brother who was in hospital. He was killed instantly when struck by the tram and was buried in Saughton Cemetery on Wednesday 21st. The tram driver, 3 passengers and another pedestrian were hospitalised. The Corporation sent a wreath and his funeral was attended by Councillor Mancor, Convenor of the Tramway Committee and R. S. Pilcher, the general manager of Corporation Tramways. The Lord and Lady Provost sent a letter of sympathy. A subsequent Board of Trade enquiry found no fault with the tramway equipment or tramcar and did not apportion blame to the driver, who had tried to use the resistance brake to slow the tram followed by the hand brake. There was some popular discontent with the Tramways, a correspondent by the pen name of A. Mother wrote to the ‘News to complain about the speed of the electric trams – “too fast for either safety or comfort“- and to protest about plans to increase their speed even further.
The next runaway took place in spectacular fashion on Saturday June 1st 1929. Miraculously, nobody was injured when car No. 349, waiting at the Liberton terminus with no crew but four elderly passengers aboard ran off down Liberton Brae. Anyone who has ever tried to cycle up (and down) that road can attest just how severe the gradient quickly gets! As the crew availed themselves of the facilities in the terminus shelter they didn’t notice their vehicle slowly begin to roll off down the hill; they had not applied the mechanical hand brake and the pressure had leaked out of the air brake hose causing it to slowly release.
Former tramway terminus shelter at Liberton Gardens, on Liberton Brae.The four passengers (aged 59, 71, 71 and 84) were subjected to a terrifying half mile ride down the Brae before No. 349 came to the corner at Alnwickhill Road, jumped the tracks, slid across the road and pavement and impaled itself on a pole for the overhead wires before caming to rest in the garden of 42 Liberton Brae.
No.349 in the garden of 42 Liberton Brae after the accident of June 1st 1929. © Edinburgh City LibrariesQuite how only one passenger suffered only light bruising and all four had walked away from this defies logic. Indeed the two 71 year olds who had been aboard, a married couple from Leith Walk, simply waited for the next car and carried on home as if nothing else had happened. The house at number 42 was similarly unscathed, although the same could not be said for its garden wall, gate and neat privet hedging.
A News photo of No.349 in the garden of 42 Liberton Brae after the accident of June 1st 1929As a result of this incident protective barriers were installed on the corner outside numbers 42 to 46 where they remain to this day; the dents in their metalwork show they still serve their intended purpose well.
Crash barriers, No. 42-48 Liberton BraeSix years later, in 1935, an accident took place only a few hundred metres down the Brae at Braefoot Terrace. The current collection pole of a tramcar proceeding uphill became dislodged from the current wire and the vehicle lost power and ground quickly to a halt. The trailing SMT bus was following too closely to stop in time and swerved off the road to avoid a collision. Instead it demolished the shopfronts of a James Baxter’s butchers, Adam Smith’s chemist and the branch of the Commercial Bank of Scotland. There were fortunately no major injuries; the butcher’s boy had a lucky escape as he had just been sent outside to clean the windows only to find a thirty-two seater bus baring down on him. He was able to jump clear in the nick of time.
On 25th October 1945, 64 year old Brownlow Grigor of Leith, a Corporation tram driver with 30 years experience was fined £3 by the Burgh Court for “having driven a tram culpably and recklessly“. Grigor was in charge of car No. 42 and had not been paying sufficient attention as he was trying to stow away his thermos flask. He had approached the sharp bend where cars travelling between Morningside and Marchmont turned off Church Hill and onto Greenside Gardens too fast and the laws of physics did the rest. His vehicle jumped the tracks and demolished a 24-foot section of the wall of – coincidentally – number 42 Greenhill Gardens. The embarrassment was all the more severe as this house was St. Bennets, the official residence and private chapel of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Edinburgh and St. Andrews! Grigor’s claim that it was defective rails that were at fault was not upheld.
1945 Ordnance Survey town plan of Edinburgh showing the traamway winding its way from Church Hill to Strathearn Place via Greenhill Gardens. Number 42, marked “RC Chapel (Private)” is St. Bennet’s, official residence of the Archbishop. Grigor’s car had jumped the rails as it made the sharp turn in front of it at too high a speed. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandOur last calamity took place in 1951 and it was the heroic figure of James Ferguson, a 53 year old worker from Portobello Power Station, who averted a real catastrophe. The busy tramcar he was on was hit by a lorry near Piershill which injured the driver and caused him to lose consciousness. Ferguson leapt to his feet, ran the length of the car, punched through the glass door to the driver’s compartment with his bare fist and let himself into the cab to disengage the power lever and apply the brakes. Ferguson was treated in hospital for cuts to his hands but was otherwise unscathed.
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Reaching for the skies. Ish: the thread about the Edinburgh aviation craze of 1910
This thread was originally written and published in February 2023.
It was the year 1909 and aviation fever was sweeping Britain. In May of that year, John Moore-Brabazon made the first heavier-than-air flight, in Britain, by a British citizen; in June, Alliott Verdon Roe flew the first, fixed-wing aircraft of all-British manufacture. Come July, Frenchman Louis Blériot made the first flight across the English Channel and the Barnwell brothers – Harold and Frank – make the first powered flight in Scotland at Causewayhead in Stirling. To cap off a thrilling year, in November Moore-Brabazon made pigs fly when he strapped one into a basket and attached it to the wing of his aeroplane.
