#nonstandardhousing — Public Fediverse posts

“Absolutely Scandalous”: the thread about Wardie Playing Fields and the Lochinvar Camp

They aren’t in use any more, but on Granton and Netherby Roads in the north of Edinburgh there are impressive ornamental gates that lead to Wardie Playing Fields, where generations of local school children have loved or loathed playing cold and muddy games of football or rugby; have triumphed at their sports day or endured the dreaded “cross country” runs. The fields themselves are still in use, but there’s rather more their story than just 14 acres of windswept turf.

The former gates to Wardie Playing Fields on Granton Road on a cold and windy day. It always seems to be cold and windy in the middle of the fields… Photo © Self

The story of these fields begins when nineteen and a half acres of feuing ground of the old Wardie estate were purchased in late 1920 by the Leith Education Authority for use as a recreation ground for its schools. Few if any of Leith’s urban schools had any playing or sports facilities of their own beyond confined, hard playgrounds and one of the last independent acts of this Authority was to purchase this ground, and that at Bangholm, for school use.

Bartholomew Post Office directory map of Edinburgh, 1888, showing the Wardie Feuing Grounds. The Playing fields occupy the space east of Granton Road and west of Trinity Nursery. Wardie House is at the north end of the map. Notice the dotted lines of streets that would never be built. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Within a year, the shotgun wedding that amalgamated Edinburgh with Leith saw the fields pass to the former Education Authority, which had a lucrative sideline in leasing it out as sheep grazing well into the 1940s. Edinburgh had also purchased at this time the rest of the undeveloped Wardie feuing grounds west of Granton Road for a public housing scheme (but that’s another story).

The Scotsman – Saturday 12 April 1924. Advertisement for the letting of grazing rights to certain playing fields of the Edinburgh Education Authority, including 8¼ acres at Wardie

As it so often was, the city Corporation was slow to catch up with the population growth of its own housing schemes and the little old village school at Granton was soon at bursting point. But it was not until 10 years later, in September 1931, that a new “sunshine school” – constructed on open-air principles –was opened at Wardie for the district, taking up the southern portion of the playing fields in the process.

Our story so far has been an unremarkable one but all that was to change in 1943. That year the “stone frigate” (the Navy’s nickname for a shore base) of HMS Lochinvar – the Royal Navy’s principle school of minesweeping – found itself evicted from its base at Port Edgar along the coast and displaced to Granton Docks instead where there was already a shore training facility called HMS Claverhouse. Lochinvar had to move to make way for the pressing task of combined operations training in the run up to D-day, but it too had a vital role to play in that campaign; it trained the thousands of men to man the little ships that would keep the approach lanes and assault beaches free from sea mines.

Commissioning two Danish motor minesweepers at HMS Lochinvar, Granton, on March 12st 1944. These were the first all-Danish ships fighting with the Allies in the war. Count Eduard Reventlow, Free Danish minister in London, makes the address. On the left is Commander H. F. Hackett RN, Commander of Minesweepers. IWM A 22099

There was plenty space in Granton Docks for the vessels of Lochinvar, but precious little for surface buildings. And that’s where the playing fields came in – an expanse of undeveloped ground just up the hill from the busy harbour and large wartime camp of Nissen Huts was quickly erected, providing everything from accommodation, catering and recreation facilities for personnel to offices, stores and workshops.

Nissen hut at HMS Lochinvar on Wardie Playing Fields. The sailor gives scale to the 15ft long “Oropesa float”, the device towed behind a minesweeper to support the sweeping gear under the water. IWM
A 30283

New minesweepers came up to Granton where they were allocated to a crew of largely green recruits who were then given an intensive but short period of training in the dangerous art of clearing the sea of mines and then after a few weeks they were then packed off to war. But Lochinvar wasn’t just a man’s world, there was a significant contingent of Wrens (WRNS – the Women’s Royal Naval Service) whose job it was to run the place and make sure everything from sweeps to guns were maintained in good order and would work first time, every time. In the below photo we see two Wrens in overalls – Beryl Lyster from Largs (left) and May Groosjohan of Glasow (right) – showing HRH Duchess of Kent – the WRNS Commandant of the inner workings of the Lewis and Browning Guns and Oerlikon Cannons that they are stripping and servicing for the minesweepers at Wardie. A rather pompous looking male officer looks on.

The Duchess of Kent watching gun repairs at HMS Lochinvar. IWM (A 26072)

Lochinvar‘s spell at Wardie was relatively short and less than two years after it opened, at the end of the war, the complex found itself surplus to military requirements. The city’s Education Committee was raring to get the ground back, remove the huts and return the fields to school sports once more: but there was an outcry. You see it’s often forgotten that there was a critical housing crisis at the end of the war. There had been six long years of no new building and few repairs to existing stock, there was a flood of men (and women!) being demobbed and returning home and six years of pent up demand to settle down and start families. Edinburgh was no exception. Anything that could be lived in was being lived in, including properties condemned as slums pre-war. The city faced a homelessness and a squatting crisis and many families simply had nowhere to go. The Housing Committee turned its gaze to the surplus military camps to try and ease this immediate pressure. Its chairman, Councillor J. J. Robertson, said “there was no more pressing claim than the needs of the people for housing” under the headline “School Football or Housing?” in the Evening News on 18th Setpember 1945, just a month after the war’s end.

