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348 results for “newhinton”
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Even the Chair of Undercover Policing Inquiry looks like he's finding sleazy #AndyColes 'evidence' hard to believe.
Reference to Trevor Monerville relates to #MetPolice decision to spy on the campaign to obtain justice and accountability for 19 year old Trevor, who was diagnosed with long-term brain damage following his arrest by Stoke Newington Police officers on New Year’s Day 1987. Trevor was murdered in March 1994
This was covered by #spycops Inquiry in October
https://dpglaw.co.uk/joint-press-release-racist-murders-and-policing/
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Even the Chair of Undercover Policing Inquiry looks like he's finding sleazy #AndyColes 'evidence' hard to believe.
Reference to Trevor Monerville relates to #MetPolice decision to spy on the campaign to obtain justice and accountability for 19 year old Trevor, who was diagnosed with long-term brain damage following his arrest by Stoke Newington Police officers on New Year’s Day 1987. Trevor was murdered in March 1994
This was covered by #spycops Inquiry in October
https://dpglaw.co.uk/joint-press-release-racist-murders-and-policing/
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Even the Chair of Undercover Policing Inquiry looks like he's finding sleazy #AndyColes 'evidence' hard to believe.
Reference to Trevor Monerville relates to #MetPolice decision to spy on the campaign to obtain justice and accountability for 19 year old Trevor, who was diagnosed with long-term brain damage following his arrest by Stoke Newington Police officers on New Year’s Day 1987. Trevor was murdered in March 1994
This was covered by #spycops Inquiry in October
https://dpglaw.co.uk/joint-press-release-racist-murders-and-policing/
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Even the Chair of Undercover Policing Inquiry looks like he's finding sleazy #AndyColes 'evidence' hard to believe.
Reference to Trevor Monerville relates to #MetPolice decision to spy on the campaign to obtain justice and accountability for 19 year old Trevor, who was diagnosed with long-term brain damage following his arrest by Stoke Newington Police officers on New Year’s Day 1987. Trevor was murdered in March 1994
This was covered by #spycops Inquiry in October
https://dpglaw.co.uk/joint-press-release-racist-murders-and-policing/
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CW: UK Activism Tour Dates [19-27 Oct] by Stop Shopping Choir UK & Rev Billy
UK Activism Tour Dates
19-27 Oct by Stop Shopping Choir UK & Rev Billy#Colchester #Hastings #Brighton #UK #Canterbury #Cambridge
#London #Birminghamhttps://colchesterartscentre.com/directory/current-projects/rev-billy-the-fabulous-unknown-|58/
#StopShoppingChoir #RevBilly
#ChurchofStopShoppingChoir
#ChoirsForClimate #Climate
#ClimateCrisis #Activism
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TOUR DATE+AREAS:
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SUNDAY 20 OCTOBER: HASTINGS
The Stables Theatre & Art CentreMONDAY 21 OCTOBER: BRIGHTON
Attenborough Centre For The Creative Arts
TUESDAY 22 OCTOBER: CANTERBURY
Gulbenkian Arts CentreWEDNESDAY 23 OCTOBER: COLCHESTER
Colchester Arts CentreFRIDAY 25 OCTOBER: CAMBRIDGE
Cambridge Junction
SATURDAY 26 OCTOBER: LONDON
Newington Green Meeting HouseSUNDAY 27 OCTOBER: BIRMINGHAM
Midland Arts Centre -
CW: UK Activism Tour Dates [19-27 Oct] by Stop Shopping Choir UK & Rev Billy
UK Activism Tour Dates
19-27 Oct by Stop Shopping Choir UK & Rev Billy#Colchester #Hastings #Brighton #UK #Canterbury #Cambridge
#London #Birminghamhttps://colchesterartscentre.com/directory/current-projects/rev-billy-the-fabulous-unknown-|58/
#StopShoppingChoir #RevBilly
#ChurchofStopShoppingChoir
#ChoirsForClimate #Climate
#ClimateCrisis #Activism
===============
TOUR DATE+AREAS:
===============
SUNDAY 20 OCTOBER: HASTINGS
The Stables Theatre & Art CentreMONDAY 21 OCTOBER: BRIGHTON
Attenborough Centre For The Creative Arts
TUESDAY 22 OCTOBER: CANTERBURY
Gulbenkian Arts CentreWEDNESDAY 23 OCTOBER: COLCHESTER
Colchester Arts CentreFRIDAY 25 OCTOBER: CAMBRIDGE
Cambridge Junction
SATURDAY 26 OCTOBER: LONDON
Newington Green Meeting HouseSUNDAY 27 OCTOBER: BIRMINGHAM
Midland Arts Centre -
"The #Greens are celebrating a surprise victory over the ruling #Labour party after Liam Davis won the #StokeNewington ward by-election with 53% of the vote. Davis gained the seat with a 19-point swing from Labour, whose candidate Zak Davies-Khan finished second on 40%."
https://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2024/09/13/greens-stoke-newington-labour-shock-by-election-victory/
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Toxic Masculinity has claimed another life, randomly.
Going to be a cishet male as the killer, isn't it? "Boys will be boys"https://www.mylondon.news/news/north-london-news/stoke-newington-derek-thomas-bus-29651163
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DESANTIS: RACISM ON REPEAT
"Calhoun then offered a moral defense of slavery by claiming it to be a more humane method of organizing labor than the conditions wage laborers faced in industrial cities in Europe and the northern United States." re: John C. Calhoun, “Slavery as a Positive Good,” 1837
#desantis #racistmf #calhoun #defendingslavery #capitalism #fascism #kkk #neoslavery #wageslaverynormalization #indoctrination #newhistory
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DESANTIS: RACISM ON REPEAT
"Calhoun then offered a moral defense of slavery by claiming it to be a more humane method of organizing labor than the conditions wage laborers faced in industrial cities in Europe and the northern United States." re: John C. Calhoun, “Slavery as a Positive Good,” 1837
#desantis #racistmf #calhoun #defendingslavery #capitalism #fascism #kkk #neoslavery #wageslaverynormalization #indoctrination #newhistory
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DESANTIS: RACISM ON REPEAT
"Calhoun then offered a moral defense of slavery by claiming it to be a more humane method of organizing labor than the conditions wage laborers faced in industrial cities in Europe and the northern United States." re: John C. Calhoun, “Slavery as a Positive Good,” 1837
#desantis #racistmf #calhoun #defendingslavery #capitalism #fascism #kkk #neoslavery #wageslaverynormalization #indoctrination #newhistory
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"We kindle this chalice flame because there is darkness
In our world, the shadows of injustice, oppression, hunger, and pain fill too many lives with gloom
We light this small flame
Not because it will vanquish all darkness
But because it is a start
Because rather than condemn the dark
We have chosen to bring light"Courtesy of Newington Green & Islington Unitarians, on behalf of we Unitarian Universalists everywhere.
#Unitarian
#universalis
#faith
#hope
#darkness
#light
#religion -
"We kindle this chalice flame because there is darkness
In our world, the shadows of injustice, oppression, hunger, and pain fill too many lives with gloom
We light this small flame
Not because it will vanquish all darkness
But because it is a start
Because rather than condemn the dark
We have chosen to bring light"Courtesy of Newington Green & Islington Unitarians, on behalf of we Unitarian Universalists everywhere.
#Unitarian
#universalis
#faith
#hope
#darkness
#light
#religion -
"We kindle this chalice flame because there is darkness
In our world, the shadows of injustice, oppression, hunger, and pain fill too many lives with gloom
We light this small flame
Not because it will vanquish all darkness
But because it is a start
Because rather than condemn the dark
We have chosen to bring light"Courtesy of Newington Green & Islington Unitarians, on behalf of we Unitarian Universalists everywhere.
#Unitarian
#universalis
#faith
#hope
#darkness
#light
#religion -
"We kindle this chalice flame because there is darkness
In our world, the shadows of injustice, oppression, hunger, and pain fill too many lives with gloom
We light this small flame
Not because it will vanquish all darkness
But because it is a start
Because rather than condemn the dark
We have chosen to bring light"Courtesy of Newington Green & Islington Unitarians, on behalf of we Unitarian Universalists everywhere.
#Unitarian
#universalis
#faith
#hope
#darkness
#light
#religion -
"We kindle this chalice flame because there is darkness
In our world, the shadows of injustice, oppression, hunger, and pain fill too many lives with gloom
We light this small flame
Not because it will vanquish all darkness
But because it is a start
Because rather than condemn the dark
We have chosen to bring light"Courtesy of Newington Green & Islington Unitarians, on behalf of we Unitarian Universalists everywhere.
#Unitarian
#universalis
#faith
#hope
#darkness
#light
#religion -
I'll give a talk and a seminar at Lund's Centre for the History of Knowledge in March, if you fancy #communicationhistory, #mediahistory, #digitalhistory or #bookhistory, this might be of interest. Maybe.
Have a look, it's a zoom event too: https://newhistoryofknowledge.com/2023/01/26/history-of-knowledge-seminar-series-luck-2/
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I'll give a talk and a seminar at Lund's Centre for the History of Knowledge in March, if you fancy #communicationhistory, #mediahistory, #digitalhistory or #bookhistory, this might be of interest. Maybe.
Have a look, it's a zoom event too: https://newhistoryofknowledge.com/2023/01/26/history-of-knowledge-seminar-series-luck-2/
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I'll give a talk and a seminar at Lund's Centre for the History of Knowledge in March, if you fancy #communicationhistory, #mediahistory, #digitalhistory or #bookhistory, this might be of interest. Maybe.
Have a look, it's a zoom event too: https://newhistoryofknowledge.com/2023/01/26/history-of-knowledge-seminar-series-luck-2/
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I'll give a talk and a seminar at Lund's Centre for the History of Knowledge in March, if you fancy #communicationhistory, #mediahistory, #digitalhistory or #bookhistory, this might be of interest. Maybe.
Have a look, it's a zoom event too: https://newhistoryofknowledge.com/2023/01/26/history-of-knowledge-seminar-series-luck-2/
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I'll give a talk and a seminar at Lund's Centre for the History of Knowledge in March, if you fancy #communicationhistory, #mediahistory, #digitalhistory or #bookhistory, this might be of interest. Maybe.
Have a look, it's a zoom event too: https://newhistoryofknowledge.com/2023/01/26/history-of-knowledge-seminar-series-luck-2/
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Gigs coming up in >#Camden, #Wimbledon, #Chester, #Bristol, #Ruislip, #Wivenhoe, #AshbyDeLaZouch, #Knaresborough, #Sydenham, #Redditch, #NewMilton, #Leicester, #Cirencester, #TunbridgeWells, #BethnalGreen, #Stowmarket, #Wigan
Tap me or http://ents24.com for deets.
#Comedy -
Spaceships over Edinburgh: the thread about the Scottish flying saucer craze of 1950
Sunday 24th September 1950 was a momentous day in Scotland. Just over 3 years after American aviator Kenneth Arnold sent the world flying saucer crazy, the Scottish local papers (the West Lothian Courier to be precise) reported the arrival of the phenomenon in this country, specifically over the Firth of Forth! (Except the paper only published once a week, so this breaking news had to wait until the next Friday…)
West Lothian Courier – Friday 29 September 1950An Edinburgh Lawyer, Mr A. M. Leggat, and his family were on a Sunday drive to South Queensferry. They had just got out of their car and were watching a train cross the Bridge when they spotted something at a height of about 2,000ft, “a cigar shaped object, moving east to west“. Mr Leggat said that he joked to his wife “it’s probably a flying saucer“, at which point the object turned and climbed higher. “It became a circle, with a quite definite dark outside rim” he told the Courier, “it looked exactly like a perfect smoke-ring. We watched it for about 2 minutes.” He estimated it to be about 50 feet in diameter and that there were others who had seen it too. The Daily Record also joined in the reporting, its columnist The Gangrel scoffing that it caused “no excitement amongst Edinburghers” as “almost anything leaves these chaps cold”. The Linlithgowshire Gazette was dismissive too: it was a well known fact amongst informed locals, it said, that “residents often observe similar phenomena under certain weather conditions, when the smoke from passing trains forms rings and rises up soon to disappear from view“.
The Forth Bridge flying saucer? No, it is one of the piers of the bridge under construction on a mill-pond flat Firth of Forth. National Records of Scotland BR/FOR/4/34/457In a very strange coincidence, just the week before, another local paper – the Falkirk Herald – announced that the new B-movie The Flying Saucer was going to start running on the Odeon Circuit in the country from 9th October.
The Flying Saucer, 1950, theatrical release posterFlying saucers of a feather, flock together, and soon there were two: on Sunday 22nd October, Mrs Mary Mulvey, a newspaper seller, spotted three “round dark-coloured objects with small tails” flying over St. Andrew Square in the city. Her husband and a bus driver – Mr Bob Kirkhope of Lauriston Terrace – corroborated; “I saw three disc-like shapes fairly high up and travelling in the Daklkeith direction” said Mr Kirkhope to the Aberdeen Press & Journal. The resident meteorological officers at Turnhouse and Pitreavie airfields were scornful and said they must have been “low cloud formations or weather balloons“. But the folk of Annan and Peterhead begged to differ; they had seen them too!