John Moore-Brabazon makes pigs fly – as a joke, but also the first flight of a live animal cargo. November 4th 1909.Inspired by the Barnwells, others in Scotland decided to get themselves involved. There were, declared The Scotsman, “a large number who are following the development of aviation with an educated, scientific interest“; Scotland was “forging ahead” in this field boasted the Daily Record. And at the epicentre was Edinburgh, with an entire four (count them!) different parties vying to get themselves off of the ground. To add incentive to local pioneers, in September 1909 the directors of the Marine Gardens amusement park in Portobello offered a £500 prize, good for 1 year, for the first flight across the Firth of Forth by a Briton in a British-built plane; so long as it started from Marine Gardens.
Portobello’s Marine Gardens, with the island of Inchkeith and the Fife coast in the distance. © Edinburgh City LibrariesJohn Gibson, a cycle repair shop owner and engine-tinkerer of Leith, was the most prolific builder of flying machines in Edinburgh, running through a series of quarter and then half-scale models before moving on to full size machines of the Farman type. The flying experiment s of John Gibson and his son John Gibson Gibson were conducted at Buteland Farm outside Balerno and some short flights were managed. Machines made for paying customers also took successfully to the skies. The full story of these are covered in a separate thread.
The Gibson’s first full-size aeroplane – Caledonia No. 1 – probably at Balerno. Photograph donated by John Gibson’s son G. T. Gibson to the National Museums of Scotland and on display at the East Fortune Museum of FlightWilfrid Venour Foulis (1884-1951) was the son of Henrietta Fraser and James Foulis, a general practitioner, and grew up on Heriot Row in Edinburgh’s New Town. The family later moved to a villa at Barnton known as The Grove. A practical engineer, Wilfrid studied at the Heriot-Watt Technical College (as it was) before serving an engineering apprenticeship first in the foundry of Aciéries Tilleur & d‘Angleur in Liege, Belgium and then at the Hyde Park Locomotive Works in Glasgow. He then spent two years testing engines for Argyll Motors and then Arrol-Johnson Motors before going into the car business, based at Sunbury Mews off Belford Road. The 1910-11 Post Office directory lists him as a dealer in luxury French cars; Hotchkiss, Berlict and Delage.
Sunbury Mews, where Foulis had his garage and workshopHe is described in a newspaper article as “young man of fine physique, standing over 6ft 3in” and as having “devoted a large part of his life to the study of aviation“. By 1909 he is referred to as “an aviator” who had built for himself a biplane that he tried – and failed – to fly near The Grove. In that year, he married Clara Millington Dow, a well known actress and operatic soprano, who had been trained by none other than the W. S. Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan. The couple announced to the newspapers that they would be settling down in Edinburgh after their honeymoon tour of South France, but back in Edinburgh, Wilfrid did not to settle down. Instead, he took himself off to Brooklands in England and learned to fly. On his return he began construction of a new flying machine; a Lane monoplane, a British adaptation of the Blériot monoplane
Flight magazine details of the Lane monoplane from April 1910.Foulis’ made a successful flight in this aircraft some time in early February 1910, but was extremely secretive about his project. The Daily Record wrote that he “will not divulge any particulars as to his machine… [and he] refuses to state where his flights take place“. The location was later gleaned by the Linlithgowshire Gazette as being West Briggs Farm, between Turnhouse and Kirkliston, west of Edinburgh. Coincidentally, this spot is now directly under the runway of Edinburgh Airport. The Gazette‘s reporter was watching when, on 26th March 1910 at 630PM, he made a number of high speed loops of the airfield (on the ground) and managed a number of hops off the ground to a height of three feet.
West Briggs farm, as used by Foulis for his flying experiments, now beneath the runway of Edinburgh Airport. OS 6 inch Survey, 1890 vs. modern satellite imagery. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandThe distance from his business and workshop in Edinburgh to the flying strip limited flights to weekends or the very early morning or late evenings, and his ability to practice was not helped by the weather. However he persisted, trying 8 different propellers before settling on one that worked to his satisfaction. The experiments were not without incident; on two occasions the plane crashed and overturned. One early morning in late July, around 4AM, he made his “highest and most successful flight“.
The secretive Wilfrid found himself in court in November 1910, being sued by a man he had employed as an engineer to help him build the planes. It is from this court case that we learn most of the details about his flying experiments. Henry Funke was a motor mechanic in Foulis’ employ and alleged that the latter owed him £20 overtime, having spent all his spare time and Sundays assisting in the construction of the aircraft, sleeping in the workshop in a hammock, but had only been paid a flat weekly rate. Funke declared under oath that while the biplane had “failed entirely“, the monoplane had indeed taken to the skies. On one occasion they had taken it to Newton Stewart to make a public display but it was too wet to fly so they had to cancel: the bitterly disappointed crowd became angry and started throwing stones at the visitors, who had to hide from them. The court found in Funke’s favour and he was awarded £10.
Wilfrid continued his flying experiments after the court case, until a serious accident in early 1911 totally incapacitated him and he had to retire from flying and retreat to France for a number of years to recuperate. His aeroplane was advertised for sale from Edinburgh (for some reason, in the Belfast Telegraph, to Ireland!) in February 1911.