Wrens parade at Lochinvar, Wardie, during the visit of the force’s commandant HRH Duchess of Kent. 21st October 1944. IWM A 26073

On 29th August 1946, fourteen homeless families in Edinburgh took matters into their own hands and made a night time “seizure” of the recently vacated Anti Aircraft Gunners’ camp at Craigentinny, which they took possession of as squatters. The group formalised themselves as the “Edinburgh Houseless Association” and began to take applications from other homeless families to join them. While the police investigated alleged vandalism due to stripping some huts of their interiors to improve those that were to be lived in, the residents got on with trying to better their lot and applied to the authorities to have the water and electricity supplies turned back on.

Families at Craigentinny read all about themselves in the Evening News, 30th August 1946.

In November, the Corporation relented and the Housing Committee authorised the spending of £4,500 to put the camp in order and take over its administration – crucially, charging rents. They soon widened this action and a Prisoner of War and gunners’ camp at Craigentinny, the Cavalry Park camp in Duddingston and the Nissen Huts of HMS Lochinvar at Wardie were all taken over as housing labelled as both “emergency” and “temporary“. This was despite all of these sites all being totally inappropriate for family living – but there was nothing better and the post-war New Jerusalem would have to wait in the meantime.

Children playing amongst the bins at the former Sighthill PoW camp in 1954. Picture credit “Muriel from St Nicholas Church and Bill Lamb” via Edinburgh Collected

Families at the optimistic renamed Lochinvar Camp at Wardie paid 12s a week for half a corrugated iron Nissen Hut, but life here was no holiday camp. Each hut had a thin internal partition dividing it up into two houses, with further thin partitions for bedrooms; this gave people only the idea of privacy. A small coal stove was provided to try and keep the place warm, but with no insulation the thin metal walls were always cold and ran constantly with condensation. You can see some photos of hut interiors here at the Edinphoto website of the late Peter Stubbs. Electricity was provided but only enough for basic lighting, residents found their wireless sets or any other electrical appliances being impounded by the Corporation’s electricians. Toilets and washing facilities were shared between six to nine families. Vermin were a constant problem and they, and the damp, ruined people’s furniture, clothing and posessions.

Elizabeth Kennedy with her big brother John and little brother Jimmy, standing outside the family’s Nissen Hut at Lochinvar camp. Photo credit Elizabeth McArdle via Edinburgh Collected.

There was a wash house, but there were only three sinks per 50 families and no stoppers for the sinks. Cooking and cleaning facilities were communal too and centralised; mothers may have to walk hundreds of metres to and from them multiple times a day to feed their families. This would cause a heartbreaking tragedy barely a few months after opening. On October 21st 1946, Mrs Watson made one of her many daily trips to the kitchens and left 18 month old Ann and 3 year old John playing in the hut. This was not unusual and was a simple practicality of life. She was drying clothes on an airing horse by the stove which was somehow knocked over by the children and quickly caught fire. Almost everything within the hut was flammable, it had only a single door, the windows set too high for the children to reach and there was no running water. They were quickly trapped by the flames and there was nothing their mother or the neighbours could do. First the Police and then the Fire Brigade arrived, but all were beaten back by the red hot metal.

The Scotsman – Tuesday 22 October 1946 – headline

There was an outcry in the papers; the letter writers pointed the blame at the mother, the authorities, the fire brigade. The tragedy further stigmatised residents who already felt looked down upon by many. One hut dweller, Mrs Thompson, wrote in her defence to the Evening News on October 28th about the reality of life in the camp;

I am the mother of two young children and I have to go about 100 yards to cook, wash up, and clean in a communal kitchen. When I went to Castle Terrace and told them I was unable to do this, I was told the alternative was to find other accommodation.

The authorities were compelled to act and fire guards were provided for the stoves until gas and water could be laid to the huts to allow cooking and domestic tasks to be done in the home with children under supervision. The city Corporation formed a “special sub-committee to deal with the prevention of accidents in the home” and in recognition of the unsuitability of these sites for housing it cancelled plans to takeover similar camps at Muirhouse and Alnwickhill.

