#princesstreet — Public Fediverse posts

Busy Princes Street
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/55207630941/in/photostream/lightbox/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #StreetPhotography #BlackAndWhitePhotography #PrincesStreet #PeopleWatching

I'm waiting for my tram, 26 dollars in my hand... (apologies to the Velvet Underground)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/55207778228/in/photostream/lightbox/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #StreetPhotography #tram #PrincesStreet #EdinburghTram #BlackAndWhitePhotography

It's bright today!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/55166346336/in/photostream/lightbox/

Couple dazzled by the spring sunlight on Princes Street

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #StreetPhotography #PrincesStreet #BlackAndWhitePhotography

Taken this day, 2019, did you call for a cab??
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/40622799863/in/photostream/lightbox/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #PrincesStreet #Taxi #BlackAndWhitePhotography

"Scotland stands with the people of Iran"
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/55112796798/in/photostream/lightbox/

Latest #mural on the side of Saint John's Church on Princes Street (the church there has a long history of murals commenting on social, ethical and political issues around the world)

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #Art #StreetArt #photography #photographie #Iran #Scotland #Ecosse #SaintJohnsChurch #PrincesStreet

Early spring sunlight on the west end of Princes Street
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/55110835730/in/photostream/lightbox/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #Architecture #photography #photographie #PrincesStreet #WestEndEdinburgh #BlackAndWhitePhotography

Rainy Princes Street at night

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #NightPhotography #EdinburghByNight #PrincesStreet #WetReflections #pluie #rain

Rainy Princes Street at night

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #NightPhotography #EdinburghByNight #PrincesStreet #WetReflections #pluie #rain

Rainy Princes Street at night

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #NightPhotography #EdinburghByNight #PrincesStreet #WetReflections #pluie #rain

Rainy Princes Street at night

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #NightPhotography #EdinburghByNight #PrincesStreet #WetReflections #pluie #rain

Rainy Princes Street at night

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #NightPhotography #EdinburghByNight #PrincesStreet #WetReflections #pluie #rain

A festive season in Edinburgh, Scotland.

#edinburgh #scotland #princesstreet #christmas #travel

Blue skies and golden, winter sunlight less than an hour ago, on the way to my appointment.

Now murky, grey clouds closing in as I left, and rain starting. There's a reason we talk so much about weather here...

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #architecture #Grassmarket #PrincesStreet #ScottMonument #EdinburghCastle #castle #chateau

Taken this day, 2019, shopping after dark
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/49175196976/in/photostream/lightbox/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #Photography #photographie #StreetPhotography #PrincesStreet #Shop #Magasin #UrbanNight #BlackAndWhitePhotography

Coming, going, waiting, shopping, hoping https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/54873352863/in/photostream/lightbox/

People watching on Princes Streets

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #StreetPhotography #PrincesStreet #PeopleWatching #BlackAndWhitePhotography

On the outside, looking in
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/54865939668/in/photostream/lightbox/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #PrincesStreet #UrbanNight #StreetPhotography #PeopleWatching #BlackAndWhitePhotography

Window shopping at night https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/54848072839/in/photostream/lightbox/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #StreetPhotography #PrincesStreet #Shop #Magasin #UrbanNight

Princes Street after dark https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/54848141610/in/photostream/lightbox/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #PrincesStreet #UrbanNight #BlackAndWhitePhotography

Waiting on the bus https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/54801003110/in/photostream/lightbox/

Princes Street, #Edinburgh #Edimbourg
#photography #photographie #StreetPhotography #PrincesStreet #BlackAndWhitePhotography #BusStop #PeopleWatching

The wee cafe in Princes Street Gardens https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/54792378528/in/photostream/lightbox/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #StreetPhotography #PeopleWatching #Cafe #PrincesStreetGardens #PrincesStreet #BlackAndWhitePhotography

Masked Edinburgh youths maraud city centre as ‘baby gang rules Princes Street’

A feral youth gang was caught on camera wreaking havoc on Edinburgh’s Princes Street on Tuesday evening. Around…
#Edinburgh #UnitedKingdom #UK #GB #Scotland #Headlines #News #Europe #EU #Britain #GreatBritain #PrincesStreet #PrincesStreetGardens #WaverleyStation #youths
https://www.europesays.com/uk/414244/

#Edinburgh Castle enjoying the last hour of a September day, the sunlight stretched out into honeyed copper tones, bathing ancient stonework.

#Autumn in Edinburgh...

#Edimbourg #Photography #photographie #automne #architecture #EdinburghCastle #Castle #Chateau #PrincesStreet

Frederick Douglass Inspires in Cork City Centre

I love this mural of Frederick Douglass. It’s painted on a wall of the small avenue going up to the Unitarian Church on Princes Street. I think the church has been closed for quite some time, but I’m glad this area is maintained.

https://inphotos.org/2025/06/29/frederick-douglass-inspires-in-cork-city-centre/

#Cork #Ireland #PrincesStreet #photo #photography #UnitarianChurch #FrederickDouglass #mural

Frederick Douglass Inspires in Cork City Centre

I love this mural of Frederick Douglass. It’s painted on a wall of the small avenue going up to the Unitarian Church on Princes Street. I think the church has been closed for quite some time, but I’m glad this area is maintained.

The history of the church here is fascinating too.

After a fire in January 2024 destroyed the interior of the chapel, Cork Unitarian Church was left without a home and with little hope of continuing. Some of the church’s lay leadership believed that there was a future if the model for running the church radically changed. The church now operates as a Limited by Guarentee corporation – independent of external ecclesiastic governance (e.g. ordained ministers, synods, etc.).  This is more in keeping with the model of most Unitarian Universalist (i.e. UU) church congregations in the EU (see: EUU). The Cork church congregation no longer has a permanent building to maintain. All of the energies of the church go to meeting the needs of the congregation, not preserving historically significant architecture. 

While the Cork congregation has moved on to a different way of doing “church”. The congregation still has an affection for its former Princess street home. We also have an interest as Corkonians in seeing that the asset of the building, with all of its historic and architectural significance, is preserved. Cork Unitarian Church supports effort to donate and repurpose the Princes Street building as a publicly held asset – revitalising Cork’s City Centre and providing social and cultural benefits of the entire Cork community.

#Cork #FrederickDouglass #history #Ireland #mural #Photo #Photography #PrincesStreet #publicArt #streetArt #StreetPhotography #UnitarianChurch #urbanGarden

Crossing, Princes Street
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/54503145572/in/dateposted/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #StreetPhotography #PedestranCrossing #PeopleWatching #PrincesStreet #BlackAndWhitePhotography

#ViewFromABus : Princes Street and the Scott Monument at dusk this evening.

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #PrincesStreet #ScottMonument #architecture

From shadow into light https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/54443871279/in/dateposted/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #Shadows #Ombres #PrincesStreet #SouthSaintAndrewStreet #Ecosse #Scotland #BlackAndWhitePhotography

Bar + Block at night. Not somewhere I'd visit (not a carnivore), but made for an interesting night shot as I was passing.