Classified advert selling Foulis’ aeroplane, February 1911He was still in France, in convalescence, when war broke out in 1914 and he returned home to “sign up”. But he did not join the Royal Flying Corps, he instead entered the Army Supply Corps, where he would rise to the rank of Captain. Making use of his engineering and motoring background, he made a name for himself by converting a moulding machine into a tyre press for the repair of army lorry wheels, receiving “a mention in despatches” and promoted to the head of the 3rd Army Supply Corps’ repair shop. While in this position he invented the “Foulis Walking Stick Gun” and was sent back to Britain in December 1915 with it by none other than Field Marshall Haig (a fellow son of Edinburgh). He was seconded to the ministry of munitions to further this invention and took 9 back to the front for trials with the 2nd Army in 1916. Not one to stop inventing, he is also credited with the “Foulis Adaptor for Howitzers” and the “Foulis Safe Red Cartridge for Stokes Mortars“, although I am unsure of what any of these devices actually look like or did.
Wilfrid and Clara settled in England after the war but divorced in 1923. Their son, Michael Venour Primrose Foulis, joined the RAF in 1940 and served in the Mediterranean as a pilot, where he died in action in 1943. Wilfrid re-married in 1924, to Ida Brookes. In 1935 his career took a significantly different direction when he was appointed director of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, a position he held until his death in 1951 aged 67. He is buried in the family plot in the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh.
Wilfrid’s final resting place in Dean Cemetery, photo credit JSF via Findagrave.comIn April 1910, it was reported that Charles Hubbard, an English-born engineer and factory manager living at Viewforth, had built for himself a Blériot type monoplane of the sort in which Loius Blériot had recently managed his cross-Channel flight. The machine is described as being 28 feet long and with a wing span the same. It was constructed mainly from a bamboo framework with a propeller of butternut wood, and was powered by the unusual arrangement of two 5hp Rex motorcycle engines coupled together by a chain. Hubbard was in the process of constructing a 3 cylinder, 25hp Anzani engine and hoped to have his machine ready for the Royal Aero Club’s inaugural Scottish flying meeting at Lanark Racecourse in August of that year.
Louis Blériot prepares for his epic cross-channel flight, 25th July 1910.Hubbard deviated from the standard Blériot design, by having square wing-tips instead of rounded ones and in sitting himself on a hammock seat inside the framework of the fuselage, underneath the wing, rather than above it looking over the top surface. Testing was being carried out on Portobello Golf Course in the early mornings. On 25th April it was reported that he had managed to make a number of powered hops in it, although with only 10hp total engine output – less than the Wright Flyer of 1903 – it was unlikely he would actually have ever sustained flight. A serious crash required a period of recovery for Charles and the machine to be entirely rebuilt. By June the following year, the more powerful engine was ready and fitted, when Hubbard is photographed in it at Portobello.
The Hubbard-Blériot monoplane at Portobello, June 1911No more is heard of Hubbard’s flying experiments after this time. He and his brother would later go into business in car sales, hire and repairs from the workshop in Viewforth where his flying machine had been built.
Henry (1882-1964) and Alfred (1891-1965) Alexander were the sons of Margaret Wilson and James Robert Alexander. The latter had found success in the boot and shoe trade, before expanding into piano sales. Obviously adept at spotting the next new thing, he then moved into the bicycle trade. The whole Alexander family were keen cyclists, and all four of “JR’s” sons had been high school cycling champions. Just as their father progressed the business on to motorcycles, Henry and Alfred graduated from cycle to motorcycle racing. The former had several district championships to his name and the latter had won 13 first prizes in the 14 races he had contended in 1910.
With a passion for speed, engineering and dangerous thrills, it was only natural that flight should interest them. They decided to build their own aeroplane, in their motorcycle tuning workshop on St. James’ Street, off St. James’ Square (the family business at this time was nearby in the district of Greenside). Their monoplane was exhibited at the Scottish Motor Exhibition at the Waverley Market in January and February 1910. It was of the Santos-Dumont type, named for its Brazilian inventor. This was a particularly lightweight aircraft, where the pilot sat slung beneath the wing, and the brothers constructed it from bicycle tubing and fitted it with a small 20hp engine of their own design and construction. It was 19 feet long, with a wing span of 20 feet, a fuselage 4 feet wide and an all-up weight of 240lb – about 25% less than a regular Santos-Dumont Demoiselle. It was their intention to be able to produce a low-cost flying machine for £225 (about £33k in 2023).
1910 Postcard image of the Santos-Dumont “Demoiselle” type that the Alexanders constructed. The caption reads “Grand Aviation Week at Bordeaux-Merignac. The aviator Audemars Bayard-Clement piloting a “Demoiselle” type Santos-Dumont, wingspan 6m, total length 6m, wing surface 12m², cruciform tail which pivots in any direction, landing gear with pneumatic wheels. Engine Bayard-Clement 30hp, 2 cylinders. Gross weight in running order 145kg.”In early April, the Edinburgh Evening News reported that they had been secretly testing it on the ground at an undisclosed “sports enclosure” on the outskirts of Edinburgh, towing it there behind their car in the early mornings. Following extensive ground runs they had managed a 20 yard flight in the dusk of Monday April 4th. When interviewed by the reporter of the Daily Record, the brothers informed them that their intention was to overhaul and improve the engine before trying for the sky again. The description of the site, along with a grainy photo of it, identifies it as Myreside, the playing fields of the brothers’ old school, George Watson’s. They were limited to runs of only 150 yards by the confines of the grounds, surrounded by high walls.