Ordnance Survey map of Lochinvar Camp showing the arrangements in the playing fields. 1949 survey published in 1950. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

But although Edinburgh was one of the most enthusiastic local authorities when it came to building postwar prefab housing, it couldn’t keep up with demand for housing and the camp found itself in demand with a long waiting list. In July 1949 it was estimated that the temporary camps could be filled four times over, and one family had even taken up residence in the corridors of the city’s Social Services offices in Castle Terrace in protest. Many residents found themselves stuck in the “temporary” camps for far longer than they thought they would be – three years or more instead of six to nine months – and began to organise themselves. A Lochinvar tenants association had been set up in 1947, making an appeal in the classifieds for the donation of a typewriter to help with their secretarial burden. The Corporation set up nurseries to help watch the children while their mothers were busy or out working and social workers were sent in. Mrs Bell, one of the residents, organised sewing classes and Christmas parties for the 36 girls who called the camp home. But others had a more individualistic streak and prouder spirit and had a different response, a resident calling herself “Indignant Mother” wrote to the Evening News, outraged at the insult of being offered “public charity“.

Inside a Nissen Hut nursery at the Sighthill Camp. Note the stove in the background behind its protective screen. Photo credit Walter Allan (who is one of the children featured), via Edinburgh Collected.

Tensions were further stoked in the camp in 1948 when a group of German workers were installed in some huts. They were young women from the Allied Zones who had found themselves separated from families trapped in the Soviet Zone and had been brought to Edinburgh to work in mills at Musselburgh to help address a labour shortage. There were soon accusations that the Germans had gotten better huts with better heating; but this was not the case. They slept 10 or 12 to a room in dormitories and lived a regimented life of work, rations and few personal possessions. But despite the resentment, some reached out to the incomers; they found their new neighbours to be young and frightened, alone in a strange and foreign land where few spoke their language. There had little in the way of home comforts and many had no idea what had become of their parents in the Soviet Zone.

But one thing that all could agreed upon was that the camp was no fit place for housing. It was “a disgrace to the city of Edinburgh. The decent, hard-working people who have to live here surely deserve a better lot” wrote one resident to the papers in 1947. Another, calling themselves Grantonian said the site should be given instead to the newly formed National Coal Board for use as offices. In October 1949 there was a further fire at Lochinvar that left five families, eighteen people in all, homeless when a gas grill in a hut set fire to the wooden partitions. Fortunately on this occasion nobody was injured. The Evening News described the camp as “shanty town squalor” for 150 families and that conditions there were “not British“. By the 1951 the huts were well past their expected lifespans but the housing demand was such that even though the Education Committee wanted its playing fields back, it was told “no” and the camp was to remain as housing.

Edinburgh Evening News – Monday 10th December 1951

This was in spite of the fact the Corporation could barely keep up with the basic maintenance, never mind make improvements. In the preceding year the Lochinvar camp had an average of 176 families resident and was costing the city £4,997 for gas, £68 for coke fuel and £824 for electricity. In two years the city had run up a £19,289 deficit for fuel costs alone across its emergency camps. This was before they outlay of £55 per household (at Lochinvar) for maintenance, almost twice what each was paying in rent. Residents claimed the authorities were trying to force larger families living in huts laid out inside as one large apartment into the same sized space divided into more apartments, for which they would have to pay higher rents. Sickness rates amongst children were high and dysentery was becoming common. Vandalism was endemic and there were worrying cases of child neglect reported. Residents said that they had stopped giving out their address as being in the camps when applying for jobs as it usually saw them turned down and a case brought before the Burgh Police Court as a result of a fist-fight heard that it was brought on by the overcrowded conditions in the camp; it was “the kind of place that would make you fight with your own shadow” according to the witness.

Enough was enough. The secretary of the camp’s residents association said conditions were “absolutely scandalous” and protests were organised in conjunction with residents of the other camps and an organisation called Housing Crusade. Placards were carried with messages such as “We Want Houses, Not Promises“, “A Camp Is Not a House“, “Homes Before Festivals” and “Edinburgh – Build Your Allocation“. Residents at Duddingston Camp reported the police removed posters they had put up on perimeter fencing as a tourist bus route went past it.

Evening News photo, 17th August 1951, camp residents (probably at Duddingston) stand in front of a Nissen Hut holding a hand-lettered protest poster

At last it seemed that the city was listening and in December 1951 laid out a plan to deal with the problem of the camps. It would close down Craigentinny as soon as possible, huts in the worst repair in the other camps would be closed too and to deal with the fuel costs the huts would be fitted with coin-operated gas and electricity meters. But such was the drawn-out nature of the UK’s post-war economic malaise, in 1954 the camps at Duddingston, Sighthill and Lochinvar were still being used even though in theory each hut would be closed down when its residents left for permanent housing. It was agreed in March that year that Sighthill and Duddingston camps would be exited expeditiously by preferential allocation of new houses to tenants. But the long suffering residents at Wardie found they were overlooked, even though the place was ever more decrepit the city judged their camp to be in the best condition of the three and so they would have to stay put. Indeed, some huts that should have been permanently closed down were even brought back into use, even though it was normal practice for the resident children to commandeer the empty properties as gang huts and thoroughly trash the interiors. A similar fate befell the Wardie sports pavilion, leaving one local councillor to go on the record that it wanted a “good fire” to help improve it.