Sixteen year old twins, Ann and Elizabeth Weightman of Newington Avenue, Annan, told the Sunday Post that they had watched them in the sky at night, approaching from the north and hovering over the town for 10 seconds. And in far off Peterhead, 15 year old schoolboy Ian Cruickshank of Prince Street, reported to the police that he saw a flying saucer “hurtling across the sky“, as reported the Dundee Courier. His mother said “my boy was quite excited about it. It was quite genuine“, her son adamant that “It is no schoolboy joke. I had just come out of the house when a high-pitched whistling sound from the sky attracted my attention“. His friends did not agree and he would tell the Courier that they teased him over the matter.
15 year old Ian Cruikshank’s picture in the Dundee Courier.On 28th October, an un-named “Glasgow Sunday paper” received a report of a flying saucer over Kirkintilloch. They refused to print the story or be directly identified with it but the Kirkintilloch Herald didn’t! The paper joked that as a dry town (i.e. there was no sale of alcohol on public premises in the town, until 1967) that the only flying saucer was the head of the man who came home late and drunk from the fair. There would be no Spaceships Over Glasgow until Tuesday 5th December when a man came into the office of the Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser to report seeing a flying saucer over Raywyards (an area of Airdrie). The paper was able to correlate this with sightings over Glasgow and Loch Long shortly afterwards.
The craze inevitably reached the Kingdom of Fife, and on December 19th the Courier and Advertiser published a remarkable photo of an actual flying saucer over Leven municipal golf course!
Flying saucer over Leven, Dundee Courier – Tuesday 19 December 1950But don’t dismiss the photo as a hoax, it was a real flying saucer: but just a flying model of one, the work of two young friends – George Russell and Don Beaton of Leven Aeromodellers Club,. The pair had been flying their saucer and shocking (and entertaining locals) over the course at the end of their string since May that year. The two were trying to rekindle interest in their club, which they had been members of when younger in the war years, and had ordered the plans of the Sorcerer model by mail order and built it, complete with tiny 2-stroke engine, themselves.
George Russell of Leven Aeromodellers Club with his model flying saucer.After this year of Saucery, things quietened down in the new year. They would flare up every once in a while in the next few years as a reported “sighting” would lead to copycats. The Evening News’ resident poet “MacNib” penned a humorous verse in response in July 1954
Saucy Saucers.
Those flying saucer yarns are back
Some say, a prelude to attack
By Martian airmen one foot high
Who guide these saucers as they fly.These little fellows have been seen.
With big eyes and a nose between.
Clark Gable ears which they can wriggle.
Antennae such as clipshears wiggle.These flying sorcerors, as they’re called.
Are highbrow and completely bald
And far advanced in many ways,
A friend of mine who knows them says.I’m scared about these little creatures.
“MacNib”, Edinburgh Evening News – Wednesday 7th July 1954
Not just for their revolting features:
The thought that sends me off my rocker
Is – ten to one they’ll take up Soccer.In November 1954, publisher Ian Girvan (of that town in Ayrshire) formed Flying Saucer Service Ltd. to act as a receiving and clearing house for information on UFOs. His business partners were Desmond Leslie and George Adamski, authors of the best-selling Flying Saucers Have Landed. As well as being a prominent UFO-ologist, Ian Girvan (also known as Waveney Girvan) was immersed in right wing politics, having been in the British People’s Party, National Front and Independent Nationalists movements. He nonetheless found time to publish the quarterly Flying Saucer Review until his death in October 1964.
Air Marshal Hugh Dowding: from the collections of the Imperial War Museums (collection no. 4700-27)In May 1955, Girvan and his partners received the unlikely support of the otherwise sober and unimpeachable figure of Lord Dowding, (Air Chief Marshall High Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding, GCB, GCVO, CMG), the former Commander-in-Chief of the RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain. Dowding, a national hero credited with a crucial role in the air defence of the nation, shocked everyone and verified to the Daily Sketch paper that the reports from February 1954 of a flying saucer that had landed at Lossiemouth in Morayshire and where a “Martian” had made contact with the witnesses, who had taken photographs, were all true. Dowding had apparently been won over to the belief of flying saucers by Desmond Leslie, Flying Saucers Have Landed co-author and partner in the Flying Saucer Service, and became a firm UFO believer in later life.
The Lossiemouth Flying Saucer, from “Flying Saucer from Mars” by Cederic AllinghamBut Dowding’s bold Lossiemouth claim was actually the result of him being the victim of an elaborate and highly convincing hoax by Cedric Allingham, a fictional figure created by Peter Davies and his friend one Patrick Moore (yes, that Patrick Moore), to take advantage of the gullibility of the British UFO-ologist scene. Cederic Allingham fabricated a photograph of the Lossiemouth UFO and “Martian” and also a corroborating, sworn statement from an entirely fictitious but unimpeachable witness, local fisherman James Duncan. He published these claims and other verifying evidence in apopular 152 page book, Flying Saucer From Mars.
Cover of Flying Saucer from Mars. An Eyewitness Account of the Landing of a Martian, by Cedric AllinghamAllingham’s blury photo of the “Martian” he claimed to have met at Lossiemouth looked remarkably like a photo of Peter Davies with his back to the camera wearing an outfit including suspenders… But somehow Dowding, who had proved a dedicated, single-minded and organisational mastermind at Fighter Command, was taken in by it.
Alligham’s “Martian” photograph taken at Lossiemouth, from Flying Saucer From MarsIt was probably Patrick Moore who wrote the book, and he even acknowledged “meeting” with Allingham to lend credence to his existence. But he and Peter Davies sensibly denied all knowledge of it and made sure that their creation was impossible to pin down for interviews or meetings. But Dowding wouldn’t take no for an answer and used his personal reputation to track down the understandably elusive Cederic Allingham, and to convince him to give a lecture to his local Flying Saucer Club in Tunbridge wells. Moore and Davies were backed into a corner by Dowding and it would prove necessary for Allingham to appear if they were to maintain their illusion. And so appear he did, to deliver the lecture to a triumphant Dowding. Except it was actually Peter Davies in a false moustache
Cederic Allingham (actually Peter Davies), with one of Patrick Moore’s telescopes.Moore and Davies would keep up their silent pretence for over 30 years, long after Dowding had died, before other authors pieced the rather obvious clues together and identified them. Moore was careful to never completely confirm his part in it, despite convincing proof to the contrary (including the photo of Davies as Allingham, in his garden with his telescope).
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
The Edinburgh Hostels for Women Students: the thread about their wartime role as Internment Camps for “Enemy Aliens”
This thread was originally written and published in January 2023.
An intriguing image was tweeted today, with the caption “WWII Prisoner of War Camp, Scotland, November 1939“:
Note, this tweet has been re-inserted as an image, as under current ownership, “Twitter” has completely and deliberately broken embedding and cooperation with other social media platforms such as WordPress.Where was this camp? The soldier is very obviously equipped by the British Army, but the building doesn’t look very Scottish, does it? In fact it looks more like a French chateau. Is it a school, a hospital wing or a sanatorium? I didn’t know, so I shared the picture and quickly the answer came back (thanks Sean McPartlin, Graeme Dickson and Ian “Silverback”). It is the Suffolk Road Halls of Residence or to give them their proper name, the Edinburgh Hostels for Women Students. These were used as an internment camp for “enemy aliens” at the start of the war.
Carlyle Hostel in 2001A 20 acre site in Newington, which had formed part of the the Craigmillar Golf Course, was purchased in 1913 for £10,000 by the Edinburgh Association for the Provision of Hostels for Women Students for a purpose-built accommodation hostel – or halls of residence. The Association was a joint venture between the Edinburgh Provincial Committee for the Training of Teachers, Edinburgh University, the Edinburgh College of Art, the Edinburgh Merchant Company and the Edinburgh Episcopal Training College. The hostels were “for the more satisfactory housing of women students” and were intended to eventually have a capacity for 350, with 250 reserved for teaching students at Moray House College. There already existed two small halls of residence for women medical students, converted from houses, on George Square.
Each hostel had a common room, library and dining room and 52 separate study bedrooms. They were grouped around a quadrangle which had a hockey field and tennis courts. The architect was Alan Keith Robinson. This was the first large commission for Robinson and his partner Thomas Aikman Swan, but would be his last. Both volunteered to fight in WW1 and Robinson refused a commission so that he could fight “in the line”. He was severely wounded and was invalided out of the army in 1917. He attempted to restart his practice and partnership but his wounds prevented him properly realising this and he died from them in May 1925.
Carlyle (l) and Darroch (r) HostelsThe first three hostels (Buchanan, Balfour and Playfair) were opened in June 1917 by Sir J. Alfred Ewing, Principal of the University at a cost of with £79,000; £44,000 from the Treasury and the bulk of the remainder from the Carnegie Trust. The running costs were to be met entirely by fees, in 1917 this was an annual £30 (about £2,600 in 2023).
The glory of the Scottish Universities is that they are open not simply to the rich but to those of very moderate means indeed. In Scotland we have always been proud of the fact that we have to cultivate the Muses on a little oatmeal, and even at the present price of oatmeal a Scottish University Education is cheap! There will, I feel sure, be a great satisfaction to all that a comparatively new side in university life will be developed in Scotland, namely the communal life; true education is not simply a matter of listening to lectures and studying books.
Opening speech by Sir Alfred EwingTwo further hostels – Carlyle and Darroch – were added in 1928 to Robinson’s original designs by Frank Wood, at a cost of £60,000, adding 120 additional bedrooms.
So how did the hostels end up in the photo at the top of this page, fenced off behind barbed wire and with armed guards in watch towers? A brief notice in the Edinburgh Evening News of 30th October 1939 states that the hostels had been “taken over for national purposes.” But the “prisoners of war” in the picture are not servicemen, they are interned civilians. Most were sailors who had been caught in – or en route to – British ports, or in service on ships of Allied-aligned nations at the outbreak of war. Others were simply people of German birth who had been resident in Scotland but now found themselves to be undesirables; “enemy aliens“.
One of the latter category was Adolf Theurer, an hotel chef at the North British Hotel in Edinburgh who “hated the war, and hated the Nazis, but was a German.” Theurer, 61, had lived in Scotland for 44 years and had been at the NB for 37, but had never become naturalised – with war approaching he felt his poor health and good record as a citizen would stand in his favour. He had been interned during WW1 for 4 and a half years and had declared to his family that we would “rather be put against a wall and shot than be interned again“.
Adolf Theurer, picture in the Sunday PostHowever, when he appeared at the “Aliens Tribunal” on October 12th 1939 they found against him and interned him at East Suffolk Road. Those subject to appearance at the tribunal were allowed no legal representation, but Theurer’s manager at the hotel had attended and spoke in his favour. He never saw his family again, and died 5 days later, “broken hearted”, from a heart attack. His family, at 16 Claremont Crescent, were only informed after his death and had not been allowed the opportunity to visit him during his final illness.
Theurer’s “Male Enemy Alien” index card, with the word “Dead” coldly printed in block capitals. © Crown Copyright Images reproduced by courtesy of The National ArchivesTheurer had been an active member of the German Congregation of Edinburgh, which had been forced to disband during WW1, and had assisted in the sale of its chapel to the Brethren after the war, an order in which he was also active. His wife – Johanna Becker – was also German (although her mother was Aberdonian and she was born in London) and they had three children in Edinburgh; George Adolf, Christina and William. His family were not allowed to take possession of his body, instead it was kept in the police mortuary. He was tragically unlucky; at this early stage of the war, relatively few Germans had been incarcerated. In May 1940 the Minister of Home Security, Sir John Anderson, informed the House of Commons that of 73,535 “aliens” in the country, only 569 – less than 1% – had been interned. There was an outcry of public sympathy for him and his funeral at Piershill Cemetery was well attended. John Mcgovern, the Independent Labour Party MP for Glasgow Shettleston raised a question in the House of Commons about the circumstances surrounding his death. Anderson replied that a “report would be prepared“.
This was not even the end of the Theurers’ travails however; on Friday 10th May 1940, two detectives knocked on the door of the Theurer house in Edinburgh while the family were eating a meal and requested that Johanna Theurer pack a case and follow them. Despite her protest, she was taken to Saughton Prison and sent into internment too. Her younger son, William, was a promising footballer who played with Blackpool and in Edinburgh, St. Bernards and later Hibs. He was a British citizen and was exempted from war service as a conscientious objector, telling his tribunal “I am not a member of any church, but my father was a member of the Plymouth Brethren. The horrors of war have been brought to my own door by his death“. He accompanied his mother to the prison gates.