Period newspaper photo of the Alexanders’ aeroplane at their test ground at Myreside. The pavilion of Craiglockart Playing fields is in the backgroundThe Alexanders, who proclaimed themselves “Scotland’s largest motorcycle dealers,” became the first and sole distributor for Ford vehicles in Scotland in 1911 and Henry, ever the adventurer and showman, hit on a publicity scheme to promote the new 20hp “Model T” and showcase its practicality and ruggedness: he would drive one up Ben Nevis! Taking a stock, 4 seat, touring model for his adventure, he spent a week on the mountain (on foot), scouting out potential routes, making notes of obstacles etc., finally picking on a start point at Inverlochy. The attempt began on the 9th May and the climb would take 5 days in all. Numerous times the car sank up to its axles in marshes, only to be pulled, coaxed and dug out. Where the path was too narrow, a gang of workmen widened it. Where streams were to be crossed, a portable ramp was used to bridge them. The snow on the summit was 12 feet deep in places, and Henry had to dash between patches of bare rock and boulders, building up enough speed to slither across the snow to the next clear patch.
Henry at the Summit, with the old observatory and “hotel” behind him. Note the snow chains on the rear wheels. Credit: BFIHenry sets off from the summit through the snow to begin the descent. Credit: BFIFord’s general manager in Britain had invited the press to view, photograph and film the descent; driving them to the foot of the mountain in a Convoy of Ford cars, and carrying their gear up by pony. In contrast to the climb, Henry’s return journey took only 2.5 hours (although split into two legs, with an overnight stop half-way down at 2,000ft altitude). A newsreel film of this remarkable journey can be seen at the British Film Institute website. Henry’s feat was used extensively by Alexander & Co. in their newspaper adverts.
The Scotsman, 31st May 1911In November 1912, Henry was fined 10s for failing to show a licence when requested and £1 (or 10 days imprisonment) on a charge of having driven in a negligent manner on a country road in Fife, resulting in the death of 3 sheep from a flock he hit. In September 1928 he repeated the feat of “motor mountaineering” on Ben Nevis, this time ascending on the bridle path on the western side in the new Model A. The car broken down a few hundred feet from the summit and required an axle to be replaced, probably the highest ever “roadside repair” undertaken in the UK. This ascent took 9h 20m on a route that had been prepared in advance.
Patrick Thomsons, one of Edinburgh’s premier department stores, cashed in on the enthusiasm for all things flying and took out large adverts in the local papers capitalising on the successes of the Alexanders and Foulis (Hubbard didn’t get a mention), inviting shoppers to land on their roof by aeroplane (“Ours is a big, broad, flat, asphalt roof. You can tell it from almost any height by the green and white P.T. flag. An ideal place for a bird-like descent, we should say. Leave your machine up top and take the elevator down”.
Edinburgh Evening News advert, from June 1910The Daily Record reported in April 1910 that an unknown machine, based at Swanston farm to the south of the city, had been flying high over the southern outskirts of the city on more than one night, with people seeing “a flying machine, brilliantly illuminated, which was at a considerable height from the ground“. On the 5th April, the “moving lights of the aeroplane were seen by several people over the Hunter’s Tryst“. Given the progress (or lack of) of the known aviators in the city at this time, and that there are no other corresponding news or magazine reports, it is likely that this was Scotland’s first Unidentified Flying Object caused by local hearsay, rumour and excitement. Despite the intense efforts, none of Edinburgh’s home-grown flyers enjoyed much success on their home-made machines. All seem to have been distinctly underpowered and hard to control, and made little more than short, high-speed hops at low altitude. It would take another man to bring success to the city’s pilots.
William Hugh Ewen (1879 – 1947) , usually known as W. H., was born in Shanghai to Selina Blakeway and William Ewen, who were Scottish missionaries. On returning to Scotland they lived in the Pilrig area of Leith before moving to Willowbrae, and W.H. studied music at Edinburgh University. After graduating, he worked as a printer’s clerk, served in the Territorial Army and was an organist in the United Free Church. Perhaps inspired by the well-reported exploits of the Alexanders, of Foulis and of Hubbard, in February 1911 he took himself to Hendon and was awarded Royal Aeronautical Society flying licence no. 63, making him the 6th Scot to be so accredited. He was something of a natural, he flew on his first attempt and graduated on his third.
W. H. Ewen in 1913, from Flight MagazineIn June of that year, Ewen relocated himself to Lanark Aerodrome, which had been built the previous summer a the Lanark Racecourse to host the Royal Aero Club’s inaugural Scottish flying meeting, and set himself up as a flight school, W. H. Ewen Aviation Co. Ltd., offering tuition (or just joyrides) on Blériot or Deperdussin monoplanes, for the princely sum of £75 (c. £11,300 in 2023) plus a refundable £15 deposit for damages to the machines!). And then on August 16th 1911, the news wires brought exciting news to Edinburgh; not only was Ewen going to fly through from Lanark, and not only was he going to spend a week giving demonstration flights from the Portobello Marine Gardens, he was going to also take up the now-expired challenge to fly an aeroplane across the Forth from there!
Midlothian Journal, August 1911Ewen didn’t make things easy for himself; he was going to fly a brand new aeroplane – a French Deperdussin monoplane – which had never yet flown and had an engine of only 28hp (50hp was by this time a standard for longer distance flights). For the start of the aviation week the poor weather prevented him flying, but then on the morning of Wednesday 30th, the skies cleared and the winds dropped, and he made the decision to try for his pioneering flight across the Forth. At 6AM he took a practice flight, the first time he had flown the new machine, making a loop at 150ft altitude towards Leith, circling over Seafield, before climbing to 350ft and passing across Craigentinny Golf Course, Duddingston and Joppa, before being caught in an unfavourable wind and deciding to land in a field at Northfield Farm. Mr Graham, the farmer, towed the plane back to Marine Gardens on his horse and cart.