It was not until December 1955 that it was announced that they would get permanent homes and even then it took a further year for the last 71 families at Lochinvar to be moved from their “temporary” accommodation; a full ten years after it was taken over for “emergency” use. Within a year the hut bases were ploughed up and the Corporation’s groundskeepers were finally allowed back in to returf the pitches. There is nothing to be seen on the ground these days of what was – for over a decade – hundreds of houses with thousands of families passing through them.

1957 aerial photo of Wardie Playing Fields, showing Wardie School top right. The playing fields are covered in concrete foundations from the Lochinvar Camp, which stood in stark contrast to the pleasant middle class villas and bungalows that surrounded it. BritainfromAbove SAR029103

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Corolite: the thread about a Lochend experiment in Dutch construction

Another day. Following on from the thread about the Riversdale Demonstration Houses, here’s another bunch of inconspicuous-looking municipal houses in Edinburgh which once again pose the question of “well, what makes these so special then?”. This post will endeavour to answer that.

Houses at Restalrig Square in Lochend

This is just one little corner of the large Lochend housing scheme, which was developed in the mid-1920s as a big showpiece by the Edinburgh Corporation. The Corporation purchased the 170 acre Lochend estate from Morton Gray Stuart, 17th Earl of Moray, in 1923 for £37,500 (£2.9M today). Central government subsidies in place at the time encouraged the use of “non traditional construction” techniques, to try and deal with post-war shortages of skilled trades labour and an economic downturn that put many men employed on labouring out of work. Edinburgh Corporation was quick to embrace both the money and the new techniques required to access it.

The first houses that went up at Lochend were of the Airey Duo-Slab type, a mix of pre-cast concrete slabs (which apparently made use of waste rubble from the construction of Portobello Power Station) and poured concrete.

Airey Duo-Slab cottage flat house at Lochend.

At a ceremony officiated over by Lord Provost Sleigh, Labour MP for South Ayrshire and Lord High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland, James Brown MP, laid a foundation stone at a Duo-Slab house on May 27th 1924 (although construction had actually started in January).

Lord Provost Sleigh (balding, with moustache and chains of office) and James Brown MP (balding, with moustache and no chains of office) at the Lochend stone-laying ceremony in 1924

Edinburgh Corporation ended up being very pleased with these houses and they would go on to become the prevalent type at Lochend, with something like 1,000 built (I haven’t counted them all!) There are Duo-Slab cottage flats at Restalrig Square, but those aren’t what this thread is about, there’s something else too. So if these other houses aren’t Duo-slabs then what are they? Well, one of them is a slight give-away as it’s different from the rest; strikingly so. This house is strikingly modern, with a flat roof, overhanging eaves, no ornamentation and chimney flues running up the façade.

The unique and incongruously modernist flat-roofed Corolite house at Restalrig Square

This house is very conspicuous – Edinburgh’s City Architects were rarely radical when it came to style and even the thoroughly modern (in construction terms) Duo-slab houses were conservatively traditional in style; they had a mock-classical porch (pre-cast concrete of course), 4-over-2 sash windows, tiled hipped roofs and traditional placement of the chimneys. No, what we are looking at here is a different, radical new construction technique, one imported from the continent. This is a Corolite House and is basically a copy of the Dutch Korrelbeton houses of the early 1920s.

The flat-roofed Corolite House, an alternative angle

Korrelbeton translates from Dutch as – approximately – “granular concrete”. It was a “no-fines” technique (i.e. no fine sand or ash to fill in the gaps between the aggregate) but instead of gravel as an aggregate it used crushed waste brick, clinker or slag. This made it lightweight – it was 25-50% air pockets. It was also cheap, as it was mixed in the very lean ration of 1 part Portland Cement to 9 parts aggregate (which was recycled waste materials). The end result was both well insulated and breathable, so it didn’t suffer from two of poured concrete’s biggest drawbacks when it came to house building.

The Dutch developed Korrelbeton around 1919 and had been using it for 5 years when a visit was made by the British Housing Commission. Suitably impressed and interested, a British company was set up – the Corolite Construction Co. – in London to import this technique for housebuilding. Edinburgh’s City Architect, Adam Horsburgh Campbell, took a particular interest in what was going on in the continent regards housing and was either part of that delegation, or made a follow up visit of his own. In Jan. 1925, the Corporation accepted an offer from the Corolite Co. to built 52 experimental houses at Lochend to demonstrate the technique.

Early Dutch Korrelbeton houses, c. 1925, note the overhanging eaves and flat roofs.

Thirteen blocks of 4-house cottage flats (mid-density, 4-in-a-block houses, with 2 flats upstairs and 2 downstairs, all with their own external entrance doors) were to be built. Six were of the “Dutch” style, with poured Corolite flat roofs, at £420 per house. Seven were of a more traditional style with a pitched, tiled roof, costing £440 each. These houses were eligible for £9/house rent subsidy, so saved the Corporation money.