William TheurerWilliam’s younger brother, George Adolf, went on to become a successful wigmaker in Edinburgh after the war. He was usually known as Adolf, one wonders if this was a direct tribute to his late father given the connotations such a name would have had at the time. He became a local politician, town councillor for Broughton Ward for the Progressives, 1959-74, senior Baillie and Deputy Lord Provost of the city and, after political reorganisation, Lothian Regional Councillor 1974-82.
An observation about the photo was made (by Adam Brown of the Scottish Military Research Group) that some of the men were dressed rather like sailors; zooming in we can definitely see men dressed in what look like peaked caps, sweaters and trousers tucked into sea boots! Contemporary newspaper reports confirm that all inmates were required to sew a circle of contrasting coloured cloth on to their outer garments and that most of the 100 kept at East Suffolk Road at this point were merchant seamen – unsurprising given the trade between the Port of Leith and the Baltic.
Prisoners at East Suffolk Road, November 1939On November 18th, three men escaped from the camp, described as “a bow-legged boy of 15 and two others aged 17” The 15-year old was Rudi Platta and the other two were Walther Bartels and Gunther Berger. They were merchant seaman and had managed to steal khaki uniforms – including caps and boots – from off-duty guards while they slept, climb through a window, climb the barbed wire fence and a 10 foot high wall to escape under cover of darkness. Without money, with no English spoken amongst the three and with no real idea where they were going, their chances were not high. They were found 10 hours later walking along the road to Peebles some 20 miles away after a motorist who had passed them heard of their escape on returning home.
Further embarrassment was caused to the authorities (and further sensation was reported in the papers) just 3 days later when two men escaped on the night of 21st November. The pair – George Sluzalek (24) and Franz Feltens (22) were in their civilian attire and again had no money or food, little English, and no plan of where they were going. They became lost, thinking they were heading for the sea but actually they were moving inland. They resorted to eating turnips from a field that had been left out for wintering sheep and were later found nearby, cold and wet, hiding in a yew tree near Dalkeith by an alert gamekeeper.
A detective returns Sluzalek and Feltens (one in his sailor’s pea coat) to Police Headquarters in Edinburgh. Photograph from the Courier and Advertiser, November 22nd 1939A second pair of men – Eber Hord Rolf Fischer, aged 23, and Max Waderphul, aged 38 – also escaped that night, parting company with Sluzalek and Feltens after their breakout. Again they had little idea where they were and had no resources with them, but managed to make an impressive distance on foot. Around 430PM the following day they knocked on a cottage door to the south of Edinburgh to beg for tea in broken English. Although they aroused the suspicion of the householder, she showed them kindness and welcomed them in to her house and made them a small meal of bread and butter, cheese and cold mutton, telling reporters “I never saw anyone so grateful in my life“. They left after 15 minutes and she phoned the police; the men had disappeared by the time they arrived. They were on the run for 36 hours and a man hunt of hundreds of police and soldiers combed the Lothians looking for them. They were recaptured cold, wet, hungry and exhausted by the search parties near Heriot, some 22 miles south of Edinburgh and seemed glad to have been found.
Remarkably, a further three men almost escaped on the 21st but were spotted by a sentry who fired his rifle in their direction, raising the alarm. They were quickly captured by the camp defence unit. Some of the escapees were allowed to answer questions by press. when asked if they “had anything to complain about of the treatment they were receiving at the camp, one of them said emphatically, ‘No‘”. All of the men were reluctant to be drawn into answering questions about the quality and availability of food in Germany vs. Britain.
The Corporation of Edinburgh was deeply unhappy about the location and security of the camp, and at a meeting on the 23rd November it was resolved to make a formal request to relocate it out of the city boundary; Lord Provost Steele was able to tell the assembled councillors that he had already been given notification of the intention to move it. On Monday 4th November, the Aberdeen Evening Express announced that a “motley company” of almost 200 German men had left Edinburgh at Waverley station from “an internment camp on the south of the city – the camp which has been so much in the news recently because of escape bids.” The prisoners were reported to be in good spirits and waved and smiled to morning commuters. Some conversation was made between men who could speak English and railway employees, and cigarettes were shared with the captives.On Tuesday 5th, the Daily Record reported that in total 300 German internment prisoners had left Scotland for England “for the duration of the war”.
On 28th December, the Edinburgh Evening News reported that the camp would now be formally closed, with transit accommodation for processing prisoners “for no more than 48 hours” having been arranged at an unspecified hospital. The East Suffolk Road Hostels were turned over to the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) officer cadets; the women’s branch of the British Army.
ATS Officer Cadets at East Suffolk Road Hostels, 1941. © IWM H 11075The requisition had caused something of a crisis for University Accommodation, which also saw 200 cadets billeted in its other accommodation. As a result most students who kept up their studies in wartime had to stay “in digs”, with the Scotsman reporting they were now sharing 3 and 4 to a single bedroom. The hostels were quickly returned to civilian use post-war, with adverts being taken out in the local newspapers for new wardens in August 1945. Later, they became the Newington Campus of Moray House Teacher Training College, closing in 1997 when this institution merged with the University of Edinburgh. They have since been converted into private housing.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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Political sectarianism and redoubtable mothers: the thread about the Sciennes School Strike of 1925
As often seems to happen, I start off reading a little bit about one thing and then fall unwittingly yet compliantly down a deep rabbit hole with all kinds of unexpected tangents. So let’s unravel a bit of the Sciennes School Strike of 1925.
Sciennes, if you don’t know, is a neighbourhood in Edinburgh. You pronounce it to rhyme with machines (it’s a Scottish corruption of Sienna, after a convent that long ago stood here) and it is home to a school of the same name. To get to the root of our story we go back to 1872, when the Education (Scotland) Act of that year brought responsibility for mandatory schooling in Scotland under the control of local School Boards. For the Burgh of the City of Edinburgh (the formal name of the city) this was the Edinburgh School Board.
The roundel of the Edinburgh School Board, “the female figure of education” dispensing knowledge to the young. Dean Public School, one of the ESB’s first new schools after the 1872 act. © SelfMost of the existing schools at that time were either church, parish or charitably provided and those of the Presbyterian churches (that is the majority of all churches in Scotland at that time) and parishes were transferred directly to the School Boards. Most of these facilities were too small and found to be inadequate as teaching spaces for modern methods, so a crash building programme was initiated. Sciennes School was a product of this program, completed in 1892. Other public schools in the Southside of Edinburgh at the time included the 1877 Bristo School on the long demolished part of Marshall Street, Causewayside School on that street and later Preston Street school of 1896 on the east part of that street.
Sciennes Primary School, CC-BY-SA 4.0 StephencdicksonBoard schools, while largely Protestant in outlook, were strictly speaking non-denominational and there was no direct church control (although the churches had a reserved seat in the board’s membership). Crucially to what would happen in the future though, Catholic schools were not covered by the 1872 act and remained in control of that church, with the Scottish Episcopal Church also choosing to remain independent at this time, fearing the erosion of their denominational, religious education. To provide for a Catholic education in central Edinburgh therefore that Church set up a school, St. Columba’s. It moved around a bit, repeatedly outgrowing a series of unsuitable premises, before settling in a converted townhouse at 81 Newington Road. You can still see where the sign once was.
81 Newington Road, you can see where the sign would have been above the central window.Edinburgh’s Catholic population was growing quite rapidly at the time with immigration into the city centre from both Ireland and Italy. And then came the 1918 Education (Scotland) Act, which brought the Catholic schools into control of the state sector, with the School Boards rationalised into larger local Education Authorities, with wider responsibilities. Like the old School Board, the Edinburgh Education Authority (EEA) was directly elected by popular ballot and was outwith direct control of the City Corporation or any church; although a system of proportional representation meant a balance of Presbyterian, Episcopal and Catholic members had reserved places on its board. The new authority was unimpressed by the size and quality of the facilities it had inherited off the R. C. Church (actually, it bought them off them under the provisions of the 1918 act) so set about trying to find a better home for St. Columba’s.
The post-WW1 economic slump meant there wasn’t the money to go around to build a new school – particularly a minority school – so the EEA looked to rationalise its public schools in the Southside, which it found had an excess of capacity, and make one of them into a new Catholic school. The plan seemed simple enough; move St. Columba’s to the half-empty Causewayside School and transfer that school’s roll to Sciennes, Bristo or Preston Street schools, whichever alternative was closest to children’s homes.
Causewayside School, architectural elevation by Robert Rowand Anderson, which would later become St. Columba’sAfter the numbers were crunched, 154 children were to be relocated from Causewayside to Sciennes, 101 to Preston Street and 66 to Bristo. 291 children were to transfer in turn from St. Columba’s into its new home and 81 Newington Road would be disposed of. All simple enough and making better use of the Authority’s resources, so it should be relatively uncontroversial administrative change, yes?
No. What happened next was the emergent Scottish Protestant League decided to wade into things and try and make it a wedge issue – stirred up in part by local lawyer, political dabbler and green inker, Robert Sterling Craig Esq SSC, known as Sterling Craig. Sterling Craig was nominally a Liberal and therefore opposed to any place for religious education in schools, but it seems clear from his writing and speaking on the subject that he also had a clear anti-Catholic bent. When the Authority announced its decision towards the end of the school term in June 1924 he and a local parish councillor, Mrs Inglis Clark, organised a public meeting in protest “in the strongest way“.
What followed next was a rather predictable series of conflicting arguments by Sterling Craig and Clark, which began to descend into the disingenuous, e.g. the alternatives would be too far, causing 2 or 3 mile walks to school (Sciennes and Preston Street were less than 500m away). The EEA was accused of inflating the roll of St. Columba’s by “stuffing” it with children from the Catholic Home (an orphanage), a claim the Authority flat out denied: they claimed 477 children were being displaced – the Authority said it was 321. Sterling Craig simultaneously claimed that Causewayside was a non-denominational school (it was) but also “Protestant” (it wasn’t, although likely much of the school roll was). His loud and authoritative voice drowned out the views and representations of the parents and children impacted by this. He had previously sat on the Edinburgh School Board and was standing for the upcoming Edinburgh Education Authority election and decided to make this issue a key plank of his campaign. His letters to the Scotsman refer to “the Roman Catholics” and “the Roman Catholic Children” in a very othering tone – they are quite unpleasant to read in places with retrospect.
Sterling Craig was upset that a “central” school (i.e. one serving a wide rather than strictly local catchment) was being located in the Southside of the city; that children would be bused-in (actually, trammed) at the Authority’s expense and that they would be given school meals at the EEA‘s expense (at this time most school children went home for their lunch time) – despite these all being provisions in line with the 1918 act and therefore a legal obligation for the authority. To boil his arguments down to a single sentence, they would be: I’m not anti-Catholic, but can’t they just go some place else? To this extent he suggested wholly inadequate facilities at Old St. Patrick’s in the Canongate (the Authority pointed out that they didn’t own these and so would have to buy and renovate them at its own expense). It was all very not from round here and he and his allies in Mrs Inglis Clark and others began to go rather seriously down the route of sectarian scaremongering. However the EEA, to its credit, stuck to its plans and even managed to get most of the parents would would be impacted by the changes on side. The nay-sayers were not placated however and together with the nascent Scottish Protestant League (SPL) under Alexander Ratcliffe and a number of local Presbyterian churchmen, they organised a “Great Protestant Rally” at the Livingstone Hall on South Clerk Street in January 1925, which was attended by around 500.
Advert for the Great Protestant Rally, Edinburgh Evening News, 3rd January 1925The meeting denounced the Education Authority as “traitors” and as a result the SPL – which claimed itself apolitical – and Sterling Craig agreed on a platform of trying to take over the Education Authority at the upcoming elections and campaign for repeal those provisions of the 1918 Education (Scotland) Act that they disliked; namely the state provision of R. C. education. Sterling Craig’s words were reported as “the only thing that prevented ‘the Catholics’ walking back to St. Columba’s and the old school going back to Causewayside was the laziness of the ratepayers” (if only people would turn out and vote for him, he would sort it out).