#Edinburgh #Edinburgh #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #restaurant #PrincesStreet

Johnny Walker Whisky Experience at night (in what used to be Fraser's Department Store for many years)

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #PrincesStreet

Taken this day, 2024, #BlueHour , Princes Street https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/53481335489/

Yes, you get views like this in #Edinburgh when you're just leaving the pub...

#Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #PrincesStreet #Dusk #Crepuscule #BalmoralHotel

Taken this day, 2022, trams that pass in the night https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/51802656990/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #PrincesStreet #EdinburghTram #Tram #BlackAndWhitePhotography

"Sale now on" https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/54237766812/in/dateposted/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #shop #magasin #PrincesStreet #BlackAndWhitePhotography

The thread about Edinburgh’s public Christmas trees; from Victorian commercialism to symbols of international friendship

The Christmas tree on the Mound is one of those annual Edinburgh institutions you kind of take for granted. It always seems to have appeared there each year and you expect that it always shall. But as I passed it by the other week it inevitably got me thinking about just how the tree on the Mound came to be and just how far back the tradition of public Christmas trees goes in Edinburgh. Inevitably this led me straight down a rabbit hole or two in the old newspapers and the clippings that I found down there have threaded themselves into a festive story for your amusement.

Christmas trees in Edinburgh pre-date considerably their public display. It was likely Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, who introduced the German tradition of the Christmas fir tree into British society but it’s generally accepted that it was Prince Albert who helped popularise them and lead to their widespread introduction into the homes of the Victorian upper classes in the 1840s. In the sketch below by Jemima Wedderburn, we see a posed scene of an upper class Scottish family around their Christmas tree in 1853. It is remarkably like those in popular Christmas prints of the Royal Family at that time.

The earliest advert I can find for the sale of a Christmas Tree in Edinburgh is in 1849, when they were for sale alongside “Chinese Sweetmeats and Fancy Boxes of Tea” in Maclean & Son’s French and Italian Warehouse at 27 Princes Street. Adverts for the sale of this “favourite German amusement” are increasingly common in throughout the 1850s and its clear many higher end shops and department stores were making them a public attraction to draw in customers. In 1856, Knox, Samuel & Dickson’s establishment at 15 Hanover Street was advertising a “Grand Spectacle to be seen during the Christmas holidays” which included “The Model Christmas Tree“. They were also selling trees with prices ranging from 5s (about £25 in 2024) through to £65 (around £7,000 these days!) if you wanted one complete with “many hundreds” of ornaments.

It’s clear from the newspaper coverage and advertising of Christmas Trees that Edinburgh’s retail proprietors were vying with each other throughout the middle Victorian period to have the biggest and most elaborately decorated tree displays in order to get the customers through the doors. The trees and their decorations would have been unaffordable to most, but they and Christmas were clearly a profitable commercial enterprise. But it would take over 80 years from their introduction to get these trees out of the department stores or New Town parlours and on to public display. It seems to have been St. John’s Episcopal Church on Princes Street which was first to do this, when in 1936 they got permission from the Cleansing & Lighting Committee of the City Corporation to erect a 25ft high tree at the end of Princes Street on the proviso that it had no flashing lights on its decoration.

The introduction of this tree may have been in direct response to the public display of a pair of large trees outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in London which were the gift of the King and Queen from their Sandringham Estate. This was already an established tradition but was quite widely reported in 1936 owing to the death of King George V and the brief accession of Edward VIII. The pair of trees he sent arrived at St. Paul’s on December 12th, two days after he had abdicated… Perhaps as something of a public charm offensive following the intense public embarrassment of the abdication, in 1937 the new King and Queen extended the tree donation to Edinburgh, with two trees being sent down from the Balmoral Estate. The newspapers reported that one tree was for display outside St. Giles High Kirk, long a Royal place of worship in Scotland, and the other was for the Canongate Kirk, in which parish the Palace of Holyroodhouse is located. Their arrival in town on December 17th got the attention of the Evening News’ cameraman.

Confusingly though, the newspaper photos on December 21st show two trees at St. Giles and described the King as having send two for display there. So maybe he actually sent three trees in total? The St. Giles pair were floodlit each night during the festive season.

The other great “public” Christmas tree in Edinburgh was that of Jenners department store, one which undoubtedly has a lot of nostalgia values for multiple generations of the city’s residents.

Jenners had long run a “Christmas Bazaar”, the original Kennington & Jenner store was advertising this back in the 1870s, stating it contained “a hundred thousand toys and trifles” and “gifts of slight cost” (mass market Christmas was a thing back then too), but their tree tradition only seems to have begun in the late 1930s, with adverts in 1938 being the earliest I can find. It’s no coincidence that large public Christmas trees began to be a thing in the UK during this period. Punitive tariffs on post-WW1 Germany included 2d per lb on cut Christmas trees. Far-sighted English landowners started commercial planting of them in 1922 and by the mid-30s large, home-grown trees had reached maturity and were widely available. It made commercial sense to raise Christmas trees to maturity in the south and west of England, closer to the London market, but many, if not most, were reported by the late the 1920s as having started life in Scotland on Forestry Commission plantations, before being transplanted south when old enough to move. In 1932 the Great Western Railway transported 60,000 trees from Herefordshire alone to London. That year the Scotsman reported that at Covent Garden a 1ft tall domestic tree would cost you 6d (c. £1.50 in 2024), a 25ft tree was £15 (~£885) and the average 3-4ft tree was £1 (~£59). The home producers dominance of the market was assured completely the next year due to the Importation of Elm Trees and Conifers (Prohibition) Order 1933 by the Ministry of Agriculture. This banned elm and all pine-type tree imports into the country to slow the spread of diseases.

This new industry and tradition did not last long however, World War 2 largely cancelled Christmas trees as there were obviously no European imports and domestic plantations were earmarked for more important purposes than mere festive ornamentation. A tree sent to the Canongate from Balmoral in December 1941 seems to have been the last. There are occasional reports of trees in Churches and Hospitals in Edinburgh during wartime, one imagines they must have been locally sourced from gardens before being turned over to the war effort. A public tree did not return to the city until 1945 when the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) erected a 20ft high specimen in Waverley Station. It was this company that had instituted the idea of railway Christmas trees back in 1933 at Newcastle Central and before the war they had become a feature south of the border at mainline stations, but this was the first example north of the border.

In 1946, Waverley had two such trees and these were collection points for presents for children who were stuck in hospitals over the Christmas period. It wasn’t until 1950 that Edinburgh’s other mainline station, at Princes Street, got a tree, by which time the railways were nationalised.