The Lochend Corolite Houses at Restalrig Square

The flat-roof type have overhanging eaves and the distinctive external chimney flues running up the facade. All except one of the 6 were re-roofed and reclad during the 1990s or 2000s, when rather odd-looking porticos were added. I’m not sure how one survived in its original form.

The flat roofed Corolite House next to a modernised house of the same type (right)

The other seven blocks were built with pitched roofs that had a reduced overhang and did not have the external flues or the central 3 windows recessed. They also got those same porticos during modernisation, so are visually quite similar – but not identical to – the refurbished flat roof houses.

Pitched roof Corolite House, also modernised

These were amongst the first Corolite houses completed in Britain (they may be the first completed scheme) and were certainly the first in Scotland. On a visit to Scotland in June 1926, Prime Minister Baldwin said he thought them “quite agreeable to the eye“, “quite reasonable” and “wished [we] had more of them“. Baldwin’s government had announced a £40 per-house (about 10% construction costs) subsidy for the use of Non-Traditional construction, for the first 4,000 such houses built by local authorities in Scotland. While many authorities resisted this temptation as they did not like the terms, or care for non-traditional construction, others such as Edinburgh raced to try and build such council housing under subsidy.

In December 1925, the Edinburgh Town Council’s Housing and Town Planning Committee made a recommendation to the council that 500 further Corolite houses should be built at Lochend to capitalise on the subsidy. The Council however voted to turn down the recommendation by 35 votes to 20, after deputations from the building trade associations made representations. The £40 subsidy meant that only 10% of labour employed could be from skilled trades and the trades said it had been almost impossible to erect the Corolite houses with this workforce and keep to timescales. They also said that official figures for the number of men in the building trade that were out of work were wrong; they contended that they had better information as men out of work from one job to the next would sign on with their Union when in need of work, rather than with the Labour Exchange. Rather than being fully employed, the trades said that many men were unemployed; Edinburgh bricklayers were off working in England on public housing schemes due to the lack of work for them at home. Councillors asked about the shortage of plasterers; the plasterers’ trade representative pointed the finger at the building contractors. The trades said that building to more traditional construction practices would employ more men in the short term and the investment and would pay for itself in the long run by providing a better quality of house.

Dundee’s Housing Committee had also been unimpressed with the progress of Corolite houses, and had made that known in the papers. The Corolite Construciton Company were aggrieved at this and made their defence known in the papers too. L. J. Pond, their general manager in Edinburgh, defended the use of wallpaper on bare concrete (rather than plaster) as being the result of the 10% skilled labour cap and having to use an unskilled wall finish. He said that it was a “sanitary, durable and pleasing finish” and should not reflect on the house itself. Corolite also said that they could build good houses faster, and cheaper, and that if Edinburgh didn’t take them up on it then someone else would get the £40 per house subsidy instead and unemployed general labourers lost the chance of steady work.

In the end, neither Lochend nor Edinburgh (nor I believe, anywhere in Scotland) got any more Corolite houses. Airey won the contract to build lots more of their Duo-slabs at Lochend and the Second Scottish National Housing Company would build 350 steel houses for Edinburgh on Corporation land, before a return to more traditional construction for later phases. The Corolite Construction Company tried to flog their system to various other local authorities – Willesden Council in London built some at Brentfield and Manchester Corporation built a number that may total a few hundred – but overall they seem to have never found favour. The company moved on to other things and were last heard of in “Metroland”, advertising an estate of traditionally-built bungalows outside Berkhamstead in 1938.

A 1938-built Corolite Construction Company house at Berkhamstead.

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.

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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

A street with a ridiculous name: the thread about the Riversdale demonstration housing

Riversdale Road is, on the face of it, another sleepy little inter-war suburban Edinburgh street, of neat little bungalows and well-trimmed hedges. You can see streets like these all over Edinburgh. I’ve cycled down it hundreds of times, probably over a thousand, and never paid it much attention. If I had, I might have found out that this is no ordinary street.

Riversdale Road, Roseburn

You may recall the other week I wrote about the “Sighthill Demonstration Site”, the post-war living laboratory for municipal housing experiments in Scotland. Well, nobody was more surprised than me to find out that Riversdale Road is its inter-war equivalent!

Edinburgh Corporation had acquired the Saughton Hall Estate in 1905, to provide a new public park and land for suburban expansion. Riversdale Road, at the eastern end of the estate where the Water of Leith approaches Roseburn was so-named at a meeting of the Streets and Buildings Committee in 1913, to some consternation from one member who felt it sounded too English:

Judge Macfarlane took exception to the name as ridiculous for a Scottish town. It seemed to him to come from Putney. (Laughter.) A title in keeping with the City of Edinburgh should be found. (A Member: “Macfarlane Avenue!” and laughter.) Mr Fraser defended the name on the ground that the road ran alongside that beautiful river the Water of Leith – (Laughter) – and along a dell.