1935 reprint of The Protestant Advocate in Ratcliffe’s own newspaper, the Protestant VanguardIn case you didn’t realise it by the way – 1920s and 30s Edinburgh local politics was quite a hotbed of anti-Catholicism. The Protestant League stood seven candidates in the 1925 Authority election, Sterling Craig stood himself as an independent. Just one of the those candidates – Alexander Ratcliffe (who styled himself “Scotland’s Modern John Knox” and went as far as to refer in public to St. Columba’s as “the now misnamed St. Columba’s“) – was elected, as was Sterling Craig. Ratcliffe soon turned his ire to the opening of a Carmelite Convent in the city before getting altogether a bit bored of Edinburgh local politics. He would move to Glasgow where he made some inroads with the SPL in that Corporation’s elections of 1931, exploiting and stoking that city’s long-standing sectarian tensions. In Edinburgh it was to be the Protestant Action Society under John Cormack that would later take up the anti-Catholic political mantle. As a party held together purely by a common hatred, it was inevitable that the SPL would eventually become unstable. It split with the Ulster Protestant League in 1933 when Ratcliffe’s wife Mary and another SPL member attacked and defaced a (factually correct) painting in the Northern Irish parliament that showed the Pope celebrating William of Orange’s victory at the Boyne
William III, the Duke of Schomberg, and the Pope (top left, blessing the Protestant monarch from a cloud), by Pieter van der Meulen, c. 1690After falling out with the UPL, the SPL itself fell apart due to irreconcilable internal divisions. The Scottish protestant mainstream distanced itself from the increasingly extremist and unpredictable Alexander Ratcliffe. The man who had started his political life at the Edinburgh Education Authority moved on to dabbling with the Scottish fascists, who in turn kicked him out as being too extreme for even them. He has been described as “one of the very first Holocaust deniers in the country and perhaps even the world“. He was an extreme anti-Catholic and anti-Semite to his core who thought that Hitler and Mussolini were in league with the Pope to smash Protestantism… This conflicting and thoroughly distasteful man died at his home in Glasgow in 1947.
A wartime anti-Semitic pamphlet issued by Alexander RatcliffeBut back to Edinburgh and back to 1925, when St Columba’s opened its doors after the summer holidays, the former pupils of Causewayside School instead made their way to Sciennes, Preston Street and Bristo schools. How did this end up in a strike? Well what happened was that – in true local authority style – after winning parents over to its controversial plans the Education Authority went back on its assurances and rightly aggrieved a lot of parents. Sciennes, it said, was actually too full and so 150 or so children who had just recently been settled in at Sciennes would instead need to go to Bristo School.
Bristo Public School on Marshall Street. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThis poured salt on a wound that had not yet had any chance to heal and the mothers of the Southside were having none of it. Official phraseology such as “arriving at a more equitable distribution of scholars” just made things even worse. The problem was not just the repeated relocation of children, it was where they were to be moved to. Bristo was notoriously small and dark and dingy on the inside and as you can see from the aerial photo below it had a tiny playground that was penned in on all sides by tall tenements. Furthermore, it was fundamentally on the wrong side of the (tram) tracks for many parents.
Bristo Public School from the air – it is the building in the centre with the flat roof to the rear and the corner tower. You can see how penned in the playground at the back was, and how many of the school windows were in the shadow of neighbouring tenements. From Britain From AboveWithout the distraction of Sterling Craig or Mrs Inglis Clark and their anti-Catholic agenda, the mothers of the affected children quickly formed themselves into an effective deputation to the Education Authority. They literally marched strait there and beat on the door – turning up at its offices on Castle Terrace on September 2nd 1925 to demand an audience. For good measure, a flying squad was also send to the home of the Authority’s chairman – Councillor P. H. Allan – to wait for him in case he was there. When it became clear that the Authority was not for budging the mothers organised a public meeting on September 4th, packing out the Nicolson Square public hall. Councillor Mrs Adam Millar tried to cool things down but only inflamed the situation by saying it was not the Authority’s fault but the fault of parents as they had voted for the same EEA (or hadn’t bothered; turnout for the previous election was only around 20%). At the meeting the mothers of around 110 of the affected children agreed to stop sending them to school entirely if they could not send them to Sciennes. The Sciennes School Strike had begun.
Councillor P. H. Allan, Chairman of the Education AuthorityOn September 8th it was reported there were rumours that the strike would spread as a result of some children from Craiglockhart, Roseburn and Gorgie schools being dispersed to Dalry in the name of a “more equitable distribution of scholars“. The strike did not end up spreading but neither did it go away. The Authority tried to offer an olive branch and say children from the Buccleuch Street area could stay at Sciennes, however those from George Square would still have to go to Bristo. Whether this attempt at strikebreaking was a deliberate ploy to divide and conquer their opposition is unclear, but it failed. By September 15th, the 3rd week of the strike, it was still ongoing with 55 children remaining out of school. The mothers caused uproar in the Authority board room by turning up en masse with their children in tow and “infants in their arms“. But they did have sympathisers on the Authority and Mrs Swan Brunton* spoke out in their favour. At a deadlock, the Authority did what Authorities do best when they don’t know what to do and conceded to set up a Special Sub-Committee on School Congestion to look into the matter further.
Janet Swan Brunton 1882 – 1932. * = The redoubtable Mrs Swan Brunton JP, a suffragette of the Scottish Cooperative Women’s Guild. In 1928 she became only the 5th woman elected to the Corporation of Edinburgh, as a Labour member. She died suddenly in 1932 aged 50, in Glasgow at a meeting of the Scottish Cooperative Wholesale Society, and was buried in North Merchiston CemeterySeptember 21st. No resolution was in sight, 58 children were on strike from Sciennes and in total 86 across the city were. On September 24th the Scotsman reported that the Education Authority declared the strike had been broken and most of the children had returned to the schools it had allocated them to. The next day, September 25th, they had to print something of a retraction; the children had not in fact gone back to school and were still on strike. At a public meeting of ratepayers it had been agreed that a general strike of children should be called for in the Central District. Come September 26th the Authority remained unmoved, issuing a statement that it had acted in accordance with its statutory obligations and that if the 42 children on strike were not sent to school then they would start taking legal action to enforce it. But still the strike was not broken and so one month into the walkout, on October 6th, the Authority held an exceptional meeting. Mrs Swan Brunton implored her colleagues to use their common sense and allow the 40 children to go back to Sciennes as they had been promised, with Mrs Mclaren speaking in support. Unfortunately, Mrs Swan Brunton’s motion, seconded by Mrs Mclaren, was voted down. Alexander Ratcliffe blamed the Catholics as usual.
October 14th, five weeks in and the strike dragged on. It was suggested at an Authority meeting that if only the Corporation would repave the street outside Bristo School with wooden setts that the noise of traffic that affected it would be reduced sufficiently to entice the strikers to attend. Chairman Allan tried to force through a resolution to this effect but Mrs Swan Brunton challenged the count on the grounds that it had not reached a quorum of three quarters of members. She prevailed this time and the meeting then collapsed into farce and had to be adjourned. The Authority tried again the next week. One typically bureaucratic proposal that came out of this was to set up yet another sub-committee – the Special Committee on School Areas. Alexander Ratcliffe yet again agitated against “the Catholics” and also this time the Episcopalians, supported by Sterling Craig as seconder. It was agreed to set up the sub-committee and spent the rest of the meeting was spent listening to the extremist ramblings of Ratcliffe .
Eight weeks in on October 26th another meeting was held by the Education Authority. It lasted precisely two minutes before again collapsing into chaos when the chairman over-rode Mrs Swan Brunton’s motion for resolution. He left to the mothers in the gallery crying “Shame!” November 2nd. Week 9. The Chairman called a private meeting restricted to a sub-set of members of the Authority, with the mothers forced to wait outside the offices. The Authority could not bring itself to publicly concede but fundamentally capitulated when it agreed that the 46 children who had been moved from Sciennes to Bristo could instead have their pick of Castlehill, Preston Street, Tollcross or St. Leonard’s schools.
Castlehill School, now offering a very different sort of education as the Scotch Whisky ExperienceThe mothers decided as one that they would send their children to Preston Street. They were true to their word, and 37 mothers and 46 children arrived at the school door the very next day, November 3rd, exactly 2 months from the start of the strike. The strike was over. Almost: the Authority meeting had ended so late in the day that nobody had bothered to write to the Headteacher at Preston Street to inform them of the decision! The school refused to admit the children and sent them away. It was not until November 4th that the Head was satisfied with the paperwork and the children were admitted to Preston Street School. The Great Sciennes School Strike of 1925 was finally over.
Preston Street School, CC-BY-SA Kim TraynorNote to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
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The thread about Brydone’s Circular Delivery; trying and failing to break the Royal Mail’s monopoly
Today’s Auction House Artefacts are some intriguing postage stamps (stamps are big money on the auction scene, it seems) that unravels a really interesting local history story of their own. But these aren’t Royal Mail Stamps, they are Circular Delivery Company stamps. The Circular Delivery Companies where short lived attempts to flout the Royal Main’s postal monopoly, between 1865 and 1869. They were the brainchild of one Robert Brydone, a 33 year old Edinburgh printer and publisher. Robert was the son of James Brydone, an established printer and engraver with a good reputation around town. The family premises were on Elder Street, just off St. Andrew Square.
The Brydone family house was at the respectable address of 27 Dundas Street. Robert seems to have been on the move a bit as he goes from 5 Hope Park Terrace in Newington to 25 Gayfield Square between 1865-1866 and then is no longer in town by 1867 (more on that later).
The Brydones published railway timetables amongst other things;
Brydone’s Railway Directory. Railway Map of Scotland. 1858-1862 © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum1865 finds Robert Brydone as the manager of the Edinburgh & Leith Parcel Delivery Co., based at 4 North St. Andrew Street. Now the site of Edinburgh bus station and just around the corner from the family printing works on Elder Street. These parcel delivery companies were nothing new, they did exactly what the name suggested and moved priority parcels around town – and began charging by issuing stamps (which could be printed at the Brydone family works). The Edinburgh & Leith Parcel Delivery Co. had been founded in 1856 by Robert Ferguson, a merchant in the Kirkgate of Leith and ran “light parcel delivery vans” twice a day between the respective burghs to and from 9 different stops.
Two pence stamp for the Edinburgh and Leith Parcel Delivery Co.Robert’s brainwave was to exploit his delivery network to undercut the Royal Mail’s postage monopoly in the city. This was a curious 360° turn of events, as the very first postage network within the City had been set up by a private entrepreneur – “Indian Peter” Williamson – in the 1780s before being bought out by he Royal Mail. Brydone set up the Edinburgh & Leith Circular Delivery Co. to provide prepaid delivery for the booming market in “circulars”, magazines, newspapers etc. The Brydone presses already made the stamps for the parcel company so it was natural they should make the circular stamps too, from designs by George Oliver, engraver and die maker, of Edinburgh. None of these ideas were on their own novel, all Robert did was bring them together, and have the gumption to take on the might of the Royal Mail.
A wide selection of Edinburgh & Leith Circular Delivery Co, featuring stylised coats of arms of each respective burghBrydone was directly targeting the legally protected revenue of the General Post Office here; they weren’t so interested in the parcels business. He also had his stamps perforated and gummed so they could be issued prepaid, a direct infringement of the GPO’s patents. But for whatever reason, the GPO decided to do nothing while the practice was restricted to just Edinburgh and Leith. Brydone issued stamps to the value of 1/4d (farthing), ha’penny, 3/4d and 1d., with the rates being 1/4d for circulars, 1/2d for newspapers and 3/4-1d for books.
Sheet of One Farthing E. & L. Circular Delivery Co. stamps before perforation.The business seems to have boomed initially, with their stamps cancelled by an elegant R. B. & Co. monogram.
Robert Brydone & Co. monogram from the cancellation stampHad Brydone been content to leave it there he might have got away with it, indeed he had taken legal advice from the Lord Advocate who had shared this opinion with him, but he over-reached himself and decided to grow the concept by setting up similar Circular Delivery Companies across the whole country. Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow all got companies, as did Liverpool. Each got their own stamps, to a similar design inspired by the civic crest of each city.
Liverpool Circular Delivery Co. stamp, One Farthing, featuring a Liver Bird.Brydone also began to face competition himself – you can’t keep a good idea down and soon found himself up against his neighbour at Dundas Street, the stationer and printer Robert Clark, whose press was directly over the road from Byrdones’ at 15 Elder Street.
Clark & Co. Circular and Parcel Delivery stamps, notice these have no price or perforations.So now Brydone faced competition at home, form the lawyers of the Royal Mail who were not content at all for him to undercut their business across the country, and also from a third direction; Forgery. Philately was the new pass-time for the aspiring Victorian gentleman of leisure and the novel and relatively uncommon Circular stamps found themselves in huge demand (a similar thing happened with the short lived regional coinage of “Provincial Tokens”.)
Forgeries of Brydone’s stamps became common and before long Robert was declared bankrupt in 1866. His father James took on the business, moving it to the family’s Elder Street premises, and issuing new stamps to match; I assume that the removal of the price and perforations was to satisfy the Royal Mail’s lawyers.
Edinburgh and Leith Circular Delivery Co. advert from 1867, when James Brydone was the managerThe Philately website says it is “unlikely” that many (or any) of the offshoot stamps were ever used for delivery, instead they remained valuable collectables. Robert Brydone was not one to be kept down however, and moved to London in 1866. He founded the London Circular Delivery Company to carry on his ideas, merging with the Metropolitan Circular Delivery Company in 1867 to form the London & Metropolitan Circular Delivery Company.
One Halfpenny Stamp for the London Circular Delivery CompanyBrydone’s next move was the National Circular Delivery Company, which would act to connect the provincial Companies and form the basis of a national delivery network to undercut the GPO. While they did not feature the monarch’s likeness, these stamps had a very thinly altered version of the Royal Coat of Arms and were a direct challenge and affront to the Royal Mail.