All Christmas trees at this time were still domestically sourced, a wartime ban on imports was ongoing. The nation could hardly afford to import timber for construction, yet alone for disposable ornaments. The Forestry Commission granted a special licence to import a single 48ft tree from Norway to Trafalgar Square in London in 1947 as a gift from nation to nation. It was not until 1949 that this privilege was extended to other towns and cities. That year, as a symbol of wartime solidarity and postwar friendship, the St. Andrew Society of Denmark sent a 63ft tree over the North Sea to Edinburgh and it was erected in the now traditional spot on the Mound. But disaster struck on December 15th when despite (or perhaps because of?) the combined efforts of the men of four different Corporation Departments, the tree snapped in two under the weight of the lighting display. It took two Burgh Engineers to come up with a solution to stick it back together again.

Fortunately the tree was grafted back together in time for the official lighting-up ceremony the next day. The Lord Provost, Sir Andrew Arbuthnot Murray, gave an address which was broadcast over telephone link to a concurrent ceremony in Copenhagen. In his speech he quipped:

Everyone knows that Edinburgh is renowned for its surgery, but I did not know it also applied to tree surgery. Now the tree is stronger than ever and I am sure the same can now be said about the friendship between Denmark and Scotland.

The Royal Danish Consul attended and had Santa Claus hand out Christmas crackers presented to the children’s choir who had serenaded the tree with carols.

Each year after this, a tree would cross the sea from Denmark to Edinburgh, destined for the Mound. Disaster struck again in 1962 when the tree blew down in gales before Christmas while still being decorated. On the night of Sunday December 16th a storm hit Scotland and 100mph gusts in Dumbarton destroyed a distillery under construction. The tree was fortunately saved and re-erected in time for the lighting up ceremony on the 19th.

While its commonly held locally that the Mound tree has always been a gift from the people of Norway, it actually came from Denmark until the 1970s. The ceremony of 1973 is the last time it reported in the newspapers, when its lights were switched on by Miss Ellen Larsen of Copenhagen who was long associated with the St. Andrew’s Society of Denmark’s annual gift. An additional dynamic that year was the political and economic situation in the UK at the time; because of the Oil Crisis and Three-Day Week, the Government had decreed that public trees and Christmas light displays could only be illuminated for three evenings; Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and either the Saturday or Sunday beforehand and for three hours during the lighting up ceremony. After that year, the Danish tree was replaced by a locally grown one from the Duke of Buccleuch’s estate at Bowhill.

The confusion over the tree’s origins may have occurred because the species has always been a Norway Spruce. The Scandinavian connection was re-established again in 1986 when the tree was gifted to the city by the county of Hordaland and city of Bergen in Norway; although it was still sourced locally to cut down on transport costs. The Norwegian friendship tree was first lit on Monday 1st December by councillor Lesley Hinds, Santa Claus and children from Graysmill School. The Mound tree is still gifted by Hordaland and Bergen to this day, and the tradition will be 40 years old in 2026. You can see photos of the 2024 tree being decorated in this article at the Edinburgh Reporter.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2024, Andy Arthur

#Canongate #Christmas #PrincesStreet #Royalty #StGiles #Victorian #Written2024

The thread about Edinburgh’s public Christmas trees; from Victorian commercialism to symbols of international friendship

The Christmas tree on the Mound is one of those annual Edinburgh institutions you kind of take for granted. It always seems to have appeared there each year and you expect that it always shall. But as I passed it by the other week it inevitably got me thinking about just how the tree on the Mound came to be and just how far back the tradition of public Christmas trees goes in Edinburgh. Inevitably this led me straight down a rabbit hole or two in the old newspapers and the clippings that I found down there have threaded themselves into a festive story for your amusement.

Christmas trees in Edinburgh pre-date considerably their public display. It was likely Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, who introduced the German tradition of the Christmas fir tree into British society but it’s generally accepted that it was Prince Albert who helped popularise them and lead to their widespread introduction into the homes of the Victorian upper classes in the 1840s. In the sketch below by Jemima Wedderburn, we see a posed scene of an upper class Scottish family around their Christmas tree in 1853. It is remarkably like those in popular Christmas prints of the Royal Family at that time.

The earliest advert I can find for the sale of a Christmas Tree in Edinburgh is in 1849, when they were for sale alongside “Chinese Sweetmeats and Fancy Boxes of Tea” in Maclean & Son’s French and Italian Warehouse at 27 Princes Street. Adverts for the sale of this “favourite German amusement” are increasingly common in throughout the 1850s and its clear many higher end shops and department stores were making them a public attraction to draw in customers. In 1856, Knox, Samuel & Dickson’s establishment at 15 Hanover Street was advertising a “Grand Spectacle to be seen during the Christmas holidays” which included “The Model Christmas Tree“. They were also selling trees with prices ranging from 5s (about £25 in 2024) through to £65 (around £7,000 these days!) if you wanted one complete with “many hundreds” of ornaments.

It’s clear from the newspaper coverage and advertising of Christmas Trees that Edinburgh’s retail proprietors were vying with each other throughout the middle Victorian period to have the biggest and most elaborately decorated tree displays in order to get the customers through the doors. The trees and their decorations would have been unaffordable to most, but they and Christmas were clearly a profitable commercial enterprise. But it would take over 80 years from their introduction to get these trees out of the department stores or New Town parlours and on to public display. It seems to have been St. John’s Episcopal Church on Princes Street which was first to do this, when in 1936 they got permission from the Cleansing & Lighting Committee of the City Corporation to erect a 25ft high tree at the end of Princes Street on the proviso that it had no flashing lights on its decoration.

The introduction of this tree may have been in direct response to the public display of a pair of large trees outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in London which were the gift of the King and Queen from their Sandringham Estate. This was already an established tradition but was quite widely reported in 1936 owing to the death of King George V and the brief accession of Edward VIII. The pair of trees he sent arrived at St. Paul’s on December 12th, two days after he had abdicated… Perhaps as something of a public charm offensive following the intense public embarrassment of the abdication, in 1937 the new King and Queen extended the tree donation to Edinburgh, with two trees being sent down from the Balmoral Estate. The newspapers reported that one tree was for display outside St. Giles High Kirk, long a Royal place of worship in Scotland, and the other was for the Canongate Kirk, in which parish the Palace of Holyroodhouse is located. Their arrival in town on December 17th got the attention of the Evening News’ cameraman.

Confusingly though, the newspaper photos on December 21st show two trees at St. Giles and described the King as having send two for display there. So maybe he actually sent three trees in total? The St. Giles pair were floodlit each night during the festive season.

The other great “public” Christmas tree in Edinburgh was that of Jenners department store, one which undoubtedly has a lot of nostalgia values for multiple generations of the city’s residents.