Edinburgh Evening News, 28th October 1913

Nothing further progressed along this road at that time due to the onset of World War I, however afterwards it was earmarked for Council Housing under the “Addison Act” (The Housing, Town Planning etc. Act) of 1919. Again this came to nothing as the scale of that act was drastically cut back and only around two out of every five homes planned were built. The Housing Act of 1924 once again made public money available to councils to construct houses and things finally began to move. Some of Riversdale Road would be built with the sorts of private-built bungalows for the burgeoning middle class that came to dominate much of suburban Edinburgh at this time, but the Corporation used some of the 1924 funding to create a “demonstration scheme” here to experiment with the latest non-standard construction techniques. And most of these houses are still there!

This scheme attracted a variety of novel construction methods and materials – what we would call “non-standard construction”. The government was willing to pay a futher £40 subsidy (about 10% of the cost of building a house) on top of other finance for approved houses built using “non standard” methods, so there was financial incentive to explore these options. This meant that none of the houses at Riversdale were (entirely) built from the traditional materials of brick, stone, wood, slate and tile. The scheme also spilled into adjacent streets in the next few years, with further examples of the most popular or successful houses being built. The others remained as one-or-two-off curios.

I have identified 8 definite types of houses at the Riversdale Demonstration Scheme, with references in passing to 3 or 4 more types, which were either never built or have been subsequently demolished (as is frequently the case of non-standard construction, it is not mortgageable, so will often be demolished and rebuilt, that house can then be re-mortgaged). The below map is in no particular order.

Riversdale Demonstration Scheme, base plan © City of Edinburgh Council

1. Reith Steel Houses. Leith shipbuilders John Cran & Somerville were a traditional heavy industry looking to diversify in the post-WW1 economic downturn. They erected four Reith Steel Houses here in early 1926, which were all-steel houses walled and roofed from the same sort of steel sheet as used in shipbuilding. They were to the design of Robert Buchanan Reith, who took his inspiration from ships deckhouses. Reith claimed his was the first all-steel house design in the country (it predates the Lochend Steel Houses by a few months) and it was first demonstrated at The Edinburgh Housing and Building Exhibition in February that year, when Cran & Somerville exhibited a quarter of a house, open to the sides to be seen by the public. That same year the Clyde shipbuilders, Alexander Stephen & Sons of Govan, also demonstrated a model of it at The Building Exhibition. The designer’s brother – John Charles Walsham Reith – is probably familiar to you as Lord Reith, the “father” of the BBC and. put in a good word for his brother, declaring these houses were “the finest… for wireless reception [I have] come across“.

The Reith Steel Houses in early 2022. This house – with the window above the door – has been demolished.

Two pairs of semi-detached houses were built at Riversdale, one of which remained until last year (2022), when half of it was demolished to be replaced by a new-build (the demolished houses are hatched out on the map). A contemporary journalist described them: “there is the most perfectly equipped kitchenette I have yet seen and it is that house which goes one better in the matter of hot water, with an ingenious portable boiler which heats the water for the bath in summer“. This new market was not enough to save Cran & Somerville however and they went out of business the next year. Fifty Reith houses were apparently built by Stephens at Harthill the following year at a cost of £425 per house.

I am obliged to the present householder of the remaining Reith Steel House for taking the time to have an enthusiastic chat about her unique property and the time to show us a very heavy section of 3/16″ shipyard steel that was cut from the house during renovations. She informed us that the house is hot-riveted together in typical shipyard manner and that these can be seen inside the garage.

3/16″ steel plate cut from the Reith Steel House during renovations © Self

2. Glasgow Steel Roofing Co. Duracrete Houses. These houses look really like your standard, inter-war, suburban, Edinburgh bungalows. You would never tell that all is not quite what it seems with them.

Duracrete Houses at Riversdale

But if you were to look really closely, and I mean really closely at one house and its neighbour, you will realise that the “masonry” texture on each house is exactly the same. Because it isn’t masonry at all, it’s pre-cast panels of a material called “Duracrete”, hung off of a steel frame. These houses were built by the Glasgow Steel Roofing Co. and cost £425 each.

Matching panels on two different Duracrete houses.

3. Allied Builders Montrose Bungalows. These handsome bungalows were built by Allied Builders Ltd. of Montrose, and named after that town. Allied were a subsidiary of the Coaster Construction Company shipyard in Montrose, who had been formed by W. D. Mclaren and his business partner in 1919 to build ships to Mclaren’s designs that incorporated prefabrication and simple, standardised lines and components. The company found itself in the same post-war slump as the rest of the shipbuilding industry, which was suffering from significant overcapacity, and like Cran & Somerville and Alex Stephens, they diversified.

Montrose Bungalow at Riversdale.