National Delivery Company Stamp featuring a very official looking coat of armsEnough was enough, and the GPO took the London & Metropolitan CDC to court in August 1867, a case which they quickly and comprehensively won. Within a month, all the other CDCs were closed down too, some having never got further than having their stamps printed.
A selection of provincial stamps for the various local Circular Delivery Companies, one Farthing, 1867The parcel delivery companies carried on, but the GPO got its monopoly on the prepaid collection and delivery of letters and printed materials back. But Brydone’s basic idea was sound and in demand, and in 1870 the Royal Mail bowed to demand and introduced the “red bantam” stamp, a reduced rate stamp for the delivery of circulars and papers.
Red Bantam stamps for “circular delivery”Brydone still wouldn’t give up though, and his various companies were in court again in 1868 and again in 1869 for attempts to restart their practices by getting around the letter but not the spirit of the law (.e.g by not using prepaid stamps). Again they lost and again Brydone tried again. He registered the Circular Delivery Company Limited in 1869 and was taken to court yet again before they had even got off the ground. The GPO made it clear that they would not tolerate any form of competition, and this time it seemed to work. The railways, however saw their opportunity and very carefully got in on the act too. They restricted their practice to newspapers and parcel delivery and by not offering a door-to-door service; you picked up your items from the station. Thre’s a huge page of very beautiful railway delivery stamps on this website.
Caledonian Railway Company pre-paid parcel stamp for Central Station.Perhaps it was the death of James Brydone in 1869 that dried up Robert’s sources of funding. Robert himself died a few years later back in Edinburgh, at 10 Comely Bank, aged only 41, from phthisis (TB of the lungs) with his brother by his side. Obviously not financially ruined, but a widower.
41 Comely Bank, another fine address.He may have died relatively quietly and in obscurity but for a short time, Brydone genuinely shook the establishment. The original local delivery disruptor! His main legacy is one of interesting and collectible stamps which seem to have been heavily forged in their time.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
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The Finnish Connection: the thread about William Crichton and the Trinity Chain Pier
The Old Chain Pier, on the sea wall at Trinity in the north of Edinburgh, is a nice little pub for a drink or some lunch with an uninterrupted view across the Firth of Forth to Fife. It takes its name from the Trinity Chain Pier, a rather fragile-looking structure opened nearby on August 14th 1821 to serve the east coast steamers. The pier is long gone, commemorated by the pub, but surprisingly you can fine many direct links to it in Finland of all places!
“Pier of Suspension. Erected at Trinity, near Newhaven, and within Three Short Miles of Edinburgh”. 1825 print by Charles Hulmandel. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.The pier was first proposed in 1820 by George Crichton, an entrepreneurial Leith businessman. George, the son of was the son of Alexander Crichton of Woodhouselee and Newington, came from money and had spent some time in the Royal Navy, rising to be a Lieutenant. But it was on land where he made his own fortune as a shipowner. He introduced one of the first steamships to Leith, the imaginatively named Tug of 1817, which plied the Forth coast. The Port of Leith at that time was not in a good state of upkeep and access was strictly tidal. His company, the London, Leith, Edinburgh and Glasgow Shipping Company – was granted permission to build his rival pier. They in turn transferred their interest to a new company backed by Crichton – the Trinity Pier Company – who would build, own and operated it.
Coloured lithograph by Jobbins & Chiffins, 1836, showing steamers at the Chain Pier from the sea, looking south towards Trinity. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.The final design of this “pier of suspension” was by Captain Samuel Brown RN and it was situated west of the old harbour of Newhaven. Its three spans projected 627 feet out into the sea and rose ten feet above high water, it was intended that it would be accessible to steamers at all states of the tide and would not have to compete with the Newhaven fishing fleet for space.
Close up of the end of the pier from the 1825 print by Charles Hulmandel, showing a small steamer berthed. There were stairs down to water level to allow embarkation. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.At the head of the pier was a small waiting room for steamer passengers and visitors could pay 1d at a toll booth to promenade along the slender deck. The pier however never really caught on with the steamer trade; a proper deep-water harbour at Granton would open in 1837, in 1850 the North British Railway bridged the Forth from there using Thomas Bouch’s “floating railway” system, and improvements to the docks at the Port of Leith all conspired to make it surplus to requirements.
Comparison of the 1849 OS Town Plan and the 1893 25 inch map of Edinburgh showing the Chain Pier. The original toll house has been replaced by a public house in the later view, and a tramway and waiting room to serve the steamers have gone, with new bathing shelters added instead. Move the slider to compare. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandNot long after the pier was opened, a public house opened opposite called The Chain Pier Inn. This was sold in 1865 so that the portion of Trinity Crescent called Albert Terrace could be extended to the east and the pub transferred across the road, replacing the former pier toll house. It is this building, much modified over the years, that forms the core of the present-day Old Chain Pier.
Around 1910, already the Chain Pier Inn is the Old Chain Pier Bar. It features an ornamental cupola from its days as the ticket office for the pier. Old postcard.The last regular steamer from Trinity, the Helen McGregor, sailed its final season in 1850, leaving Largo on the east Fife coast at 6:45AM each morning with intermediate stops at Leven, Dysart and Kirkcaldy before arriving at the pier to meet the 9AM train from Edinburgh and make the return journey. Further departures were made to Fife at 1PM and 5PM.
“Newhaven Harbour and the Chain Pier, looking east” coloured print of an engraving by R. Brandard after W. H. Bartlett, originally published c. 1840.After that year, when the railway service was inaugurated from Granton to Burntisland, the steamer trade reduced to little more than the occasional summer visitor and the pier found itself without a purpose. In 1859 ownership was sold to the Colonial Life Assurance Company. In order to try and make some money out of the scheme, it was promoted as a swimming station, with changing huts erected at the end and served by special early morning bathers’ trains and later cable-hauled tramcars.
Bathing huts at the end of the chain pier in the 1890s. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.Advertising bill for the Chain Pier. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.In March 1898 the Chain Pier Inn burned down, the result of an overheated hearth stove, and a much more permanent disaster occured later in the year the pier was largely swept away in a great storm that culminated on the night of October 18th 1898. Sections of the sea wall at Newhaven and the sea wall and railway embankment at Wardie Bay were also swept away by the power of the waves.
After the storm in 1898. The remains of the pier would be demolished. From Old Leith by Guthrie Hutton.During the height of the storm, which lasted for thirty-six hours, the Norwegian sailing ship Kawe was wrecked ashore at Annfield, between Newhaven and Leith Docks, and the Swedish barque Bertha was wrecked between Cramond and Granton. Numerous other vessels were damaged, driven ashore or wrecked all along the Forth coast.
Evening News artist’s impression of the stranding of the Kawe at Annfield. Printed 19th October 1898The pub would be rebuilt – and survives to this day – but the pier was not and the remains were demolished. Within the pub you can find the older masonry walls of the original structure and other relics from the pier.
Relics from the Old Chain Pier within the pub of that name. © SelfGeorge Crichton however prospered, even if his pier did not; he was one of the Leith Docks Commissioners, a Commissioner of Police, councillor of the Royal Landing Club, a reformist and vocal defender of Leith’s political independence from Edinburgh. He died in September 1841, leaving behind the not insubstantial fortune of £8,167 (after his creditors were settled) – about £901k in today’s money.
In 1827, George Crichton’s third son – William – was born in the family home at John’s Place in South Leith. His mother was Margaret Gifford Allan, known as Gifford. William followed in his older brothers’ footsteps and went into a career in engineering. At the age of fourteen his father died and he finished school. His brother Alexander got him a position at Scott & Company of Greenock, one of Scotland’s most prestigious shipbuilders. After that his other brother Edward got him into the Shotts Iron Company, the name in iron founding in 19th century Scotland. He completed this practical education at Robert Napier & Sons in Govan, one of the names in the country for marine engine building. When he left in 1848 he was aged just 21 but already had a most impressive CV for an aspiring young engineer.
William Crichton in later lifeWilliam now went to sea to get practical experience, and served as engineer on one of the ships of his father’s old company – the London, Leith, Edinburgh & Glasgow Shipping Co. – where he still had relations on the board of directors. After a season on the Royal Victoria he spent a winter working on his draughtsmanship and design studies, before sailing the next season with the Napier-engined Isabella Napier of the Continental Steam Navigation Co. between Leith, London and Hamburg.
Post Office Directory advert showing the “Royal Victoria”William’s big break came unexpectedly in 1850 when a letter arrived from his fellow Scotsman, David Cowie of Cowie & Eriksson – marine engineers in Turku, the Grand Duchy of Finland (then a part of the Russian Empire). Cowie invited William to join his company on a three year contract as a supervisor. William jumped at the chance, Russia was then the place to be for an aspiring naval engineer to make his name and make money; the waning Imperial power was playing catchup with France and Britain and desperately trying to buy in the foreign expertise to expand and modernise its navy.
David CowieRussia held a further attaction for the aspiring William as he had connections in high places in the country. His uncle, Sir Alexander Crichton, was physician to the Czar and his cousin, Sir Archibald Crichton, was also in the service to the Czar’s family. His first job in Finland was to supervise the construction and installation of the steam engines of the new frigate Rurik then being built by Cowie & Errikson for the Russian Navy.
Launch of the “Rurik” in 1851Crichton however soon fell ill and needed to be nursed back to health by Cowie’s wife. It was during this time he met her brother, Samuel Owen (junior), whose father Samuel Senior had helped industrialise Sweden and through whom Eriksson and Cowie had come to work together and form their partnership. In turn through Samuel Junior he met Annie Elizabeth Owen and the two would be wed in 1854. They would ultimately have twelve children together but before he could marry, William had to finish his work on the Rurik, which dd not complete until 1853. This brought his contract with Cowie & Eriksson to a close and so William took up a new opportunity in Helsinki through the Owens with Fiskars (the company known for orange-handled scissors and who may have made your garden shears).
But before he could get started, the matter of the War in Crimea got in the way and he was arrested in St. Petersburg as a possible enemy agent. Fortunately he was able to drop the name of Sir Alexander Crichton to the chief of police and instead of being sent to Moscow, he was released into his uncle’s care. Put above suspicion through his connections, he instead was given a place with Izhorskiye Zavody, a state-owned engineering works in Kolpino, St. Petersburg. Here he was able to repay Samuel Owen Junior by getting him a place there too.
Soviet postage stamp celebrating 250 years of the Izhorskiye ZavodyWilliam set about his new job with enthusiasm and after the Crimean War was over travelled frequently back to England to appraise himself of the latest designs and technology, bringing them back to Russia to improve his own company’s engines. For his efforts in modernising their naval engineering the appreciative Russians presented him with a St Stanislaus Ribbon with a golden medal in 1860.
St. Stanislaus ribbon and silver medal, collection of the SmithsonianIn 1862, William was called back to Turku in Finland by a letter from one Erik Julin who had bought Eriksson’s shares of his old employer Cowie & Eriksson. Julin informed him that Cowie was ready to sell his share too and wanted William to consider buying it and entering into partnership with him, acting as the lead engineer. William agreed and bought Cowie’s share for 32,810 Silver Roubles. The new company became William Crichton & Co and it wasted no time in expanding from engineering into shipbuilding.
Erik Julin, Crichton’s partner in Crichton & Co.With solid finances, Julin’s business sense and William’s engineering prowess and Imperial connections the company prospered. By the 1870s their Turku yard employed 400 and was building small screw tugs, coastal vessels and auxiliary engines. The company expanded by taking control of the Turku Old Shipyard and modernising it to allow production of steel vessels. With greater liabilities at stake it was converted into a limited organisation, with tho-thirds of the shares owned by Crichton and one third by Julin.
Letterhead of William Crichton & Co,The company went from strength to strength and became the largest employer in Turku. To ensure Imperial orders it maintained a dedicated “commercial counsellor” in St. Petersburg, to handle the delicate negotiations and backhanders required to get state work. Crichton continued to modernise and enlarge the works until his death in 1889 aged 62. None of his many children wanted to take on the operation, so his shares were sold off to his deputy, John Eager and to Russian banks and nobility. The company continued to prosper and increasingly started to build small warships for the Russian navy. In 1898 it built twenty-six Sokol torpedo boats and took over a yard in Okhta, St. Petersburg. This investment would ultimately be their undoing as it incurred significant debts and its poor performance resulted in large penalty contract clauses.
Sokol torpedo boat of the Imperial Russian NavyIn 1906, tensions between Moscow and the Finnish Grand Duchy saw the Russian Navy cancel all contracts with Finnish yards. This hit Crichtons hard and they incurred further losses from which they never recovered. By 1913 they declared bankruptcy with enormous debts. But that was not the end for the Leith name of Crichton in Finnish shipbuilding – two of the company’s biggest creditors (and shareholders) were the Dahlström brothers, and they restarted the yard in Turku under the name Aktiebolaget (AB) Crichton in 1914.