Jenners had long run a “Christmas Bazaar”, the original Kennington & Jenner store was advertising this back in the 1870s, stating it contained “a hundred thousand toys and trifles” and “gifts of slight cost” (mass market Christmas was a thing back then too), but their tree tradition only seems to have begun in the late 1930s, with adverts in 1938 being the earliest I can find. It’s no coincidence that large public Christmas trees began to be a thing in the UK during this period. Punitive tariffs on post-WW1 Germany included 2d per lb on cut Christmas trees. Far-sighted English landowners started commercial planting of them in 1922 and by the mid-30s large, home-grown trees had reached maturity and were widely available. It made commercial sense to raise Christmas trees to maturity in the south and west of England, closer to the London market, but many, if not most, were reported by the late the 1920s as having started life in Scotland on Forestry Commission plantations, before being transplanted south when old enough to move. In 1932 the Great Western Railway transported 60,000 trees from Herefordshire alone to London. That year the Scotsman reported that at Covent Garden a 1ft tall domestic tree would cost you 6d (c. £1.50 in 2024), a 25ft tree was £15 (~£885) and the average 3-4ft tree was £1 (~£59). The home producers dominance of the market was assured completely the next year due to the Importation of Elm Trees and Conifers (Prohibition) Order 1933 by the Ministry of Agriculture. This banned elm and all pine-type tree imports into the country to slow the spread of diseases.

This new industry and tradition did not last long however, World War 2 largely cancelled Christmas trees as there were obviously no European imports and domestic plantations were earmarked for more important purposes than mere festive ornamentation. A tree sent to the Canongate from Balmoral in December 1941 seems to have been the last. There are occasional reports of trees in Churches and Hospitals in Edinburgh during wartime, one imagines they must have been locally sourced from gardens before being turned over to the war effort. A public tree did not return to the city until 1945 when the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) erected a 20ft high specimen in Waverley Station. It was this company that had instituted the idea of railway Christmas trees back in 1933 at Newcastle Central and before the war they had become a feature south of the border at mainline stations, but this was the first example north of the border.

In 1946, Waverley had two such trees and these were collection points for presents for children who were stuck in hospitals over the Christmas period. It wasn’t until 1950 that Edinburgh’s other mainline station, at Princes Street, got a tree, by which time the railways were nationalised.

All Christmas trees at this time were still domestically sourced, a wartime ban on imports was ongoing. The nation could hardly afford to import timber for construction, yet alone for disposable ornaments. The Forestry Commission granted a special licence to import a single 48ft tree from Norway to Trafalgar Square in London in 1947 as a gift from nation to nation. It was not until 1949 that this privilege was extended to other towns and cities. That year, as a symbol of wartime solidarity and postwar friendship, the St. Andrew Society of Denmark sent a 63ft tree over the North Sea to Edinburgh and it was erected in the now traditional spot on the Mound. But disaster struck on December 15th when despite (or perhaps because of?) the combined efforts of the men of four different Corporation Departments, the tree snapped in two under the weight of the lighting display. It took two Burgh Engineers to come up with a solution to stick it back together again.

Fortunately the tree was grafted back together in time for the official lighting-up ceremony the next day. The Lord Provost, Sir Andrew Arbuthnot Murray, gave an address which was broadcast over telephone link to a concurrent ceremony in Copenhagen. In his speech he quipped:

Everyone knows that Edinburgh is renowned for its surgery, but I did not know it also applied to tree surgery. Now the tree is stronger than ever and I am sure the same can now be said about the friendship between Denmark and Scotland.

The Royal Danish Consul attended and had Santa Claus hand out Christmas crackers presented to the children’s choir who had serenaded the tree with carols.

Each year after this, a tree would cross the sea from Denmark to Edinburgh, destined for the Mound. Disaster struck again in 1962 when the tree blew down in gales before Christmas while still being decorated. On the night of Sunday December 16th a storm hit Scotland and 100mph gusts in Dumbarton destroyed a distillery under construction. The tree was fortunately saved and re-erected in time for the lighting up ceremony on the 19th.

While its commonly held locally that the Mound tree has always been a gift from the people of Norway, it actually came from Denmark until the 1970s. The ceremony of 1973 is the last time it reported in the newspapers, when its lights were switched on by Miss Ellen Larsen of Copenhagen who was long associated with the St. Andrew’s Society of Denmark’s annual gift. An additional dynamic that year was the political and economic situation in the UK at the time; because of the Oil Crisis and Three-Day Week, the Government had decreed that public trees and Christmas light displays could only be illuminated for three evenings; Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and either the Saturday or Sunday beforehand and for three hours during the lighting up ceremony. After that year, the Danish tree was replaced by a locally grown one from the Duke of Buccleuch’s estate at Bowhill.

The confusion over the tree’s origins may have occurred because the species has always been a Norway Spruce. The Scandinavian connection was re-established again in 1986 when the tree was gifted to the city by the county of Hordaland and city of Bergen in Norway; although it was still sourced locally to cut down on transport costs. The Norwegian friendship tree was first lit on Monday 1st December by councillor Lesley Hinds, Santa Claus and children from Graysmill School. The Mound tree is still gifted by Hordaland and Bergen to this day, and the tradition will be 40 years old in 2026. You can see photos of the 2024 tree being decorated in this article at the Edinburgh Reporter.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2024, Andy Arthur

#Canongate #Christmas #PrincesStreet #Royalty #StGiles #Victorian #Written2024

The thread about Edinburgh’s public Christmas trees; from Victorian commercialism to symbols of international friendship

The Christmas tree on the Mound is one of those annual Edinburgh institutions you kind of take for granted. It always seems to have appeared there each year and you expect that it always shall. But as I passed it by the other week it inevitably got me thinking about just how the tree on the Mound came to be and just how far back the tradition of public Christmas trees goes in Edinburgh. Inevitably this led me straight down a rabbit hole or two in the old newspapers and the clippings that I found down there have threaded themselves into a festive story for your amusement.

Christmas trees in Edinburgh pre-date considerably their public display. It was likely Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, who introduced the German tradition of the Christmas fir tree into British society but it’s generally accepted that it was Prince Albert who helped popularise them and lead to their widespread introduction into the homes of the Victorian upper classes in the 1840s. In the sketch below by Jemima Wedderburn, we see a posed scene of an upper class Scottish family around their Christmas tree in 1853. It is remarkably like those in popular Christmas prints of the Royal Family at that time.

The earliest advert I can find for the sale of a Christmas Tree in Edinburgh is in 1849, when they were for sale alongside “Chinese Sweetmeats and Fancy Boxes of Tea” in Maclean & Son’s French and Italian Warehouse at 27 Princes Street. Adverts for the sale of this “favourite German amusement” are increasingly common in throughout the 1850s and its clear many higher end shops and department stores were making them a public attraction to draw in customers. In 1856, Knox, Samuel & Dickson’s establishment at 15 Hanover Street was advertising a “Grand Spectacle to be seen during the Christmas holidays” which included “The Model Christmas Tree“. They were also selling trees with prices ranging from 5s (about £25 in 2024) through to £65 (around £7,000 these days!) if you wanted one complete with “many hundreds” of ornaments.