The regular panel lines, distinctive channel markings and curious rounded corners arouse curiosity that these aren’t particularly traditional despite appearances. Mclaren applied his interest in standardised components and prefabrication to housebuilding, and came up with an interlocking, pre-cast cement block that was pinned together with steel rods. This block system was relatively flexible and meant for easy reconfiguration to build different sizes of houses and rooms, and detached or semi-detached bungalows. They were lined on the inside with fibreboard – there being a shortage of skilled plasterers at the time, with the joins in the board covered in fillets of wood to give a traditional, panelled interior appearance like wainscotting.

Allied Builders’ cement blocks as used in the Montrose BungalowsAllied Builders’ cement blocks used to form a wall, note the steel rod around the top, used in the Montrose Bungalows

As a publicity stunt, Allied built the prototype house in a then record 6 days outside the shipyard and invited the public to inspect it. The house is still there (along with another up the road to a different layout). Allied offered to build these at a rate of one per week for developments larger than 5 houses, after an initial few months of groundworks. Small developments of these houses were built by councils in Forfar and in Melrose. A big public order for Bongate in Jedburgh was cancelled when it was found that traditional methods were cheaper and resulted in larger house; this is the curse of employing a “building system” on a small scale, as it negates the economies when compared to traditional techniques.

The prototype Montrose Bungalow, outside the Coaster Construction Company shipyard, now (left) and then (right)

Once again, the diversification into housing couldn’t keep the shipyard afloat and it too closed in 1927. McLaren emigrated to the west coast of Canada and was successful in the shipbuilding industry there, his prefabrication techniques and standardised designs finding favour with construction of barges and lighters. He and his son took the Allied Builders name and even logo and used it for a shipyard they later set up in Vancouver, and it’s still going as Allied Shipbuilders Ltd.

4. Cowieson Brieze Block Houses. A pair of these houses were built by F. D. Cowieson & Co., of St. Rollox, Glasgow. Cowiesons are better known as builders of bus and tramcar bodies, but had 20 years of experience building prefabricated steel agricultural buildings like barns and silos, and they also provided anything from huts to pavilions to cinemas. These houses were built of “Brieze” blocks (Breeze is the modern spelling), dense concrete blocks which used colliery waste as the aggregate component.

Cowieson Houses at Riversdale

These two houses, in a semi-detached, two-storey block, were built on a wooden frame and used “Celotex” internal partitions, which was a brand new material made from the waste fibres of sugar-cane processing. This product was being pushed in Scotland by William Beardmore & Co., another heavy industrial concern desperately casting around for new markets – and another that was imminently about to go under. Its manufacturers stated that “IT IS ENDURING, SCIENTIFICALLY STERILISED, VERMIN-PROOFED AND WATER PROOFED”. The houses were harled on the outside and had brick chimneys. Cowiesons also offered a house with a timber frame and steel cladding, the Second Scottish National Housing Company (Housing Trust) would build 500 houses of this type, with around 50 being provided at Lochend in Edinburgh.

5. Rae Concrete Houses. A large number of these houses were built at Riversdale, and a 40-house estate of them later followed up around Baird Grove. These rather plain in appearance little bungalows were built to a system and method devised by Thomas L. Rae, who for 20 years had been the superintendent of the Clydebank and District Water Trust. In that capacity, he had gained huge practical and scientific experience with working concrete and had become familiar with the intricacies of how you made it waterproof (and on the flipside, breathable). He persuaded the water trust to build two prototypes, as workers houses, at the Cochno Water Filters. Convinced he was on to something, he resigned and set up his own company to build these houses.

Rae Concrete Bungalows at Riversdale. The subtle change in the pitch of the roof over the bay windows, and the little fillet of lead flashing that bridges the resulting gap, is the giveaway.

Rae‘s method used a 3½” thick poured concrete wall reinforced with steel bars. He said that with one man erecting shuttering and ten pouring concrete, the walls of a house could be put up in a single day (so long as the foundations were prepared!) Hr gave his houses a 100 year life span. They’re now 98! You can find more of these houses in Edinburgh around Boswall Green in Wardie.

Nissen-Petren houses at Riversdale, much extended and modernised in recent years.

6. Nissen-Petren Steel & Concrete Houses. Eight pairs of these semi-detached houses were described as being planned, although only 4 appear to have been built. If you’ve been down this street, they are the incongruous-looking ones that look like Dutch Barns. Nissen was Colonel Peter Nissen, DSO, a military engineer of Nissen Hut fame. these distinctive semi-circular, corrugated steel-clad, prefabricated, temporary buildings became synonymous with British military encampments in the 20th century.