AB Crichton letterheadThis new company got by on orders from the new Finnish state – including a pair of gunboats Karjala and Turunmaa which would go on to serve in Finland’s wars with the Soviet Union in the 1940s and into the 1950s. But the post-WW1, post-revolution, post-independence and post-civil war recession hit AB Crichton very hard and it built its last ship in 1924. But once again the name it was saved; a merger with its neighbour and rival AB Vulcan formed Crichton-Vulcan Oy. Thus it was that a company with a half-Scottish name and heritage would become Finland’s largest shipyard and was awarded orders in 1927 for two new 3,900 tonne coastal defence armoured ships for the Finnish navy, Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen, the pride of the fleet
Väinämöinen in 1938, pride of the Finish NavyBoth of these ships served in the 1940s wars with the Soviet Union, Ilmarinen hit mines in September 1941 and sank with the loss of 271 men from a crew of 401. The survivors were sardonically termed “Ilmarisen uimaseura” (Ilmarinen‘s Swimming Club). Väinämöinen was a persistent thorn in the enemy side who expended great efforts to sink her. They succeeded in doing so in July 1944 only to find out that thanks to herculean camouflage efforts on the part of the Finns, they had actually sank the German anti-aircraft ship Niobe instead.
And this is why, to this day, there is a street in Turku on the waterfront called Crichtoninkatu or Crichtongatan (please feel free to send me a better picture if you find yourself on that street any time soon!)
Crichtoninkatu in TurkuNote to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
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Causewayside Public School: the thread about the epicentre of a very sectarian Southside scandal
Preamble. The schools of the “School Board” era of public education (1872-1918) have for some reason a particular fascination for me, one which is more profound where they 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 each of the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” but rapidly snowballed into an intention to cover each, in alphabetical order, on its own and in rather more detail, but not so much that they can’t be posted quite frequently.
The fourth chapter of our series looking at the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” investigates Causewayside School. In 1875 Edinburgh School Board purchased the house of Grange Villa at 140 Causewayside for £3,218 13s 11d with the intention of erecting a new school. This half acre plot was a parallelogram in shape on account of its northern boundary being defined by an old drainage ditch that cut diagonally relative to the main road. Prior to this, schooling in the district was conducted at a school run by the United Presbyterian Church on Duncan Street, which moved with that church to the corner of Salisbury Place in 1864.
An overlay of the 1876 Ordnance Survey town plan of Edinburgh (Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland) and modern Google Earth aerial imagery showing the location of Causewayside School. Note the parallelogram shape of the building plot. The UP Church can be seen to the top of the map, its school building to the rear being marked as a Sunday School. Move the slider to compareThe Board had already held a competition in 1874 to find architects for its first batch of new schools and divided the work between the most successful applicants. Causewayside was awarded to Robert Rowand Anderson, who would rise to become one of Victorian Scotland’s most notable architects. He was also awarded the work for schools at West Fountainbridge and Stockbridge and the three shared a number of design and style features (“the dimensions of the various rooms repeat to within a few inches… and the ventilating and playground arrangements are also precisely similar“) but with significant variation in the layouts to make use of three very different sites, all of which had significant constraints.
Front elevation by Robert Rowand Anderson of the Causewayside School, dated 1875. University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections, Coll-31/2/EC.74Anderson set Causewayside back from the main road and spread it across two storeys, each with a large central school room with two smaller classrooms on either side at the rear, giving a roughly cruciform footprint. There was a single large gable projecting forwards whereas at Stockbridge (below) there was one on each flank. His early work designing churches translated easily to the Collegiate Gothic style much in favour at the time for schools except now the “steeples” did not contain bells, but hid an Archimedes screw ventilator to promote good air circulation through the buildings.
Stockbridge Primary School by Robert Rowand Anderson, sharing many design features with Causewayside. CC-by-SA 4.0, Drnoble via WikimediaThe construction contract was worth £7,974 11s 0d and work commenced in late June 1875. Progress by January 1876 was reported as “slow” but by June was “well advanced“. Although it was to be completed for 1st December that year opening did not happen until 9th January 1877. The chairman of the School Board, Professor Calderwood, performed the honours and at this time already 500 of its 600 spaces had been subscribed to.
Rear (left) and north side (right) elevations of Causewayside School, dated 1875. The pair of blocks to the back housed stairs, toilets and offices on intermediate floors, hence the extra sets of windows. University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections, Coll-31/2/EC.74An inspection in its second year of operation reported favourably on the quality of teaching at the school:
Report of HM Inspectors on the Edinburgh Board Schools for Session 1878-79.
Causewayside School.
Mixed School. — An extremely good tone pervaded this School, and the class movements were very orderly. As regards the work of the three lower Standards, some weakness appeared in the spelling and intelligence of the third Standard, but everything else was most satisfactory. Of the upper Standards, the fourth might have done rather better in arithmetic, and the fifth in composition, while both the fifth and sixth Standards answered unequally in history and geography. On the other hand, for grammar, general intelligence, and acquaintance with their specific subjects, all three Standards deserve praise. In judging of the School, it must, of course, be remembered that the staff is strong. Needlework and music are both carefully taught.
Infants’ School. — Discipline and instruction in this Department both deserve the highest praise. It is evident that the Mistress and her Staff exercise a most beneficial influence alike in quickening the intelligence and in regulating the behaviour of their young pupils.
A subsequent inspection in February 1885 by the local Superintendent, Colonel Campbell, “complained strongly” about the drawing examination at the school; the children were using their pencils as a measuring gauge when doing freehand work and that they were placing lined pages beneath their drawing paper as a further guide. The teacher protested that this was how she had been taught to draw but the Colonel demanded that the exam be cancelled: the matter was not dropped until representations in defence from both the Headmaster and Flora Stevenson of the School Board.
Flora Stevenson, a redoubtable figure on the Edinburgh School Board and in the Suffrage movement. 1895 photograph by G. Watson, from the Edinburgh & Scottish Collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.In common with the first wave of schools that the Board built, Causewayside was really too small to cope with demand and already by October 1878 it was over capacity, with 638 pupils. By 1883 it was so oversubscribed that an extension for 200 further children was authorised, widening the front of the building to the same width as the rear to add additional classrooms. In 1894 a further extension was approved but by the following year there were 250 vacant spaces on account of the recent opening in the district of Sciennes School. By 1901 the school was once again reported to be suffering form overcrowding – this was still a time of urban population growth.
1893 Ordnance Survey town plan centred on Causewayside School, with the original footprint (orange) drawn over the extended footprint which added additional classrooms either side at the front. The wall across the playground was to separate girls from boys, the structures with dotted outlines on the left (west) side being open play sheds. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandLocated as it was between the Grange and Newington, you could be forgiven for thinking this school as being in a middle-class catchment. However, like most Board schools at this time, it drew its intake largely from the working classes and its pupils were subject to a life in the harsh social environment of Edinburgh at this time. In a court case in February 1884 Helen Dick, or Taylor, was brought before Sheriff Rutherfurd and charged with “failing to provide elementary education for her children and also with failing to secure their regular attendance at school“. She told the court that “she could not do more than she had done” for her two children – Jessie (10) and George (8) – her husband had abandoned the family 6 years prior and to support them she worked anti-social hours at a laundry. She had to leave early in the morning and was not allowed to return home to wake her children and get them ready for school, so they inevitably did not go. The Sheriff ordered that they be made to go to school at Causewayside. Another example comes from an 1896 meeting of the School Board which heard that of the 722 children at the school only 21 had baths in their homes. 71 boys and six girls reported that they went – occasionally – to the Corporation baths to wash. In 1901, it was estimated in 1901 that 15 percent of the juvenile department of the school were working after their school day to help support their families.
Causewayside children, 1927, at Grange Court. The tall building with the Gothic window in the background is the UP Church where the Causewayside School was located prior to the opening of the Board school. Photograph by John Smith, via Edinburgh City Libraries.In 1905 the headmaster, Robert Mathewson, retired owing to ill health after 20 years in service. He was briefly replaced by James Clark, promoted from St Leonard’s Public School, who soon returned to the latter institution as its head to be replaced in turn by Thomas W. Paterson of North Canongate. Paterson had begun his career in 1879 at Causewayside and remained there until retiring in 1922 after 51 years in the profession, the pupils and parents presenting him with the gift of a typewriter for the occasion.
On October 1st 1913, pupils from Causewayside joined their compatriots from Davie Street, St Leonard’s and South Bridge in a spontaneous protest march through the district, a rumour having spread through the streets that they were to begin attending school on Saturday Mornings.
Evening schooling began at Causewayside only a month after it opened, when the Edinburgh School of Cookery was allowed by the School Board to run courses here which were open to the general public. This became known as Continuation Schooling; continuation of education for those who had left school (at 14) but had not qualified for a Higher Grade school (or could not afford to go to one). Causewayside became the principal such school for young women and girls in the city, offering both basic academic subjects and practical classes focussing on employable skills – cookery, millinery, laundrywork, dressmaking and needlework. While these classes were not free, in 1915 a term cost 5 shillings, an excellent attendance record could result in the fees being reimbursed. Completion of these classes could qualify women for the Edinburgh School of Cookery and Domestic Economy, where employers provided bursaries. In 1915, 177 pupils earned the return of their fees and forty qualified for the School of Cookery. Headmaster Paterson of Causewayside wrote to the editor of the Scotsman in 1917 that continuation classes were “to the better equipment for life’s battle for those children who leave school at 14 years of age without passing the qualifying examination.”
Advert for Edinburgh School Board’s Continuation Classes, including Causewayside, Musselburgh News, 21st September 1906An almighty brouhaha erupted at Causewayside in 1925 when the Education Authority announced plans to close the school, transfer its pupils to other nearby schools, and re-open it as a Roman Catholic school. The background is complex but stemmed from the fact that R. C. schooling in Scotland was not transferred from that church to the state until 1918 at which point the newly formed Education Authorities inherited a rather poor portfolio of school premises. Few, if any, of these had been purpose-built and almost none were really fit for purpose; St. Columba’s R. C. School, which served the Southside, was teaching 291 children (with a waiting list of 27) in a totally inadequate converted town house at 81 Newington Road. Causewayside’s school roll had slumped after WW1 due to urban depopulation and with only 321 children at less than half its capacity. The authority’s bean-counters were convinced that Sciennes, Preston Street and Bristo schools could comfortably accommodate Causewayside as they too had falling rolls and that nobody would have a problem with making the most economical use of their buildings.
81 Newington Road, former St Columba’s R. C. School.How wrong they were! Edinburgh, in case you didn’t know, was a hot-bed of radical, anti-Catholic political Protestantism in the first half of the 20th century and the nascent Scottish Protestant League, led by the rabble-rouser Alexander Ratcliffe, went all in on trying to use the school proposal as a wedge issue in their efforts to repeal the provisions of the Education (Scotland) Act 1918 that saw the state obliged to provide non-secular R. C. schooling. You can read the full details of the vitriolic campaign that they orchestrated to oppose this change in the thread about the Sciennes School Strike of 1925. Suffice to say, the Education Authority was unmoved by the accusations it was handing over a “Protestant school to the Roman Catholics” and “putting Rome on the Rates” in “the city of Knox“. It maintained its position that it had a legal obligation to meet and that its only other option was to build a new school in its entirety – which would add even further to the tax burden of the local rates! And so it was that Causewayside School closed at the end of the 1923-24 term and re-opened after the summer holidays as St Columba’s R. C. School.
Pupils and teacher nun of St. Columba’s R. C. School in 1925, the year after they moved – controversially – to Causewayside. Copy of photograph in “St Columba’s Edinburgh, Centenary Year” by Mark Dilworth OSB for St Columba’s Centenary Committee, 1989The Continuation School was unaffected by all this, a matter quietly and conveniently overlooked by those claiming the school was being “given” to the Catholic Church! The Scottish Protestant League were still publicly and vocally agitating against St Columba’s, well into 1925 – until the focus of their ire was drawn to the opening of a Carmelite Convent in Merchiston in September.
As St. Columba’s the school also became a Supplementary School, i.e. for children over the elementary age of 11 and below the leave age of 14 and who were not in High School education; what we might now call a Secondary School. It took children from other R. C. primaries in the city; St Mary’s on York Lane, St Patrick’s on St John’s Hill, St Ann’s in the Cowgate, St Peter’s in Morningside and St Ignatius’ at Tollcross, adding 300 students and 9 teachers to the school. This brought the school to over 600 pupils, but the effects of depopulation soon began to take their toll and by 1938 it had dropped to 409. There were only 190 children in the elementary department and so the following year it was closed, the pupils displaced to those other R. C. schools, and the girls’ supplementary department transferred to St Thomas of Aquin’s at Lauriston. St Columba’s was to be converted and expanded into a dedicated junior secondary school for boys aged 12 to 14 and the Education Committee authorised expenditure for this scheme. This coincided with the outbreak of WW2 and so no work ever took place. Evacuation caused a further drop in the remaining school roll, part of the school was requisitioned by the Auxiliary Fire Service and the remainder suffered from a lack of coal which caused the heating to stop working, pipes and toilets to freeze and then flooding when they thawed. In February 1940 the authorities called it quits and the remaining 150 boys were sent to other schools and it was closed permanently.
