#highstreet — Public Fediverse posts

Oxford Street is being pedestrianised in weeks – here’s everything you need to know | News UK

A 1km section of Britain’s busiest high street is being made vehicle-free from next month (Picture: Mayor of…
#London #Britain #UnitedKingdom #UK #GB #England #Headlines #News #Europe #EU #highstreet #SadiqKhan #TransportForLondon #WestEnd
https://www.europesays.com/gbr/london/21467/

Oxford Street is being pedestrianised in weeks – here’s everything you need to know | News UK

A 1km section of Britain’s busiest high street is being made vehicle-free from next month (Picture: Mayor of…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #London #HighStreet #News #sadiqkhan #TransportforLondon #UK #westend
https://www.europesays.com/britain/118698/

https://www.europesays.com/britain/118698/ Oxford Street is being pedestrianised in weeks – here’s everything you need to know | News UK #HighStreet #London #News #SadiqKhan #TransportForLondon #UK #WestEnd

Oxford Street is being pedestrianised in weeks – everything you need to know

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://metro.co.uk/2026/09/06/oxford-street-pedestrianised-weeks-everything-need-know-29533739/

Oxford Street is being pedestrianised in weeks – everything you need to know

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://metro.co.uk/2026/09/06/oxford-street-pedestrianised-weeks-everything-need-know-29533739/

Best preppy menswear for autumn – from rugby shirts, loafers and cable knits

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://metro.co.uk/2026/09/06/best-mens-autumn-wardrobe-essentials-inspired-ivy-league-style-29518457/

Best preppy menswear for autumn – from rugby shirts, loafers and cable knits

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://metro.co.uk/2026/09/06/best-mens-autumn-wardrobe-essentials-inspired-ivy-league-style-29518457/

Best preppy menswear for autumn – from rugby shirts, loafers and cable knits

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://metro.co.uk/2026/09/06/best-mens-autumn-wardrobe-essentials-inspired-ivy-league-style-29518457/

Best preppy menswear for autumn – from rugby shirts, loafers and cable knits

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://metro.co.uk/2026/09/06/best-mens-autumn-wardrobe-essentials-inspired-ivy-league-style-29518457/

Best preppy menswear for autumn – from rugby shirts, loafers and cable knits

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://metro.co.uk/2026/09/06/best-mens-autumn-wardrobe-essentials-inspired-ivy-league-style-29518457/

https://www.europesays.com/uk/1090497/ Scotland among worst affected by high street decline #AssociationOfConvenienceStores #Britain #BusinessRates #Crime #GreatBritain #HighStreet #IllicitTrade #Scotland #UK #UnitedKingdom

https://www.europesays.com/uk/752248/ Major supermarket group planning redundancies with as many as 1,000 jobs at risk | Personal Finance | Finance #AutomationTechnology #Business #CostCutting #employment #HighStreet #JobCuts #MoneySaving #Ocado #redundancies #Retail #Supermarkets #UK #UnitedKingdom

It Never Did: the thread about “why did Edinburgh become the home of Hogmanay?”

HOGMANAY, n.
[hɔgmə′ne:]

The 31st December, the last day of the year, New Year’s Eve.
Generic Scots, origin much disputed, the only satisfactory etymology is the derivation from northern French dialect hoginane etc. from 16th c. French aguillanneuf, a gift given at the New Year, a children’s cry for such a gift, the second element of which appears to be l’an neuf, the New Year. In Scotland the word is probably due to the French Alliance and had been borrowed before 1560

Dictionaries of the Scots Language

In a news article the other day, the BBC’s Edinburgh and East Reporter sought to answer the age old question of “Why did Edinburgh become the home of Hogmanay?” It’s not a bad little piece by any account, but doesn’t really get under the bonnet of how the city came to consider itself the “official” home of these festivities and it reminded me that this is something I have previously peered into without writing it up. So with just under nine hours to go until The Bells, let’s finish off the Threadinburgh year by

The “official” Edinburgh’s Hogmanay™ festivities are an ancient tradition dating back to the last century, to the year 1993 to be precise. This three-day event was dreamed up by Unique Events Ltd. and the quasi-autonomous agency Edinburgh Marketing to “[package] Edinburgh more effectively” and thus “improve the visitor experience” at this time of year. All the bones of the now established programme were there; a torchlight procession, a concert in Princes Street Gardens and a street party with “fireworks spectacular” on Princes Street.