W. H. Ewen (at the controls) in his Deperdussin aircraft, probably at Marine Gardens. From Flight magazine, September 1911Just before 7PM, dressed in a suit of black oilskins, Ewen lined up the Deperdussin on the tiny 150 yard “flight strip” at the Marine Gardens sports field, started his engine, pointed his craft out to sea and opened the throttle. He only just cleared the boundary fence (which had been lowered to accommodate him) and then rose “gracefully” into the sky and headed Fifewards. Finding the wind stronger than expected, he carried on climbing until he reached an altitude of 1,000ft at which point the air was calm. By this time he was just to the east of the island of Inchkeith, and continued on his course until he crossed the Fife coast about a mile from Kinghorn. He now turned for Leith, and crossed back across the water – a period which he described as a “bad five minutes” on account of the turbulence, turning homewards for Portobello about 2 miles short of the port. Returning to the field where he had taken off, he made an attempt to land but aborted at the last moment when he was caught by a gust of wind. Deciding the landing there would be too difficult he instead put himself down nearby on Craigentinny Meadows. The whole flight had covered 12 miles and had lasted for 10 minutes
The wings were taken off and the Deperdussin was pushed back to a heroes welcome at Marine Gardens by the band of the 3rd Dragoon Guards who struck up “See the Conquering Hero Comes“. Asked to make a speech to the cheering crowd, W. H. expressed his pleasure at how the flight had gone and that he was “pleased that a Scotsman had been able to do something in the way of mechanical flight”.
An advert for the Deperdussin monoplane, September 1911, celebrating Ewen’s flight across the ForthAt the end of the week, a celebratory function was thrown by the directors of the Marine Gardens in Ewen’s honour. The band struck up “Scotland the Brave” and he was presented with a commemorative silver bowl after which a concert was held. Asked once again to make a speech, he joked that what he did not think himself particularly brave or adventurous because in 2 or 3 years time, flying would be so normalised that everybody in attendance would have done it. “Flying” he said “was the safest means of travel, if one had the common sense to know when to stop.” A few weeks later, W.H. was again celebrated by the newspapers, this time for flying the Deperdussin from Lanark to Edinburgh, a distance of 32 miles, in 35 minutes. Navigating by following the Caledonian Railway from Carstairs, he put down at Gorgie Farm, where the Chesser and Hutchison housing estates would later be built. He was followed on this journey by the mechanics from the flying school at Lanark, chasing him on the ground by car.
The Deperdussin is readied for Ewen’s flight from Lanark to Edinburgh in October 1911Flushed with success, in early 1912 W.H. moved himself to Hendon to open a new branch of his flying school. Here he also became an agent for and constructor of British-built French Caudron biplanes. “Scotland’s Greatest Aviator, the Hero of a Hundred Flights” returned home that summer to fly at both Lanark and a second season at Marine Gardens. He had a narrow escape on 26th July when his machine failed to take off, ran up an embankment and fell, nose-first, into a 6 feet deep ditch.
Ewen, in his Caudron biplane, at Lanark, ready to fly to the 1912 aviation week at Marine Gardens.After training some 350 pilots, Ewen sold his business, and it was renamed the British Caudron Co., it would later move to Alloa, the town on the north bank of the Forth, and construct an aeroplane factory there. At the age of 36, W.H. enlisted in the Army Ordnance Department in 1915 before being posted to the Royal Flying Corps. Transferring to the Royal Air Force on its formation in 1918, he retired at the rank of Major due to ill health in November that year and spent most of the rest of his life living in London, working as a composer and orchestrator of music. He died in Edinburgh in 1947.
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The Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric War: the thread about the fight to build an improbable and impossible railway
An initial version of this thread was written in December 2020.
In 1844, Britain was in the grip of a stock market bubble called the “railway mania”. Rival companies vied to build lines here, there and everywhere, and attracted ever increasing financial speculation. In Edinburgh, three principal schemes were converging at a central locus that would later become known as Waverley Station; the Edinburgh & Glasgow – running between those two cities – the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton – running north to a ferry terminal at Granton through the Scotland Street tunnel, with a branch to Leith – and the North British Railway – entering the city from the east and Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Railway mania reaches Edinburgh; the E&G in green, the EL&G in Yellow and the NBR in brown. Overlaid on an OS 6-inch map of the period.These railways favoured orthodox steam locomotives to provide their motive power, with occasional assistance by rope haulage for steep gradients,e.g. the Scotland Street Tunnel. However there was an exciting new technology which promised cleaner, faster and more economical railways that would be cheaper to build; the “Atmospheric Railway”.
This name does not come from them having a particularly romantic ambience, it is because they are propelled – in theory – by atmospheric pressure. In principal the scheme was simple; a slotted tube was laid between the railway tracks and every few miles there was a pumping house which exhausted the air from the pipe, creating a vacuum. A piston in the pipe was pushed along by the atmospheric pressure behind it; if you attached a train to that then you could propel it too. The trick to get it working was how to connect the train and the piston without breaking the vacuum. This required a longitudinal valve (in practice, long leather flaps) to seal the tube; a trick that nobody ever managed to pull off reliably.