This was not the end for the building though and it was given a new lease of life by converting it into an emergency cooking centre, the work undertaken by John Kelly & Son (Kitchen Engineers) Ltd of Rose Street. What became “the largest kitchen in Edinburgh“, capable of cooking 10,000 meals at a time, was intended to help feed the populace in the event of a catastrophic air raid. Fortunately it was never required for this purpose and so was transferred to the Education Committee in 1942 as a central kitchen for producing school meals. Together with the existing centre at the former West Fountainbridge School, together they could produce 9,000 two course lunches daily, sufficient for every child in the city who wanted one. Its official opening took place on Friday 11th September, when Thomas Johnston MP, Secretary of State for Scotland, made a speech imploring the nation to double its consumption of home-grown oatmeal and potatoes. He also announced that school cookery classes would now focus on these ingredients and local and national schools competitions for their use.
Thomas Johnston in 1955 when chairman of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, by Sir Herbert James Gunn. © artist’s estate, via National Galleries Scotland.Closure of the Causewayside centre was proposed in 1952, both as an economy measure and also reflecting the fact that most schools now had their own kitchen facilities. Newspaper adverts from 1955 record the disposal of its cooking equipment to the highest bidders.
Adverts for staff at the Causewayside Cooking Centre. Edinburgh Evening News, 25th May 1943After this it lay vacant for a decade until in 1965 the newly formed Scottish Certificate of Education Examination Board (SCEEB) acquired and demolished it as a location for its new headquarters. A modern, three storey, brutalist office block by Alan Reiach & Eric Hall was built in its place, the only notable feature of an otherwise unremarkable building being an abstract concrete panel over the entrance by Charles Anderson. This includes the crest of the Board and their motto In Trutina Ponentur Eadem which, according to the Dictionary of Foreign Quotations, translates from Latin as “These Matters are to be Weighed in the Balance“. The SCEEB moved in during 1967 but lasted less than a decade, moving in 1975 to Dalkeith on account of needing more space. They were replaced in turn by the Scottish Law Commission but their coat of arms remained, the motto perhaps equally appropriate for both institutions.
Anderson’s relief above the entrance to the SCEEB buildingNo trace of the old school now remains and as of the time of writing (February 2026) the redevelopment in turn has been empty for a number of years and a full planning application for its demolition and replacement has been submitted to the Council. A previous plan for the site in 2023 was asked to consider the re-use of the sculptured panel but I the current developer has offered it as a gift to the Scottish Qualifications Authority – SQA, the spiritual successor of the SCEEB at Dalkeith. Thank you to Peter Gillett for this update on their future. The SQA of course now needs to follow through in accepting the gift and having it removed and appropriately relocated…
The previous chapter of this series looked at Castlehill School. The next chapter examines the Davie Street Schools.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
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If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.
NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
Working list: Tallest “Tin Man” water towers in the USA
Source: archive.org Source: cannerydistrict.com Source: archive.orgProbably those most beloved style of water tower, “Tin Man” tanks have been around well over a century. These tend to come in two styles – the shape of a standard soup can with a pointed cap roof and rounded hemispherical bottom (see image above), and – a wider, more stout version of the same design shaped like a can of Crisco (see image just below). While included in the listings, these towers are not identified as “Tin Man” towers due to the tank’s wider girth.
Source: waterworld.comBoth versions are charming, though the narrower version is more common and better resembles the Tin Woodman from the Wizard of Oz. Speaking of which, the nickname “Tin Man” for these water towers largely arose from that character (see quote and image below).
Source: pinterest.com“The ‘Tin Man’ towers were nicknamed for their shape: a conical roof with a ball finial, reminiscent of the ‘Wizard of Oz’ character.”
Source: stlnpr.org
The first list identifies the tallest “Tin Man” water towers for whom the data is available on the internet. The second is a partial list of those towers for whom the height is currently unknown. As more data is collected and found, this list will be updated accordingly.
Sadly, as time passes more and more of these charming, quaint structures are being lost to time, neglect, and shortsightedness. As a result, a third list is provided below the initial list of sources identifying those “Tin Man” water towers lost in recent years.
Source: mysanantonio.comThankfully, a number of communities across the country have found the funds and wherewithal to preserve, protect, and promote their historic “Tin Man” water towers as iconic focal points of downtown or a public park, as historic structures, as a branding option with the town logo, or as centerpieces of vibrant and active entertainment venues. Below are examples of cities/towns that deserve kudos for their successful preservation efforts (with photos of each water tower):
Arvada, Colorado
Source: youtube.comBelen, New Mexico
Source: photo by authorBozeman, Montana
Source: cannerydistrict.comFranklin, Tennessee
Source: williamsonsource.comGilbert, Arizona
Source: gilbertaz.govLittle Elm, Texas
Source: dunaway.comMillstadt, Illinois
Source: republictimes.netManassas, Virginia
Source: dhr.virginia.govOshkosh, Nebraska
Source: visitgardencounty.comYelm, Washington
Source: thurstontalk.comHopefully, more places will see the benefit(s) of rehabilitating and caring for their iconic “Tin Man” water towers so they can remain an integral part of the historic and cultural vibe of the community.
Peace!
_______
- Marston “Tin Man” Water Tower (1897): Iowa State University, IA = 168 feet
2. Millstadt “Tin Man” Water Tower (1931): Millstadt, IL = 164 feet
3. Olde Town Arvada “Tin Man” Water Tower (1910): Arvada, CO = 152 feet
4. Roanoke “Tin Man” Water Tower (1936): Roanoke, TX ~ 150 feet
5-6. Manassas “Tin Man” Water Tower (1914): Manassas, Virginia and Riverhead “Tin Man” Water Tower (1968): Riverhead, NY = 147 feet
7. Paramount Studios “Tin Man” Water Tower: Los Angeles, CA = 145 feet
8. Jackson Street “Tin Man” Water Tower (1920): Elk River, MN = 137 feet
9. West “Tin Man” Water Tower (1928): Orion, IL = 136.5 feet
10. Warner Bros. “Tin Man” Water Tower (1927): Burbank, CA = 133 feet
11. Round Rock “Tin Man” Water Tower (1935): Round Rock, TX = 130 feet
12. University Park “Tin Man” Water Tower (ca 1930): Stockton, CA = 129 feet
13. Corning “Tin Man” Water Tower (1932): Corning, California = 128 feet
14. University Heights “Tin Man” Water Tower (1898): San Diego, California = 127.5 feet
15. Osseo “Tin Man” Water Tower (1915): Osseo, MN = 127.25 feet
16. Gilbert “Tin Man” Water Tower (1925): Gilbert, Arizona = 126 feet
17-19. Yelm “Tin Man” Water Tower (1946): Yelm, WA; Cuthbert “Tin Man” Water Tower (1895): Cuthbert, GA; and Bunnell “Tin Man” Water Tower (1927): Bunnell, FL = 125 feet
20. Oshkosh “Tin Man” Water Tower (1920): Oshkosh, NE = 120 feet
21-22. Red “Tin Man” Water Tower at the Factory (1930): Franklin, TN and Placentia “Tin Man” Water Tank (1935): Placentia, CA = 110 feet
23-25. Oregon “Tin Man” Water Tower (1921): Oregon, WI and Bandera “Tin Man” Water Tower (1941): Bandera, TX; and Belen “Tin Man” Water Tower (1928): Belen, NM = 100 feet
26. Grand Mound “Tin Man” Water Tower (1915): Grand Mound, IA = 80 feet
27. BHS Driller Country “Tin Man” Water Tower (1933): Bakersfield, CA = 60 feet
Beloved “Driller Country Water Tower preserved at Kern Pioneer Village – Source: bakersfield.com_______
More information needed (partial list):
- Falkville “Tin Man” Water Tower (1936): Falkville, AL
- Beardon “Tin Man” Water Tower: Bearden, AR
- Cotter “Tin Man” Water Tower (1935): Cotter, AR
- Cotton Plant “Tin Man” Water Tower (1935): Cotton Plant, AR
- De Valls Bluff “Tin Man” Water Tower (1936): De Valls Bluff, AR
- Green Forest “Tin Man” Water Tower (1937): Green Forest, AR
- Hampton “Tin Man” Water Tower (1937): Hampton AR
- Hartford “Tin Man” Water Tower (1936): Hartford, AR
- Hughes “Tin Man” Water Tower (1936): Hughes, AR
- Keiser “Tin Man” Water Tower (1936): Keiser, AR
- Lockesburg “Tin Man” Water Tower (1936): Lockesburg, AR
- Mineral Springs “Tin Man” Water Tower (1936): Mineral Springs, AR
- Rison “Tin Man” Water Tower: Rison, AR
- Tuckerman “Tin Man” Water Tower (1935): Tuckerman, AR
- Tyronza “Tin Man” Water Tower (1935): Tyronza, AR
- Ash Fork Water Tower: Ash Fork, AZ
- Kingman “Tin Man” Water Tower: Kingman, AZ
- RV Resort “Tin Man” Water Tower: AZ
- Loma Citas “TinMan” Water Tower: Coronado, CA
- Galt “Tin Man” Water Tower (1936): Galt, CA
- Hunt’s Cannery “Tin Man” Water Tower: Hayward, CA
- Ramah “Tin Man” Water Tower: Ramah, CO
- Eatonville “Tin Man” Water Tower (1887): Eatonville, FL
- Lake Helen “Tin Man” Water Tower: Lake Helen, FL
- Florida Natural “Tin Man” Water Tower: Lake Wales, FL
- Dexter “Tin Man” Water Tower: Dexter, IA
- Red Oak “Tin Man” Water Tower: Red Oak, IA
- Post Falls “Tin Man” Water Tower: Post Falls, ID
- Garrett “Tin Man” Water Tower: Garrett, IN
- Princeton “Tin Man” Water Tower: Princeton, IN
- South Whitley “Tin Man” Water Tower: South Whitley, IN
- Goodland “Tin Man” Water Tower: Goodland, KS
- Hot & Cold “Tin Man” Water Towers: Pratt, KS
- Midway “Tin Man” Water Tower (1940s): Midway, KY
- Smithland “Tin Man” Water Tower: Smithland, KY
- Baldwin “Tin Man” Water Tower: Baldwin, ME
- Brownsdale “Tin Man” Water Tower: Brownsdale, MN
- Deerwood “Tin Man” Water Tower (1914): Deerwood, MN
- Easton “Tin Man” Water Tower (1911): Easton, MN
- Fairfax “Tin Man” Water Tower: Fairfax, MN
- Freeport “Tin Man” Water Tower (1920s): Freeport, MN
- Madison “Tin Man” Water Tower (1946): Madison, MS
- Cannery District “Tin Man” Water Tower: Bozeman, MT
- North Carolina Finishing Co. Twin “Tin Man” Water Towers: East Spencer, NC
- Glencoe Mill “Tin Man” Water Tower #1 (1905): Glencoe, NC
- Glencoe Mill “Tin Man” Water Tower #2: Glencoe, NC
- SPCC “Tin Man” Water Tower: Wadesboro, NC
- Minto “Tin Man” Water Tower: Minto, ND
- Dawson “Tin Man” Water Tower: Dawson, NE
- Ford Assembly Plant Water Tower: Omaha, NE
- Superior “Tin Man” Water Tower: Superior, NE
- New Mexico Timber Co. “Tin Man” Water Tower: Bernalillo, NM
- “Tin Man” Water Tower: Los Lunas, NM
- Waterford “Tin Man” Water Tower: Waterford, NY
- Wilson NFL “Tin Man”Water Tower: Ada, OH
- Chilo “Tin Man” Water Tower: Chilo, OH
- Jeffersonville “Tin Man” Water Tower: Jeffersonville, OH
- Laura “Tin Man” Water Tower: Laura, OH
- Smithfield “Tin Man” Water Tower: Smithfield, OH
- Randlett Park “Tin Man” Water Tower (1920s): Anadarko, OK
- Boise City “Tin Man” Water Tower: Boise City, OK
- Manchester “Tin Man” Water Tower: Manchester, OK
- Vian “Tin Man” Water Tower: Vian, OK
- Cliff “Tin Man” Water Tower
- Menlo “Tin Man” Water Tower
- Crook “Tin Man” Water Tower
- Ovid “Tin Man” Water Tower:
- Ainsworth “Tin Man” Water Tower
- Pilot Point “Tin Man” Water Tower
- Ridgeway “Tin Man” Water Tower (1923): Ridgeway, SC
- Downtown “Tin Man” Water Tower: Ripley, TN
- Anton “Tin Man” Water Tower: Anton, TX
- Penn Field “Tin Man” Water Tower (1918): Austin (south), TX
- Big Wells Bulldogs “Tin Man” Water Tower: Big Wells, TX
- Bremond “Tin Man” Water Tower: Bremond, TX
- Cotulla “Tin Man” Water Tower: Cotula, TX
- Crawford Pirates “Tin Man” Water Tower: Crawford, TX
- Deport “Tin Man” Water Tower: Deport, TX
- Elkhart “Tin Man” Water Tower: Elkhart, TX
- Frisco “Tin Man” Water Tower: Frisco, TX
- Gunter “Tin Man” Water Tower: Gunter, TX
- Higgins “Tin Man’ Water Tower: Higgins, TX
- Imperial Water Tower: Imperial, TX
- Keller “Tin Man” Water Tower: Keller, TX
- Kosse “Tin Man” Water Tower: Kosse, TX
- Water Tower #4 “Tin Man”: Kyle, TX
- Linden “Tin Man” Water Tower (1936), TX
- Little Elm “Tin Man” Water Tower, TX
- Matador “Tin Man” Water Tower: Matador, TX
- Pflugerville “Tin Man” Water Tower: Pflugerville, TX
- Rowlett “Tin Man” Water Tower: Rowlett, TX
- Lone Star Brewery “Tin Man” Water Tower: San Antonio, TX
- Smithville “Tin Man” Water Tower: Smithville, TX
- Brodhead “Tin Man” Water Tower (1921): Brodhead, WI
- Main Street “Tin Man” Water Tower (1928): Waunakee, WI
***A list of recently lost “Tin Man” water towers and the year they were torn down is provided after the sources.***
SOURCES:
- https://www.republictimes.net/millstadts-tin-man-shines-again/