It’s clear from the newspaper coverage and advertising of Christmas Trees that Edinburgh’s retail proprietors were vying with each other throughout the middle Victorian period to have the biggest and most elaborately decorated tree displays in order to get the customers through the doors. The trees and their decorations would have been unaffordable to most, but they and Christmas were clearly a profitable commercial enterprise. But it would take over 80 years from their introduction to get these trees out of the department stores or New Town parlours and on to public display. It seems to have been St. John’s Episcopal Church on Princes Street which was first to do this, when in 1936 they got permission from the Cleansing & Lighting Committee of the City Corporation to erect a 25ft high tree at the end of Princes Street on the proviso that it had no flashing lights on its decoration.

The introduction of this tree may have been in direct response to the public display of a pair of large trees outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in London which were the gift of the King and Queen from their Sandringham Estate. This was already an established tradition but was quite widely reported in 1936 owing to the death of King George V and the brief accession of Edward VIII. The pair of trees he sent arrived at St. Paul’s on December 12th, two days after he had abdicated… Perhaps as something of a public charm offensive following the intense public embarrassment of the abdication, in 1937 the new King and Queen extended the tree donation to Edinburgh, with two trees being sent down from the Balmoral Estate. The newspapers reported that one tree was for display outside St. Giles High Kirk, long a Royal place of worship in Scotland, and the other was for the Canongate Kirk, in which parish the Palace of Holyroodhouse is located. Their arrival in town on December 17th got the attention of the Evening News’ cameraman.

Confusingly though, the newspaper photos on December 21st show two trees at St. Giles and described the King as having send two for display there. So maybe he actually sent three trees in total? The St. Giles pair were floodlit each night during the festive season.

The other great “public” Christmas tree in Edinburgh was that of Jenners department store, one which undoubtedly has a lot of nostalgia values for multiple generations of the city’s residents.

Jenners had long run a “Christmas Bazaar”, the original Kennington & Jenner store was advertising this back in the 1870s, stating it contained “a hundred thousand toys and trifles” and “gifts of slight cost” (mass market Christmas was a thing back then too), but their tree tradition only seems to have begun in the late 1930s, with adverts in 1938 being the earliest I can find. It’s no coincidence that large public Christmas trees began to be a thing in the UK during this period. Punitive tariffs on post-WW1 Germany included 2d per lb on cut Christmas trees. Far-sighted English landowners started commercial planting of them in 1922 and by the mid-30s large, home-grown trees had reached maturity and were widely available. It made commercial sense to raise Christmas trees to maturity in the south and west of England, closer to the London market, but many, if not most, were reported by the late the 1920s as having started life in Scotland on Forestry Commission plantations, before being transplanted south when old enough to move. In 1932 the Great Western Railway transported 60,000 trees from Herefordshire alone to London. That year the Scotsman reported that at Covent Garden a 1ft tall domestic tree would cost you 6d (c. £1.50 in 2024), a 25ft tree was £15 (~£885) and the average 3-4ft tree was £1 (~£59). The home producers dominance of the market was assured completely the next year due to the Importation of Elm Trees and Conifers (Prohibition) Order 1933 by the Ministry of Agriculture. This banned elm and all pine-type tree imports into the country to slow the spread of diseases.

This new industry and tradition did not last long however, World War 2 largely cancelled Christmas trees as there were obviously no European imports and domestic plantations were earmarked for more important purposes than mere festive ornamentation. A tree sent to the Canongate from Balmoral in December 1941 seems to have been the last. There are occasional reports of trees in Churches and Hospitals in Edinburgh during wartime, one imagines they must have been locally sourced from gardens before being turned over to the war effort. A public tree did not return to the city until 1945 when the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) erected a 20ft high specimen in Waverley Station. It was this company that had instituted the idea of railway Christmas trees back in 1933 at Newcastle Central and before the war they had become a feature south of the border at mainline stations, but this was the first example north of the border.

In 1946, Waverley had two such trees and these were collection points for presents for children who were stuck in hospitals over the Christmas period. It wasn’t until 1950 that Edinburgh’s other mainline station, at Princes Street, got a tree, by which time the railways were nationalised.

All Christmas trees at this time were still domestically sourced, a wartime ban on imports was ongoing. The nation could hardly afford to import timber for construction, yet alone for disposable ornaments. The Forestry Commission granted a special licence to import a single 48ft tree from Norway to Trafalgar Square in London in 1947 as a gift from nation to nation. It was not until 1949 that this privilege was extended to other towns and cities. That year, as a symbol of wartime solidarity and postwar friendship, the St. Andrew Society of Denmark sent a 63ft tree over the North Sea to Edinburgh and it was erected in the now traditional spot on the Mound. But disaster struck on December 15th when despite (or perhaps because of?) the combined efforts of the men of four different Corporation Departments, the tree snapped in two under the weight of the lighting display. It took two Burgh Engineers to come up with a solution to stick it back together again.

Fortunately the tree was grafted back together in time for the official lighting-up ceremony the next day. The Lord Provost, Sir Andrew Arbuthnot Murray, gave an address which was broadcast over telephone link to a concurrent ceremony in Copenhagen. In his speech he quipped:

Everyone knows that Edinburgh is renowned for its surgery, but I did not know it also applied to tree surgery. Now the tree is stronger than ever and I am sure the same can now be said about the friendship between Denmark and Scotland.

The Royal Danish Consul attended and had Santa Claus hand out Christmas crackers presented to the children’s choir who had serenaded the tree with carols.

Each year after this, a tree would cross the sea from Denmark to Edinburgh, destined for the Mound. Disaster struck again in 1962 when the tree blew down in gales before Christmas while still being decorated. On the night of Sunday December 16th a storm hit Scotland and 100mph gusts in Dumbarton destroyed a distillery under construction. The tree was fortunately saved and re-erected in time for the lighting up ceremony on the 19th.

While its commonly held locally that the Mound tree has always been a gift from the people of Norway, it actually came from Denmark until the 1970s. The ceremony of 1973 is the last time it reported in the newspapers, when its lights were switched on by Miss Ellen Larsen of Copenhagen who was long associated with the St. Andrew’s Society of Denmark’s annual gift. An additional dynamic that year was the political and economic situation in the UK at the time; because of the Oil Crisis and Three-Day Week, the Government had decreed that public trees and Christmas light displays could only be illuminated for three evenings; Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and either the Saturday or Sunday beforehand and for three hours during the lighting up ceremony. After that year, the Danish tree was replaced by a locally grown one from the Duke of Buccleuch’s estate at Bowhill.

The confusion over the tree’s origins may have occurred because the species has always been a Norway Spruce. The Scandinavian connection was re-established again in 1986 when the tree was gifted to the city by the county of Hordaland and city of Bergen in Norway; although it was still sourced locally to cut down on transport costs. The Norwegian friendship tree was first lit on Monday 1st December by councillor Lesley Hinds, Santa Claus and children from Graysmill School. The Mound tree is still gifted by Hordaland and Bergen to this day, and the tradition will be 40 years old in 2026. You can see photos of the 2024 tree being decorated in this article at the Edinburgh Reporter.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2024, Andy Arthur

#Canongate #Christmas #PrincesStreet #Royalty #StGiles #Victorian #Written2024

The thread about Edinburgh’s public Christmas trees; from Victorian commercialism to symbols of international friendship

The Christmas tree on the Mound is one of those annual Edinburgh institutions you kind of take for granted. It always seems to have appeared there each year and you expect that it always shall. But as I passed it by the other week it inevitably got me thinking about just how the tree on the Mound came to be and just how far back the tradition of public Christmas trees goes in Edinburgh. Inevitably this led me straight down a rabbit hole or two in the old newspapers and the clippings that I found down there have threaded themselves into a festive story for your amusement.