Prior to this, the officially unofficial locus of Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh was on the High Street, outside the Tron Kirk. By the early 1990s, crowds of up to 20,000 were in regular attendance here but a particularly violent 1992, with 1,900 drink-related injuries treated at the Royal Infirmary and three separate sex attacks reported to the police, saw an official rethink.

In stepped the marketing and events types, buoyed by the success of the closing celebration of the city’s European Council Summit in 1992 which marked the end of the UK’s presidency and start of the Single Market. At the same time as trouble was kicking off outside the Tron, the Beacon Europe event was being started from Edinburgh Castle, the beginning of a chain of 700 beacons that stretched from John O’ Groats to Lands End with 300 more lit on the continent, the Greek Prime Minister lighting one at the chain’s far end in Athens to coincide with its start in Edinburgh.

The beacon was lit at the stroke of midnight after musician Fish led a free (but ticketed) sing-along in Princes Street Gardens, followed by a “children’s eco-anthem for Europe.” A laser fired from the Ross Bandstand then ignited a 30ft gas flame on the Castle’s Half Moon Battery.

Official support quickly materialised behind the Hogmanay™ idea, the District Council were particularly keen, being somewhat embarrassed by the traditional public displays of lasciviousness, drunkenness and urination outside the Tron – and therefore also their own doorstep at City Chambers. Their support extended to helping financed the scheme to the tune of £200,000, along with Lothian Regional Council, Edinburgh and Lothians Enterprise and the Scottish Tourist Board. This meant that most of the outdoor events could be made free to the public. Not everyone was happy though – the scheme was branded “three days of hell” by Conservative councillor Ian Hoy and in the Evening News, then Labour councillor George Kerevan labelled it as “Come to Edinburgh and get smashed“.

The council and events types were also keen to do something about the traditional Hogmanay being a local event for local people, a mass blow-out which resulted in a 2-day public holiday and hangover with most businesses and much hospitality closed down. Pete Irvine of Unique Events told the ‘News “it’s a myth that New Year is a ‘great time’… there is nothing for the many people who are on holiday“. The stated founding aim was not just the “biggest and best Hogmanay party” in Scotland – a title Glasgow traditional claimed – but in the World. There was of course an irony that in order to do this, the traditional Scottish long New Year public holiday had to be eroded.

With official support and substantial public and corporate funding, Hogmanay™ proved a huge success. But an infamous 1996 street party where an estimated 400,000 people crammed the city centre in appalling weather, resulting in crush injuries and hypothermia, saw restrictions brought in. Initially this was by means of free wrist-bands (four per person) but it soon pivoted to becoming an ever-pricier ticket only event. The organisers had an eye on the long game from the beginning and had told the ‘News they had booked the pipe bands for the Millennium street party before the first one had even taken place.

Another cornerstone of Hogmanay™ is Ye Olde Tochlicht Processione, also an invention of 1993. This was co-opted from a mix of long established Scottish rural traditions like the Comrie Flambeaux, Biggar Ne’erday Bonfire, Stonehaven Fireballs and the Masonic processions of the Borders which mark the Feast of St. John the Evangelist.

The event has continued to grow in its scale – and the volume of debate and criticism it generates – ever since and is a substantial industry in itself. The rest, as they say, is history, and the answer to the question “Why did Edinburgh become the home of Hogmanay” is of course because it deliberately set out do so and has spent a huge amount of public and private money in pursuit of that goal over the last three decades. The other answer to the same question is that the city is not the “home of Hogmanay” at all, and has no authority to claim itself as so. Hogmanay is an ungovernable, spontaneous celebration that is owned by nobody and belongs to all of Scotland. Edinburgh just happens to have commercialised the idea, declared itself as brand owner, and in the process totally lost the whole point of it.

And on that slightly snarky note I shall thank you for reading this far, for sticking with Threadinburgh and that you have a very Happy New Year when it comes and a 2026 full of local history. If you’re still in need of a further fix of appropriate reading material for the time of year, I can suggest this culinary thread about the history of the New Year Day steak pie.

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

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

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These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

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.

Cobblestone streets lined with stone and timber-fronted buildings create a charming historic atmosphere in the heart of Conwy. Local shops, including St David’s Hospice, face a gentle incline where cars are parked along the narrow lane, reflecting the character of a #TownCenter in a #CoastalTown. Visitors stroll past independent stores and charity shops, soaking in the #HistoricStreets that lead toward Conwy’s medieval walls and nearby castle. The bright sky and relaxed pace make it a perfect spot for #StreetPhotography and #TravelPhotography.