The atmospheric railway system was patented in 1839 by Samuel Clegg and the Samuda brothers. They set up a demonstration of the system at Wormwood Scrubs in West London. This impressed the directors of the Dublin & Kingstown Railway in Ireland who felt it would be suitable for an extension of their line from Kingstown to Dalkey. This was a 1 3/4 mile branch and began operation on 19th August 1843. It persisted for a full 9 years until a small locomotive was brought in to do the same work. The Dalkey scheme attracted the attention of the London & Croydon Railway, who in 1844 built a short 1 1/4 mile atmospheric expansion of their mainline from London Bridge station to Bricklayers Arms. This was to try and reduce congestion on a steep section of the line with a number of stops and starts. The whole thing though was a “sad fiasco” which consumed a huge amount of capital and was terminated in 1847.
Contemporary illustration of the Saint-Germain atmospheric railway in France. Note the vacuum tube between the rails and the slot in its top, sealed (in theory) by the leather flap valves“Croydon Atmospheric Road”, from the Illustrated London News, October 11th 1845These were small schemes and most sensible railway engineers steered well clear of the obvious complexities of the system for larger scale application, but the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel was an exception. He was captivated by the promise of this modern and unconventional technology and proposed it for the 51 mile South Devon Railway, to help overcome the steep curves and gradients. The father of modern British railways, George Stephenson, denounced the idea as “a great humbug” before it even got going. Brunel’s own locomotive engineer, the eminently sensible Daniel Gooch, said he “could not understand how Mr. Brunel could be so misled. He had so much faith in his being able to improve it that he shut his eyes to the consequences of failure.” Brunel however remained convinced and the force of his reputation carried the scheme through; the South Devon opened its first atmospheric section in September 1847, at least a year later than planned. By September 1848 it was abandoned, having “rapidly disintegrated throughout its entire length“.
A surviving section of track and 15 inch vacuum tube of the South Devon atmospheric railway. CC-BY-SA 2.5 ChowellsDespite these hiccups, for a brief period from 1845-1846, the “railway mania” investment bubble was briefly joined by “atmospheric fever.” And once again, Edinburgh and Leith were in on it, with not just one but two atmospheric schemes were proposed. And not just two schemes; two in direct competition, running from the same start and end points, less than 100m apart, each backed by a considerable array of the councillors, merchants and notable figures of both the City and its port. And so commenced the brief but petulant Edinburgh and Leith Atmospheric Railway War of 1845.
The rival Edinburgh & Leith atmospheric schemes were both formed at some point in June 1845; each claimed to be the original and genuine scheme and that the other was a pretender. In one corner was the Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric Railway (which we shall call the Atmospheric Route) and in the other was the Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric Direct Railway (which we shall call the Direct Route.) The engineer to the former was John Miller, who designed the Almond Valley Viaduct for the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway and also Granton Harbour. The latter had George Gunn, also a railway engineer, but one who had hitherto acted in support of another, including Miller himself.
The Atmospheric Route proposed to run a railway from a terminus in the Low Calton – with a connection to the “Waverley” stations – through the Greenside Valley, under London Road and then through the market gardens parallel to Leith Walk. It then continued around the west of Leith Links to a principal terminus near the Assembly Rooms at Constitution Street. From here, branches ran to the docks, with one possibly a small passenger terminus for the Forth ferries and the other going over (or under) the river to the wet docks. A service every ten minutes was promised.
The Direct Route originated at a station near West Register Street, with an onward connection to one or more of the “Waverley” stations. It ran underground down Leith Street, possibly with an intermediate station in the vicinity of York Place, and continued underground in a “cut and cover” tunnel a few feet below the surface to Elm Row. Here it re-surfaced to run in a semi-recessed trench down the entirety of Leith Walk, the proposal being to provide regular bridges across this road.
A drawing in the “Lighthouse” Stevenson collection showing the “Direct route” at Union Place. CC-BY NLSA drawing in the “Lighthouse” Stevenson collection showing the “Direct route” at Antigua Place. The tunnel roof was to be just 2.5 feet below the surface. CC-BY NLSWhile this proposal might seem absurd today – Leith Walk is almost end-to-end 4 storey tenements and is Scotland’s most densely populated neighbourhood by quite some margin – bear in mind that the street is all “made up ground”; it’s a former defensive feature, so easy to dig out, and that in the 1850s it was nothing like as built up as it is today. It was very lightly developed with few large or important buildings, and almost pastoral in character. It was intended to use an “inclined plane” (i.e. gravity) to provide downhill locomotion to Leith and the atmospheric principle to get back up the hill to Edinburgh. There would be two tracks but only the uphill would be powered, this would cut costs but greatly reduce operational flexibility; they did however hedge their bets and publicly did not preclude themselves from using normal steam locomotives “should they prove expedient.”
What the Leith Walk atmospheric railway of the “Direct route” might have looked like. London Illustrated News illustration of the Dalkey atmospheric railway in January 1844There two atmospheric schemes not only had each other to contend with, additional pressure placed on both by the conventional railway of the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton, – already building a line from Scotland Street to North Leith via Bonnington (yellow line on the route map below) – but were now also lodging a bill with Parliament to build an extension from Bonnington across the Water of Leith to South Leith (the pale yellow line). In November the North British Railway joined in and announced their intention to tunnel through the eastern end of the Calton Hill to get from their existing mainline at Croft-an-Righ to the top of Easter Road, down which they would run a horse-drawn tramway to a terminus in the vicinity of Queen Street (pale brown line).