Christmas trees in Edinburgh pre-date considerably their public display. It was likely Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, who introduced the German tradition of the Christmas fir tree into British society but it’s generally accepted that it was Prince Albert who helped popularise them and lead to their widespread introduction into the homes of the Victorian upper classes in the 1840s. In the sketch below by Jemima Wedderburn, we see a posed scene of an upper class Scottish family around their Christmas tree in 1853. It is remarkably like those in popular Christmas prints of the Royal Family at that time.

The earliest advert I can find for the sale of a Christmas Tree in Edinburgh is in 1849, when they were for sale alongside “Chinese Sweetmeats and Fancy Boxes of Tea” in Maclean & Son’s French and Italian Warehouse at 27 Princes Street. Adverts for the sale of this “favourite German amusement” are increasingly common in throughout the 1850s and its clear many higher end shops and department stores were making them a public attraction to draw in customers. In 1856, Knox, Samuel & Dickson’s establishment at 15 Hanover Street was advertising a “Grand Spectacle to be seen during the Christmas holidays” which included “The Model Christmas Tree“. They were also selling trees with prices ranging from 5s (about £25 in 2024) through to £65 (around £7,000 these days!) if you wanted one complete with “many hundreds” of ornaments.

It’s clear from the newspaper coverage and advertising of Christmas Trees that Edinburgh’s retail proprietors were vying with each other throughout the middle Victorian period to have the biggest and most elaborately decorated tree displays in order to get the customers through the doors. The trees and their decorations would have been unaffordable to most, but they and Christmas were clearly a profitable commercial enterprise. But it would take over 80 years from their introduction to get these trees out of the department stores or New Town parlours and on to public display. It seems to have been St. John’s Episcopal Church on Princes Street which was first to do this, when in 1936 they got permission from the Cleansing & Lighting Committee of the City Corporation to erect a 25ft high tree at the end of Princes Street on the proviso that it had no flashing lights on its decoration.

The introduction of this tree may have been in direct response to the public display of a pair of large trees outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in London which were the gift of the King and Queen from their Sandringham Estate. This was already an established tradition but was quite widely reported in 1936 owing to the death of King George V and the brief accession of Edward VIII. The pair of trees he sent arrived at St. Paul’s on December 12th, two days after he had abdicated… Perhaps as something of a public charm offensive following the intense public embarrassment of the abdication, in 1937 the new King and Queen extended the tree donation to Edinburgh, with two trees being sent down from the Balmoral Estate. The newspapers reported that one tree was for display outside St. Giles High Kirk, long a Royal place of worship in Scotland, and the other was for the Canongate Kirk, in which parish the Palace of Holyroodhouse is located. Their arrival in town on December 17th got the attention of the Evening News’ cameraman.

Confusingly though, the newspaper photos on December 21st show two trees at St. Giles and described the King as having send two for display there. So maybe he actually sent three trees in total? The St. Giles pair were floodlit each night during the festive season.

The other great “public” Christmas tree in Edinburgh was that of Jenners department store, one which undoubtedly has a lot of nostalgia values for multiple generations of the city’s residents.

Jenners had long run a “Christmas Bazaar”, the original Kennington & Jenner store was advertising this back in the 1870s, stating it contained “a hundred thousand toys and trifles” and “gifts of slight cost” (mass market Christmas was a thing back then too), but their tree tradition only seems to have begun in the late 1930s, with adverts in 1938 being the earliest I can find. It’s no coincidence that large public Christmas trees began to be a thing in the UK during this period. Punitive tariffs on post-WW1 Germany included 2d per lb on cut Christmas trees. Far-sighted English landowners started commercial planting of them in 1922 and by the mid-30s large, home-grown trees had reached maturity and were widely available. It made commercial sense to raise Christmas trees to maturity in the south and west of England, closer to the London market, but many, if not most, were reported by the late the 1920s as having started life in Scotland on Forestry Commission plantations, before being transplanted south when old enough to move. In 1932 the Great Western Railway transported 60,000 trees from Herefordshire alone to London. That year the Scotsman reported that at Covent Garden a 1ft tall domestic tree would cost you 6d (c. £1.50 in 2024), a 25ft tree was £15 (~£885) and the average 3-4ft tree was £1 (~£59). The home producers dominance of the market was assured completely the next year due to the Importation of Elm Trees and Conifers (Prohibition) Order 1933 by the Ministry of Agriculture. This banned elm and all pine-type tree imports into the country to slow the spread of diseases.

This new industry and tradition did not last long however, World War 2 largely cancelled Christmas trees as there were obviously no European imports and domestic plantations were earmarked for more important purposes than mere festive ornamentation. A tree sent to the Canongate from Balmoral in December 1941 seems to have been the last. There are occasional reports of trees in Churches and Hospitals in Edinburgh during wartime, one imagines they must have been locally sourced from gardens before being turned over to the war effort. A public tree did not return to the city until 1945 when the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) erected a 20ft high specimen in Waverley Station. It was this company that had instituted the idea of railway Christmas trees back in 1933 at Newcastle Central and before the war they had become a feature south of the border at mainline stations, but this was the first example north of the border.

In 1946, Waverley had two such trees and these were collection points for presents for children who were stuck in hospitals over the Christmas period. It wasn’t until 1950 that Edinburgh’s other mainline station, at Princes Street, got a tree, by which time the railways were nationalised.

All Christmas trees at this time were still domestically sourced, a wartime ban on imports was ongoing. The nation could hardly afford to import timber for construction, yet alone for disposable ornaments. The Forestry Commission granted a special licence to import a single 48ft tree from Norway to Trafalgar Square in London in 1947 as a gift from nation to nation. It was not until 1949 that this privilege was extended to other towns and cities. That year, as a symbol of wartime solidarity and postwar friendship, the St. Andrew Society of Denmark sent a 63ft tree over the North Sea to Edinburgh and it was erected in the now traditional spot on the Mound. But disaster struck on December 15th when despite (or perhaps because of?) the combined efforts of the men of four different Corporation Departments, the tree snapped in two under the weight of the lighting display. It took two Burgh Engineers to come up with a solution to stick it back together again.

Fortunately the tree was grafted back together in time for the official lighting-up ceremony the next day. The Lord Provost, Sir Andrew Arbuthnot Murray, gave an address which was broadcast over telephone link to a concurrent ceremony in Copenhagen. In his speech he quipped:

Everyone knows that Edinburgh is renowned for its surgery, but I did not know it also applied to tree surgery. Now the tree is stronger than ever and I am sure the same can now be said about the friendship between Denmark and Scotland.