- https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM16NR6_Tin_Man_Water_Tower_Crawford_TX
- https://flaglercountyhistoricalsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Bunnell-Water-Tower-1.pdf
- https://www.stlpr.org/arts/2016-01-22/saving-the-tin-man-preservationists-hope-to-give-millstadt-water-tower-a-new-coat-of-paint
- https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=232896
- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/water-tower-in-smithville-texas-is-also-known-as-the-tin-man–502503270896179307/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_Springs_Waterworks
- https://web.archive.org/web/20160306004345/http://gis.hpa.state.il.us/pdfs/223182.pdf
- pinterest.com
- flickr.com
- gemini.google.ai
- perplexity.ai
- https://dunaway.com/project/the-lawn-at-lake-front/
- https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=237365
- https://www.news-bulletin.com/news/belen-water-tower-designated-as-historic-landmark/article_fbf3423e-a703-58e0-b8a3-69a8daa78cb3.html
- https://savingplaces.org/stories/return-of-the-tin-man-in-oregon-wisconsin
- https://midwayky.blogspot.com/2013/04/council-moves-to-put-big-water-tower.html
- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/the-red-tin-man-water-tower-at-the-factory–290834088449137581/
- https://thinkerphoto.com/2023/08/11/1350/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRpwBpSrEnw
- https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=160713
- https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=244428
- https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=166916
- https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=238075
- https://web.archive.org/web/20180223110923/http://www.mnhs.org/shpo/nrhp/docs_pdfs/0121_osseowatertower.pdf
- https://www.waunakeeutilities.com/history
- https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm16HW3_Tin_Man_Water_Tower_Kosse_TX
- https://www.arkansasheritage.com/docs/default-source/national-registry/SV0100-pdf
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Water_towers_on_the_National_Register_of_Historic_Places_by_state
- https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1981/sep/17/feature-water-towers/
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/porchdog/2713301649
- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/217932069452918155/
- https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm158QK_Tin_Man_Water_Tower_Matador_TX
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyronza_Water_Tower
- https://www.newhistory.com/eastonwatertower
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckerman_Water_Tower
- https://dunaway.com/project/the-lawn-at-lake-front/
- https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wmD3G1_Randlett_Water_Tower_Anadarko_OK
- https://history.nebraska.gov/seven-new-additions-to-the-national-register-of-historic-places/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Mound_Town_Hall_and_Waterworks_Historic_District
- https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=72322
- https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=196618
- https://www.bakersfield.com/entertainment/power-to-the-tower-museum-needs-funds-for-bhs-landmark/article_70670b62-e350-5213-8cf9-63b1756e5113.html
- https://www.dreamstime.com/historic-brodhead-wisconsin-water-tower-looking-up-built-des-moines-pittsburgh-steel-company-image155691960
- https://pbase.com/xradiotx/water_towers_of_texas&page=all
- https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=262180
- http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasPanhandleTowns/Higgins-Texas.htm
- https://thinkerphoto.com/2024/06/05/the-south-austin-tin-man/
- https://thinkerphoto.com/2024/06/06/the-lone-star-tin-man/
- https://www.blythewoodonline.com/2023/09/saluting-100-years-of-the-tin-man/
- https://web.archive.org/web/20140201220450/http://www.arkansaspreservation.com/historic-properties/_search_nomination_popup.aspx?id=2412
- https://archive.ph/20130117051504/http://www.arkansaspreservation.com/historic-properties/_search_nomination_popup.aspx?id=2368
- https://archive.ph/20130117064422/http://www.arkansaspreservation.com/historic-properties/_search_nomination_popup.aspx?id=2272
- https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=221236
- https://www.arkansasheritage.com/docs/default-source/national-registry/SB0891-pdf
- https://www.arkansasheritage.com/docs/default-source/national-registry/SF0064-pdf
- https://web.archive.org/web/20141213012948/http://www.arkansaspreservation.com/%21userfiles/MS0310.nr.pdf
- https://www.arkansasheritage.com/docs/default-source/national-registry/CR2086-pdf
Those “Tin Man” water towers sadly lost to time, neglect, or shortsightedness:
Alamo Heights, TX (2013) – an image is provided above in the main blogpost.
Aledo, TX (2009)
Brookings, SD (2019)
Brookport, IL (2015)
Cokato MN (2006)
Dorchester, NE (2013)
Gaylord, MN (2016)
Grand Forks, ND (2009)
Groveport, OH (2015)
Independence, MO (2025)
Mabais Plantation, AL (2024)
Martinsville, IL (2023)
UC Merced, CA (2021)
Shiloh, WA (2024)
Stamford, TX (2024)
Texas A & M University “Tin Man” Water Tower (1975)
SOURCES:
- https://www.kens5.com/article/news/local/alamo-heights-iconic-tin-man-water-tower-meets-its-doom/273-306413716
- https://www.columbusmessenger.com/old-groveport-water-tower-taken-down.html
- https://maguirewater.com/tin-man-demolished-after-over-100-years-of-service/
- https://martinsvilleil.com/2023/07/02/tin-man/
- https://dorchestertimes.blogspot.com/2013/09/looking-back-dorchesters-old-water-tower.html
- https://www.delanoheraldjournal.com/articles/archives/cokato-woman-writes-song-about-water-tower-dismantling/
- https://spirit.txamfoundation.com/Winter-2025/Its-How-You-Know-Aggieland-Is-Within-Sight.aspx#:~:text=In%201975%2C%20a%20new%20186,and%20befitting%20of%20Texas%20A&M.
- https://www.wpsdlocal6.com/news/demolition-of-brookport-s-tin-man-set-for-monday/article_69133a30-24df-50f0-8e8c-373dc842c6cc.html
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjxlLweRMZk
- https://www.aledotimesrecord.com/story/news/2009/10/01/downpour-doesn-t-thwart-downing/63603078007/
- https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article299382399.html
- https://newscut.mprnews.org/2016/08/ode-to-a-water-tower/index.html
- https://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/video/stamford-demolishes-old-water-tower-in-response-to-20-million-grant/9471952/
- https://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/video/stamford-demolishes-old-water-tower-in-response-to-20-million-grant/9471952/
- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/296745062959131337/
- https://mercedcountytimes.com/once-upon-a-time-in-merced-county-170-years-ago/#:~:text=90%20years%20ago%20(1934)%2C,largest%20elevated%20tank%20in%20California.
#cities #geography #history #landUse #municipal #PittsburghDesMoinesSteel #planning #preservation #TinMan #travel #utilities #water #waterTanks #waterTowers #WizardOfOZ
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Communications Systems Adaptations
As natural disasters intensify, our communication systems require fundamental transformation. There is an urgent need for resilient communication networks that can withstand environmental pressures. #ClimateAdaptation #CommunityResilience
Adapting Communication Systems for an Uncertain Future
The accelerating deterioration of Earth’s biosphere presents unprecedented challenges for maintaining reliable communication networks. These networks are vital not only for coordinating adaptation efforts but for sustaining the social fabric that binds communities together. As extreme weather events intensify and resource constraints grow, our communication infrastructure must evolve while ensuring essential connectivity persists (Rogers 2024).
The Vulnerability of Traditional Infrastructure
Traditional communication infrastructure faces mounting threats from climate-driven disasters. Physical damage to telephone and internet cable networks from flooding, high winds, and temperature extremes is becoming more common (Bartos and Chester 2015). This vulnerability demands innovative approaches to infrastructure design and management.
Innovative Solutions
One promising direction involves the development of mesh networks – decentralized systems that maintain connectivity even when individual nodes fail. The Commotion Wireless project demonstrates how communities can build resilient local networks with limited resources (Rey-Moreno et al. 2017). These distributed architectures prove especially valuable when centralized infrastructure succumbs to environmental stresses.
Underground infrastructure is gaining importance as above-ground systems face increasing challenges. However, even buried infrastructure must contend with soil instability, groundwater fluctuations, and temperature extremes. Recent innovations in materials science, including self-healing cables and resilient components, offer potential solutions (Zhang et al. 2019).
Emergency Communication and Low-Tech Backups
As environmental disruptions become more frequent, robust emergency communication capabilities become critical. Software-defined radio systems provide flexible emergency communications with minimal infrastructure requirements. The Amateur Radio Emergency Service exemplifies the effectiveness of volunteer-based networks during emergencies (ARRL 2022). These systems have repeatedly proven their worth during natural disasters when conventional networks fail.
Most importantly, low-tech backup systems gain value as complex infrastructure faces disruption. Shortwave and packet radio networks offer crucial redundancy when other systems fail. Communities that establish low-tech alternatives demonstrate greater resilience during infrastructure breakdowns (Thompson et al. 2020). This redundancy principle extends to power systems, where distributed renewable energy sources and advanced storage systems support critical communication nodes (Brown et al. 2020).
The Importance of Governance
The challenge extends beyond physical infrastructure to the governance frameworks that guide system development and operation. The International Telecommunication Union has developed comprehensive guidelines for climate-resilient infrastructure (ITU 2023). However, implementing these guidelines faces significant obstacles due to resource constraints and competing priorities.
Real-World Example
The community of Cordova, Alaska, has implemented a microgrid powered by renewable energy sources, coupled with a satellite-based communication system. This has allowed them to maintain communication and power during severe storms that have crippled other coastal communities. This demonstrates the effectiveness of combining innovative technologies with local resources to build resilience.
The Role of Individuals
Beyond government and organizational efforts, individual citizens can play a crucial role. Learning basic first aid, participating in community emergency response teams, and even having a hand-crank radio can contribute to overall community resilience.
Next
Successful adaptation requires a multi-layered approach combining robust physical infrastructure, distributed networks, and strong governance frameworks. We must embrace both technological innovation and proven low-tech solutions while fostering community-based resilience. The stakes couldn’t be higher – our ability to maintain communication systems will determine how effectively we can coordinate responses to mounting environmental challenges.
Conclusion
As we navigate this critical transition, every community must assess its communication vulnerabilities and develop appropriate adaptation strategies. The future may be uncertain, but our response doesn’t have to be. Through thoughtful planning and implementation of resilient communication systems, we can maintain the connections vital for human survival and adaptation in an increasingly unstable world.
References:
ARRL. 2022. Amateur Radio Emergency Service manual. American Radio Relay League, Newington.
Bartos M, Chester M. 2015. Impacts of climate change on electric power supply in the Western United States. Nature Climate Change 5: 748-752.
Brown T, et al. 2020. Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 128: 109917.
ITU. 2023. Guidelines on climate-resilient network infrastructure. International Telecommunication Union, Geneva.
Rey-Moreno C, et al. 2017. A telemedicine WiFi network optimized for long distances in the Amazonian jungle of Peru. International Conference on Wireless Technologies for Humanitarian Relief.
Rogers G. 2024. Silent Earth: Adaptations for Life in a Devastated Biosphere. Coldwater Press, Prescott. 333 p.
Thompson A, et al. 2020. Emergency communications during natural disasters: The role of amateur radio in disaster response. Journal of Emergency Management 18: 523-532.
Zhang S, et al. 2019. Nanomaterial-enabled self-healing cables for extreme environments. Advanced Materials 31: 1903875.
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