Atmospheric Fever in Edinburgh; the “Atmospheric Route” in red and the “Direct Route” in cyan. The pale lines are the proposals to reach Leith by the EL&G and the NBR. Note the darker blue line of the Edinburgh & Dalkeith railway approaching Leith via Niddrie from the east. Overlaid on an OS 6-inch map of the period.The Atmospheric route got their preliminary announcement published first on October 7th 1845, a day before the Direct route. They were seeking a capitalisation of £100,000. The following day the Direct route announced they were seeking £200,000 and accused the Atmospheric route of financial impropriety by issuing considerably more shares to the public than they were actually available. The Direct route stated that they were proposing their scheme lest “the independence, usefulness and commerce of [Edinburgh & Leith] are gone forever”.
Initial invitations to purchase shares were made by both schemes in the Caledonian Mercury and Evening Courant in June 1845, but there was almost instantly a problem arose. One of the merchants listed as backing the Atmospheric Route denied any connection with it and that his name had been put against it without his knowledge. As did the stock exchange said to be dealing in the sale. As was the stock broker claimed to be acting for the railway! All three immediately took out their own personal adverts in the next days Scotsman to this effect. This pattern of disinformation and using the columns of the newspapers to fight a proxy war was one that was to continue.
Scotsman, 18th June 1845By October, both schemes were ready to issue their shares. Adverts to this effect were placed in the Edinburgh papers and also in Glasgow too (each city having its own stock exchange at this time). The Direct route was careful to point out in their advert that all other railway schemes proposed to Leith were “inutile and insufficient“. Despite the improbability of two such rival schemes, with the railway investment boom being what it was the shares of both concerns were oversubscribed. Adverts were placed in newspapers seeking to buy and surplus share and each company seemed to spread gossip that their opponent had not allocated their shares in an equitable manner. As a result, the companies had to place further adverts in the newspapers to reassure investors of the fair nature of their allocation.
A blank share certificate of the Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric Direct RailwayAnd then the “phoney war”, hitherto conducted through the newspaper columns alone, suddenly got a lot more real. In the early hours of October 19th 1845, Sunday, a representative of the Atmospheric route pinned copies of its parliamentary notices in public on the church doors of Edinburgh & Leith (this was actually a legal requirement as a way to circulate official notices around the public – it was not until the 20th century that churches would have dedicated public notice boards for this purpose). However, when the faithful came to worship on the Sabbath later that morning, it was found that the Direct route had also been out and had replaced all the notices with their own.
Martin Luther also fixed his controversial notice to a church doorThe Atmospheric route was outraged, offering a reward of £50 if the perpetrator could be apprehended. The Direct route denied all complicity and reiterated that they were the original scheme and the opposition were “plagiarists”, out to serve not the public but only their own interests.
Reward notice offered by the Atmospheric routeThe next task for both schemes was to collect the deposit money for their shares, complete their surveys, plans and engineering proposals and prepare their bills to go before parliament for approval. While this took place, after the outrage on the Sabbath, the skirmishing returned to tit-for-tat adverts placed in the newspapers by the solicitors of each scheme. The details of this are tiresome and childish, each consistently blamed the other for forcing its hand and making it respond. On October 29th, both companies took out extensive, self-important adverts in the Scotsman in side-by-side columns in which they each reiterated the authenticity of their own schemes and attacked that of their opponent. Both besmirched each other as not acting in the interests of the travelling public and merely being moneymaking schemes for their backers. Each also claimed to be the original railway proposal and that the other was a mere copycat.
The Direct route consistently positioned itself as the “bona fide” and original scheme, thereby having the right of putting forward their bill to Parliament. It said that its rival “thereby created in the public mind a just and general dissatisfaction” and that that the criticism of their scheme had been “inveterate and persevering“. However, they were repeatedly vague about the specific details of their proposed route – beyond it just being more “direct” than the competition. The reality differed; their route was less than 50m to the west and the distance saving marginal. By choosing the route down the middle of Leith Walk – rather than the sensible parallel one of its rival through undeveloped ground – they gave themselves a far more expensive and complex construction proposition.
Neither company was prepared to back down, and both published notices proclaiming their intent to lodge a bill with Parliament. When the notices of intent were made to Parliament, the Treasurer’s Committee of the Edinburgh Town Council made it known that they would act in dissent, “inasmuch as it was proposed by these companies to take possession of the whole of the public markets beneath the North Bridge.” On November 20th, the Direct route “[had] the pleasure to inform the Shareholders” that their engineer had assured them their plans and surveys were nearing completion in order that they could be lodged with Parliament.
The sparring continued over the festive season as both companies tried to get the other to withdraw their bills. And then on January 29th 1846, in a surprise notice in the Caledonian Mercury, the Direct route threw in the towel and indicated that they agreed to give the Atmospheric route their “cordial cooperation and support”. After seven months, the war was over. Two days later it was announced that the Atmospheric route had lodged their bill with Parliament.
The surrender notice, in the Caledonian MercuryBut when the bill came to be read, the railway took the unusual action of immediately asking for more time. This was reluctantly given despite their opponents trying to use this as an excuse to have it thrown out; the Trustees of Heriot Hospital, who owned much of the land over which the railway was to run, and the competing Edinburgh, Leith & Granton having objected. The road ahead for the Atmospheric route was now clear, and with their focus back on the project and not fighting the competition, they evidently finessed their route, as the plans prepared for the bill are different from those described initially. A station has been inserted at Blenheim Place and at Duke Street, and the terminus is now at the harbour. The freight branches to the wet docks were still there, with an awkward approach over (or under) the lower drawbridge
The final route of the Edinburgh & leith Atmospheric, from Scotland’s Railway Atlas by David Spaven, from a map in the collection of the NLS.The company pressed on, but despite its triumph in the “Atmospheric war”, all was not well. Over Christmas, the Bank of England had increased interest rates. It was becoming obvious to many that the railway bubble was exeactly that, and that the investments might not be a sure fire winner, and began to get cold feet. Indeed this may have been what caused the Direct route to withdraw; was it a strategic withdrawal rather than a tactical surrender? The Atmospheric route‘s investors were evidently getting unsettled, and on April 6th, at a Meeting in the Waterloo Hotel in Edinburgh, a general meeting was called at the demand of key backers.