The Royal Danish Consul attended and had Santa Claus hand out Christmas crackers presented to the children’s choir who had serenaded the tree with carols.

Each year after this, a tree would cross the sea from Denmark to Edinburgh, destined for the Mound. Disaster struck again in 1962 when the tree blew down in gales before Christmas while still being decorated. On the night of Sunday December 16th a storm hit Scotland and 100mph gusts in Dumbarton destroyed a distillery under construction. The tree was fortunately saved and re-erected in time for the lighting up ceremony on the 19th.

While its commonly held locally that the Mound tree has always been a gift from the people of Norway, it actually came from Denmark until the 1970s. The ceremony of 1973 is the last time it reported in the newspapers, when its lights were switched on by Miss Ellen Larsen of Copenhagen who was long associated with the St. Andrew’s Society of Denmark’s annual gift. An additional dynamic that year was the political and economic situation in the UK at the time; because of the Oil Crisis and Three-Day Week, the Government had decreed that public trees and Christmas light displays could only be illuminated for three evenings; Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and either the Saturday or Sunday beforehand and for three hours during the lighting up ceremony. After that year, the Danish tree was replaced by a locally grown one from the Duke of Buccleuch’s estate at Bowhill.

The confusion over the tree’s origins may have occurred because the species has always been a Norway Spruce. The Scandinavian connection was re-established again in 1986 when the tree was gifted to the city by the county of Hordaland and city of Bergen in Norway; although it was still sourced locally to cut down on transport costs. The Norwegian friendship tree was first lit on Monday 1st December by councillor Lesley Hinds, Santa Claus and children from Graysmill School. The Mound tree is still gifted by Hordaland and Bergen to this day, and the tradition will be 40 years old in 2026. You can see photos of the 2024 tree being decorated in this article at the Edinburgh Reporter.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2024, Andy Arthur

#Canongate #Christmas #PrincesStreet #Royalty #StGiles #Victorian #Written2024

Homeward view from the bus

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #NightPhotography #EdinburghByNight #ViewFromABus #PrincesStreet

The Metropole Hotel which stood on the corner of Sackville (O'Connell) Street and Princes Street, Dublin, Ireland. c1890s. The National Library of Ireland. No known copyright restrictions.

#MetropoleHotel #SackvilleStreet #OConnellStreet #PrincesStreet #Dublin #Ireland #19thCentury

#ViewFromABus : a couple of quick snaps from the upper deck on the way home this evening.

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #architecture #PrincesStreet #RoyalScottishAcademy #WaterlooPlace

Taken this day, 2022, trams that pass in the night https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/51802656990/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #tram #EdinburghTrams #PrincesStreet #Scotland #Ecosse

The Ross Bandstand: the thread about 170 years of squabbling over a public performance space

The much-debated Ross Bandstand found itself being discussed (yet again) today. But what is the Bandstand’s story? How did it come to be there and who was Ross? Let’s find out.

The Ross Bandstand was opened on the evening of Friday 10th May 1935, when an inaugural concert of “music in the parks” was attended by a crowd of at least 10,000 spectators. It was largely financed by a £5,000 (c. £300k in 2023) gift from William H. (Willie) Ross, after whom it is named. Ross was the Chairman of the Distillers Company Limited (usually just known as DCL or the Distillers Company) a company he had worked for since starting as a boy clerk out of school. He had risen through the ranks from the very bottom to the very top, taken over from the founding families and guided it through industrial and economic crises to become a British corporate stalwart.

As early as 1926, the old Victorian Bandstand in West Princes Street Gardens, while still a popular public attraction, was seen as out dated and in disrepair (sound familiar?). Inevitably, letters began appearing in The Scotsman suggesting its replacement. It would take 9 years to come to fruition – nothing concrete had happened for the 8 years until 1934 at which point Ross stepped in with his offer. He approached the Lord Provost Sir William Thomson in 1934 on his own initiative, after the previous attempts had failed due to squabbles over funding, location and a backdrop of economic troubles (sound familiar?!)

The City had only acquired West Princes Street Gardens in 1876 when the lease of the West Princes Street Proprietors expired; before then it had been a gated private garden for those residents and tenants along that section of that street. However they had been trying to acquire it since at least the 1850s. One of the most prominent voices for bringing the West gardens into public control had been the social reformer Rev. Dr James Begg of the Free Church. He spoke out against what the press called the “committee of shopkeeper” who were the proprietors and their champion Henry Cockburn, who felt the public lacked interest in the gardens. Begg countered that “public involvement was dependent on public rights, and shutting them out from public parks and gardens [had] gone far to destroy their public spirit“. Begg and the Scottish Association for the Suppression of Drunkenness managed to gain access to the public for the Gardens on Christmas and New Years Days “with a view to keeping parties out the dram shops“. Occasional public concerts in the gardens had to be stopped in both 1853 and again in 1875 when conditions descended into a near riot on account of “all denominations” of the citizenry trying to force their way into the Gardens to hear military bands, with “skirmishes” ensuing. They were supported in this by the Liberal and Reformist Lord Provost Duncan Mclaren. These arguments of public vs. private rights of access to the Gardens all sound very familiar, don’t they?

The first bandstand was built in 1872. When the West Princes Street Gardens organisation was wound up in 1879 it was found that they had substantial excess funds left and so these were used to construct a new bandstand in 1880 to the designs of Peddie & Kinnear. It quickly acquired an amphitheatre of seating on all sides.

In 1897/98, in another one of Edinburgh’s interminable squabbles about the location and funding of concert halls, West Princes Street Gardens was mooted as a site for the potential Usher Hall. It was eventually built on Lothian Road, completed 16 years later.

The new bandstand was designed by the City Architect, Ebenezer James Macrae, “the man who shaped modern Edinburgh“. It has a performance stage for bands of up to fifty members. A 40 feet wide concrete canopy projects 11 feet ahead of this, not just to keep the weather off the performers beneath but also to help direct the sound downwards and forwards to the audience. For the same purpose, the rear of the stage was constructed in the manner of a “sound mirror” and the stage was hollow, to act as a passive amplifier. A paved dance floor area was laid out between the stage and the seating. The opening programme for 1935 was a very martial affair – the schedule dominated by the bands of the Scots Guards, Irish Guards, Border Regiment, Royal Scots Greys and Gordon Highlanders (amongst others). However, in a break from military music, Councillor Stevenson of the Parks Committee made it known that they were investigating the potential for staging Shakespeare on the stage.

On Sunday 13th May, 1945, Winston Churchill’s VE Day Broadcast over the BBC was relayed to the Ross Bandstand, followed by a concert and Victory Dance performed by the band of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. What would become the Edinburgh Military Tattoo started out at the Ross Bandstand in 1949, when 15,000 people attended a display of military drill and music from the band of the Highland Light Infantry under the direction of Colonel George Malcolm. The Royal Scots Greys provided a trumpet fanfare, the Royal Scots the pipes and drums, there was sword dancing, rifle drill, PT displays, a “Sixteen-some Reel” danced by the men of the Royal Scots and women of the Women’s Royal Army Corps and a general parade of service personnel.