British soldiers erecting Nissen huts near Bazentin, November 1916 © IWM, Q4597

Post-war, Nissen attempted to apply his ideas about prefabricated structures to mass-produced housing. He was assisted by “Petren”; the architects John Petter and Percy J. Warren. The resulting houses used a similar framework of curved steel tubes to support a corrugated metal roof as used in the huts, but they were substantially larger, two-storeys and had pre-fabricated concrete block walls. The roofs were “asbestos-protected metal“, which was further coated in asphalt to weatherproof it. These houses had three bedrooms when built, a living room and a kitchenette when new. I am unsure if any more Nissen-Petren houses were built in Scotland. You can read more about Nissen-Petren houses at the Municipal Dreams site here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/14230388@N03/8561234059

The prototypes were built in Yeovil and have an elegant, curved roofline that flares out towards the bottom. Unfortunately, building prefabricated “system” housing on a small scale deployment inevitably pushes costs up as economies of scale cannot be realised. As a result these houses went well over budget – £350 per house became £510, a 45% increase. I assume the angular roofs employed at Riversdale are the result of a cost-cutting exercise.

7. Consteelwood Houses. The odd names of these houses is a portmanteau word which comes from their building system; Concrete, Steel and Wood. They were built on a wooden frame, infilled with poured concrete and clad in pressed steel panels by the Stelonite Company of London. These panels were interlocking and had the pattern lines of masonry set into them to give them a traditional appearance. The roofing was a traditional wooden frame covered in tiles.

Consteelwood Houses at Riversdale

A prototype house was erected in London at Tooting. The pair of houses at Riversdale, their steel panels with fake masonry lines hidden beneath a skin of harling, were (and thus are) probably the only houses of this type in Scotland.

Pathé Newsreel from 1925 of the prototype Consteelwood House being erected in London.Pathé Newsreel from 1925 of the prototype Consteelwood House being erected in London.

A local furnishings company outfitted these houses when new and invited members of the public to come and see this “unique opportunity to inspect the latest in housing and furniture“.

Advert for McCullochs Ltd, outfitters of the Consteelwood Demonstration Houses

8. Laurie Houses. The last type I have identified at Riversdale are named for their designer, Arthur Pillans Laurie. He was the Principal of Heriot-Watt College (as it was), a chemist who had made a name for himself pioneering the infra-red photography of Old Masters paintings to analyse them. He designed a neat little pair of cottages, externally they were traditional harled brick with a timer and tile roof, but internally they used no plasterwork (skilled plasterers were in short supply) and instead had an asbestos-cork-asbestos sandwich board for partitions. A single pair of houses were built – again these are unique. Laurie later turned to fascism.

The Laurie Houses at Riversdale

These are the houses I have definitely identified. I have found written references that further types of houses were – or were intended to be – built here;

• An Atholl Steel House and clad house was apparently erected, it is certainly no longer here. Atholls were an attempt by the steel and shipbuilding company, William Beardmores – desperate for work post-war – to diversify into housing. Two estates of Atholl Houses were built by the Second Scottish National Housing Company in Edinburgh around this time; at Lochend and at Wardie. They are all still there, a precious few in near original external condition.
• Corolite No-Fines Houses – these are of in-situ poured “No-Fines” concrete, i.e a mixture with no “fine” material; sand or ash in the aggregate. This improves ventilation of the concrete. I can’t find any at Riversdale, but a small scheme of them were built at Restalrig.
• Laing Easiform Houses by John Laing & Son of Carlisle. Easiform refers to a proprietary system of shuttering into which the solid concrete walls were poured. According to newspaper reports, two 5-apartment houses at £509 each and two 3-apartment houses at £400 each were built here. I can find no trace of them (yet!). These are non-standard houses but not declared defective, so can be mortgaged, so are less likely to have been demolished to rebuild.
• A Weir Steel House was meant to be built, but a 1925 newspaper report says that it was suspended owning to a dispute over wages (the Weir houses were thought to be too cheap to put up in labour terms, and builders refused to work on them as it didn’t pay enough)
• Jones Timber House. It was noted that consideration was being given to building a wooden house by Jones & Sons, timber merchants of Larbert. Some of these houses still exist in that town.

The houses of the Riversdale Demonstration Scheme were all of types approved by the Scottish Department of Health, meaning they were eligible for Government subsidy. These subsidies could be drawn down by Councils (e.g. the Corporation of Edinburgh), by government backed housing bodies like the Second Scottish National Housing Company, by private developers or by groups of individuals.

This latter group was a scheme known as Utility Societies, which were “building clubs” of five or more interested housebuilders who had got together. The Council provided them with land it had set aside for housing and they could borrow money through a public assistance scheme or get a government grant (or both) to build an approved type of house. The builders of those houses would erect them on site on behalf of the Society. These (in theory) cheap, prefabricated, “off the shelf” designs of non-standard construction houses were aimed to suit their needs. A group of Tramway Department employees were noted in a 1925 article in the Scotsman of organising such a society, which I believe are of the Rae type and located around Boswall Green.

The houses at Riversdale are are remarkable collection of 1920s housing innovation and ideas. They are probably the most remarkable collection of such houses anywhere in Scotland – one common feature shared by most of this variety bag of houses has is the great efforts the designers went to to make the most modern and cutting edge houses look traditional and unremarkable. Have a closer look next time you are passing!

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