An 1845 newspaper cartoon warning over the dangers of “Railway Mania” financial speculationAsked to account for its progress, the committee stated that they had spent £670 in Edinburgh and £2,000 in Leith on ground for the termini, and a further £250 towards the Town Council for rights to run through the ground in their ownership. Construction costs were estimated at £160,000 and £1,000 had been set aside to cover the costs to date of the Direct route in a conciliatory gesture for their co-operation. It was noted that a deputation from the committee had been on a fact-finding visit to the Croydon Railway’s atmospheric operation and found its principal to be “most admirably adapted for the projected line.” This is interesting considering the persistent difficulties of that undertaking. The committee estimated that running costs would be 4d per mile, which was challenged by a key shareholder who countered that in Parliament the respected railway engineer Joseph Locke had stated that ordinary locomotives were costing 10d per mile and that the Croydon atmospheric was running up the incredible amount of 2/10d per mile.
The shareholders went on the record to say they were unhappy that the recent changes in the financial markets had made the scheme far less attractive and that huge additional costs (these were not specified, but one assumes they were for engineering) had made themselves known. The complainants made a motion to circulate the full details of the undertaking’s most recent reports amongst the shareholders and return at a further General Meeting on April 16th once there had been a chance to read these. The shareholders were clearly having second thoughts, time was pressing as they were due in Parliament to have their bill read as soon as May 4th, and one wonders if they were just looking for an excuse to call the whole thing off.
The General Meeting meeting was duly held, with the engineer Mr Miller and the patentee of the atmospheric principal, Mr Samuda, in attendance. on the 16th. By a majority of 462 votes to 309, it was decided to proceed with the bill – but to have one more vote to confirm this before going in front of Parliament. The naysayers, led by a Mr Berry – probably George Berry esq., chairman of the Leith Chamber of Commerce – retired to the Cafe Royal to plot their next move, and took out an advert in the Caledonian Mercury asking their sympathisers to join them. Two days later they published a letter in the Scotsman challenging the vote, on the grounds that shareholders accounting for 2/3 of the stock had not been present at the General Meeting and it was not therefore quorate. The solicitor acting for this group invited those seeking to wind the company up to sign a petition to parliament, copies of which were held in various locations around Edinburgh, Leith and Glasgow. Within 24 hours, the holders of 2,000 shares, or 40% of all the stock, had signed. The race was on to end the Atmospheric route.
A final General Meeting was due for the 18th May, just 2 weeks before they were due in Parliament, for the shareholders to finally decide the fate of the scheme.
By order of the Committee of Management. Edinburgh, April 27, 1846The meeting would never take place. On Saturday the 16th May, the “Committee of Management regre to announce to the Shareholders that the Select Committee of the House of Commons to whom the Bill for this Company referred, has found the preamble not proven“. Parliament would not read the bill. The Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric Railway was dead. The shareholders now set about attempting to recover their investments, the management gave them 8 days to lodge their requests and set about winding up the company and liquidating their assets – the land at the Low Calton and behind the Leith Assembly Rooms that had been purchased for stations. The ground purchased for stations was quickly sold by public roup (the Scottish version of an auction).
On September 1st 1846, at a General Meeting held at the Waterloo Hotel, the company formally voted itself out of existence and agreed to return its remaining balances to the shareholders. Of the £20,000 raised by the Atmospheric route, £11,000 had been spent and little had been achieved apart from the acquisition of a few parcels of land and the creation of much bad blood amongst the merchant and political classes of Edinburgh and Leith. The subscribers at least got back 18s in the pound, or 90% of their investment. For all too many in the railway speculation boom, a failed scheme meant financial ruin. The engineer, John Miller, attempted to take legal action against the company in December 1846 for loss of dividends. I am unclear if he succeeded.
Although they promised so much, atmospheric railways were riddled with insurmountable technical and operational challenges. The problems included, but were not limited to:
- The leather flaps that were required to seal the vacuum wore out and froze as hard as wood in the winter
- The vacuum tube was constantly fouled by dirt and water, needing constant cleaning
- The pumping engines frequently failed; they were just not reliable enough to keep up the constant work required to provide the vacuum. If a steam locomotive failed, it could be uncoupled and replaced, if a large pumping engine suffered the same fate, every train on that section of line would fail
- Construction costs were far higher than promised
- Operating costs were far higher than promised, as a result of the fuel consumption of the stationary engines and the constant maintenance and replacement needs of the vacuum tube
Footnote. Little more was heard of either scheme ever again, although in 1868 when the engineer to the Atmospheric route – John Miller – was standing for parliament, he was charged in a letter to the Edinburgh Evening Courant by one James Aytoun of having acted with impropriety with regards the scheme and fundamentally having lined his own pockets at the expense of the investors. James Aytoun, esq. was an advocate who had at one time been a prominent supporter of the scheme, but who had become a dissenting voice within it and ended up losing money by his account. It was Aytoun who had seconded the formal motion winding up the company in September 1846.
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