In the 1950s, the Council organised a programme of entertainments at the bandstand throughout the season. In 1954 you could see dancing, displays of fly fishing, ballet, a parade of animals from Edinburgh Zoo and of course military bands (the Cameronians were in residence). From 1946, as part of a postwar “Holidays At Home” scheme, on Saturdays throughout the summer there was a “Children’s Hour” performed each Saturday at 1030AM. Music, sing-alongs, Punch & Judy, competitions, team quizzes and dancing all took place. These ran until 1961

The bandstand began to fall out of favour in the 1960s, attendances dropped as public expectations changed. There were repeated letters to The Scotsman demanding the seating have a roof put over it “as a matter of desperation”. £10,000 was earmarked for this, but never spent. A temporary roof was eventually procured by Edinburgh District Council for the Bandstand’s seating area in 1986 at a cost of £180,000 for festival events. The 14 ton crane hired to erect it promptly cracked the concrete of the seating area and got stuck. When it came to re-erect the roof in 1987, the Conservative group on the council attempted to stop it at the Policy & Resources Committee. They wanted the whole bandstand gone on account of “the noise and cost to ratepayers”. It was “a scar on the landscape” said Cllr David Guestv

The SNP precipitated local controversy in 1971 when they tried to book the Bandstand to host a public debate on party policy on the European Common Market. The very conservative Finance Committee came down hard on the line that it was strictly to be used only for “entertainment purposes”.

Alongside use as a semi-covered Festival venue, the institution that was the end-of-festival Fireworks concert helped to save the bandstand, as each year the Royal Scottish National Orchestra would play a concert choreographed to fireworks launched from the castle. However, because there is never anything new under the sun in Edinburgh local politics even in 1989 the District Council was accused of “fervour” for “low art” by trying to make it more accessible the public by staging popular events and the letters pages of The Scotsman once again overflowed with debates on the pros and cons of the festivals.

The most recent attempt at redevelopment started way back in 2016 when the City of Edinburgh Council consulted on the future of the bandstand, with US architects appointed in 2017 to design new proposals which came to be dubbed “The Hobbit House” on account of the curving, grassed canopy. This was part of an overall public / private “partnership” scheme called (for reasons opaque ) The Quaich Project. It eventually foundered in 2021 due to a combination of political squabbling, disagreements over the design, substantial dissatisfaction over the potential restriction of access to what is seen as a public space and the main funder pulling out. The interminable debates around the Ross Bandstand continues to go on to this day, as it has done for the last 170 years.

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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#ViewFromABus : interesting mix of bright sunshine, white clouds, grey clouds and patches of blue sky over Princes Street

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #PrincesStreet #ScottMonument #clouds #nuages

Another snapshot from top deck of the bus, Mound still busy with Fringe goers and tourists as Old Town catches last hour of evening sunlight

#ViewFromABus #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #architecture #photography #PrincesStreet #TheMound

Balmoral Hotel in evening sunlight and shadow, quick snaps from upper deck of bus

#ViewFromABus #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #architecture #photography #BalmoralHotel #ScotsBaronial #PrincesStreet

#Jenners seen from above, from atop the Scott Monument, before today's awful fire, before the venerable department store closed https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/32536467596/

#Edinburgh #photography #Edimbourg #Scotland #Ecosse #PrincesStreet #Architecture #ScottMonument

Scott Monument catching the winter light on a rather chilly but lovely #SaintAndrewsDay in #Edinburgh

I love that our largest monument isn't to a king or conquering general, but to writers. Very civilised.

#photography #scottmonument #sirwalterscott #history #literature #scottishliterature #monument #princesstreet #princesstreetgardens #bus #edinburgh #edimbourg #scotland #ecosse #writer #author #books #livres

“All for the Ladies: the Thread about Darlings, where the Older Woman could “forsake the styles of youth to select fashions that have dignity”

The following is taken from a wartime guide to Edinburgh, published by the Citizens Advice Bureau in 1940-41.

FASHIONS FOR THE OLDER WOMAN. To-day, when a woman finds she must forsake the styles of youth to select fashions that have dignity as their key-note, she will find in her quest for appropriate clothes that here requirements are happily anticipated at Darling’s. There are Gowns, Coats and Accessories for her specially, in which elegance and comfort are well allied to a wise economy. DARLING’S “ALL FOR THE LADIES” PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH.

Sir William Young Darling CBE FRSE LLD MC (1885-1962) joined the family drapery business in 1922, which was located at 124-5 Princes Street, where the New Look store now is and advanced to become its Director. He was a member of the Corporation of the City of Edinburgh from 1933, made city treasurer from 1947-40 and was Lord Provost from 1941-44, for which he was awarded the customary knighthood. During wartime he was the Chief Air Raid Warden for the city from 1939-41, a period when it saw sporadic and occasionally fatal aerial attacks. Post war he was the Unionist Party (predecessor to today’s Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party) Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South from 1945-57. He was the great uncle of the late Edinburgh Central (later Southwest) Labour MP, Baron Darling of Roulanish.

A 1932 advert for the company in The Scotsman declared that their sale offerings include: Hats of Every Description, Travel Coats and Costumes, Model Afternoon and Evening Gowns, Washing Dresses, Kintwear, Blouses, Stockings, Gloves and Shoes, Lingerie and Corsets, Furs, Including Model Fur Coats, Silks, Cloths, and Tweeds.

Darling was a bit of an author; during his wartime service during the Irish War of Independence (1920-22) he was joint editor of an army newspaper called Weekly Summary. He published 5 anonymous novels in the 1930s, after which he behind to use his own name. He published a book to celebrate the centenary of the family business in 1949, “Princes Street Parade. A Century of Fashion“. I have found a few pages online from auction sales of what now seems to be a collectors item:

Published by Darling & Company. Purveyors of Merchandise for Ladies and their Daughters for THREE GENERATIONS in the Capital of Scotland

Woman. In Her Pursuit of Fashion

WHILE KINGDOMS rise and fall and new communities are born, there is one thing which is stabled through all the flux of years. Woman is always with us – Woman, with her endless search for the beautiful, the adequate and the appropriate – Woman in her pursuit of Fashion. THIS REMAINS, whatever else betides

1872. THE FEMALE FIGURE begins to find itself*1. It emerges, if only frontally, in its straight elegance, but the flounced importance remains, and a romantic atmosphere is engendered by the adoption of the bustle”

1928-1929 THE SILK STOCKING HAS ARRIVED. No longer, except in the pages of history, can a Queen assert that she has no legs! All the ladies have legs2, and how proud they are to show them!

1. I assume women didn’t have figures before 1871? ↩︎
2. Before 1927, women had wheels instead of legs and had to be moved around by men? ↩︎

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