Taken Jul 2025

#ShotOniPhone #UKCountryPic #Photography #MastoGPT #TownCenter #HistoricStreets #CoastalTown #StreetPhotography #TravelPhotography #HighStreet #Conwy #Wales #UnitedKingdom

Atmospherically misleading: the thread about Louis H. Grimshaw’s paintings of Edinburgh

This thread was originally written and published in July 2023.

Today’s (July 9th 2023) Auction House Artefact was this evocative and eerie late-evening painting of the High Street in Edinburgh, looking towards St. Giles after the rain. Painted by Louis H. Grimshaw in 1895, in the “moonlit cityscape” style he inherited from his father, John Atkinson Grimshaw.

The young Louis Grimshaw started working as an artist as an assistant to his father, helping with the details such as the people on moody and atmospheric late night scenes such as this one, “Glasgow, Saturday Night“, showing the hustle and bustle of the Broomielaw on the Clyde. The Grimshaws talent was one of capturing the ethereal glow of a sunset or moonlight as it reflected through clouds upon a wet cityscape and contrasting that with the bright, artificial lights of modernity. They also chose to deliberately avoid the dirt, grime and squalor of Victorian town life in their paintings, creating evocative but fundamentally sanitised scenes.

Father and son worked together until the former’s death in 1893. At this juncture, Louis continued the style and subject matter himself. In his painting of St. Giles, we see the historic and frequently decrepit Old Town portrayed as a modern and prosperous city, with glowing shop lights, busy shoppers, clean streets, neat rows of gas lamps a horse tram picking up passengers. (This was the brief 12 year period when the Old Town had a tram route up the High Street, which was lost the year after this scene was painted when the horse trams moved over to cable traction and the route was shifted down the Mound instead)

Despite his talents, Louis Grimshaw packed in the unpredictable and insecure life as painter in 1905, swapping it for the steady pay and regular work of a cartographer, for The Guardian, in 1905. As such he left a limited body of work and it commands high prices – £70-100k for the St. Giles painting when it last sold in 2008. He mainly depicted London but seems to have painted 3 Edinburgh scenes in 1895. Below we have the classic view up the High Street from “John Knox’s” House looking towards the Tron Kirk and St. Giles, the moon glowing somewhere above Auld Reekie’s smoggy cloak.

A small troop of Highlanders are marching downhill from the Castle to Holyrood. The gaslamps are lit, the shop windows are bright and on the right is the welcoming lamp and incongruous (for the Old Town) classical columns of Carrubers Close Mission.

Grimshaw’s scene matches *very* closely a photograph from the 1890s by John Patrick one can’t but wonder if it was the inspiration. The photo also shows the reality of the High Street compared to Grimshaw’s stylised, gentrified painting. Mixed in with the bustle and prosperity are the shoeless, malnourished children and obvious signs of the decaying, overcrowded accommodation of the Old Town that made life here so tenuous for so many children

In fact, it’s such a close match, I think that Grimshaw’s scene can only have been a tracing of Patrick’s photograph. See for yourself below:

Grimshaw’s last Edinburgh scene (that I can find) shows Holyroodhouse from the foot of the Canongate. Again the moon behind the cloud and smog casts an eerie glow over the damp road. Again the lights are bright and streets are clean. Again this is very sanitised scene compared to the reality of life in the Canongate at that time.

The reality was that in the 1890s, the Canongate – at one time long ago the suburban retreat of the City’s wealthy classes – was a crumbling, overcrowded and insanitary neighbourhood, where disease, malnourishment and poverty were endemic and child mortality was high.

Don’t get me wrong, I love these paintings and the artist’s skill in conjouring up the atmosphere. But they are a set-dressed fantasy, this thread on the diet of the working class of the Canongate in 1901 gives a window on what life was really like here for many. My Mum’s family lived this reality, at this time- flitting between the slums of the Canongate, High Street, St. Leonards and Stockbridge, constantly on the move; looking for something better or leaving behind something worse. They were Irish immigrant labourers, at the very bottom of the pile, and that reality was of their eleven children, eight predeceased their mother and four never made their 1st birthday. Of the children that survived to adulthood, five died as young adults from TB: even in the better times of the 1930s and 40s, the legacy of a childhood in the slums caught up with them.

Sorry. Ranty reality check over – please don’t get me wrong, these are very nice and evocative paintings. Stick a couple of dancers and a butler in them and they’d be quite like a Jack Vettriano scene. Do enjoy them; but they absolutely need a word of caution about how artificial the world is that they present us with.

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:

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.