#westport — Public Fediverse posts

CT chef will test the limits of heat with a new dessert https://www.diningandcooking.com/2801333/ct-chef-will-test-the-limits-of-heat-with-a-new-dessert/ #agriculture #artistic #BigE #Commercial #Dessert #developments #food #FoodTopics #GlutenFree #GrabAndGoProducts #habaneros #Industrial #innovative #Jalapeno #lattes #MexicanHabaneroHotChocolateCremeBrûlée #OverTheTopFood #PlacesToGo #restaurant #RockyHill #ShearwaterCoffeeRoasters #ThingsToDo #VietnameseCoffee #westport #WideExposure

CT chef will test the limits of heat with a new dessert https://www.diningandcooking.com/chefs/5879/ #Agriculture #artistic #BigE #Chef #commercial #Dessert #developments #food #GlutenFree #GrabAndGoProducts #habaneros #industrial #innovative #jalapeno #lattes #MexicanHabaneroHotChocolateCremeBrûlée #OverTheTopFood #PlacesToGo #restaurant #RockyHill #ShearwaterCoffeeRoasters #ThingsToDo #VietnameseCoffee #Westport #WideExposure

Hype for the Future 251/284: Hamilton and Essex Counties, New York

https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2026/07/09/hype-for-the-future-251-284-hamilton-and-essex-counties-new-york/

Am I witnessing the beginning of another 90s Smoothie Bubble?

#westport #mayo #ireland

Come for the rock cake, stay for the Sushi.

SuperValu, I hardly know u

#westport
#mayo
#ireland

Westport has shown up and showed OUT! 🌈✨ All the amazing businesses who dressed their windows with Pride and are helping spread the love, colour and community spirit for Mayo Pride this weekend 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️

Via Mayo Pride https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1GJz3EEbVb/

#mastodaoine #Pride #MayoPride #lgbt #Mayo #Westport #LGBTQIA #ireland #LGBTQIArights #QueerIreland #queer

Throwback Saturday

Looking for a snap with an #edge theme I thought of this shot from the west coast of Ireland from 2019. Taken in the #Westport area on the edge of Europe.

#photography #landscape #Ireland #scape

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: Westport, early morning.

#Westport #ireland #architecture #bridge #river

doolough valley - mayo by JimmyPierce

https://tmblr.co/Z7VXvxi_M7Bh0a00

#doolough #louisburgh #leenane #westport #mayo #ontheroad #flickr #thingsdavidlikes

#Auroraborealis seen tonight outside #Westport #Mayo #Ireland

A Dunlin backing off a bit from spray being thrown up by a Sanderling at Gooseberry.

#photography #birds #wildlife #birdphotography #nature #masswildlife #westport #massachusetts #wildmassachusetts #massachusettswildlife

Sunset at Gooseberry Island this past Friday.

#photography #westport #massachusetts #surf #sunset

Dunlin taking a little flight at Gooseberry Island.

#photography #birds #wildlife #birdphotography #nature #masswildlife #westport #massachusetts #wildmassachusetts #massachusettswildlife

A Dunlin getting in a little stretch at Gooseberry Island.

#photography #birds #wildlife #birdphotography #nature #masswildlife #westport #massachusetts #wildmassachusetts #massachusettswildlife

A Black-bellied Plover (with a few friends) near the point at Gooseberry Island.

#photography #birds #wildlife #birdphotography #nature #masswildlife #westport #massachusetts #wildmassachusetts #massachusettswildlife

A Surf Scoter coming in for a landing.

#photography #birds #wildlife #birdphotography #nature #masswildlife #westport #massachusetts #wildmassachusetts #massachusettswildlife

A Dunlin stalking the shallow water on Gooseberry Island.

#photography #birds #wildlife #birdphotography #nature #masswildlife #westport #massachusetts #wildmassachusetts #massachusettswildlife

A Ruddy Turnstone at Gooseberry Island in Westport, MA.

#photography #birds #wildlife #birdphotography #nature #masswildlife #westport #massachusetts #wildmassachusetts #massachusettswildlife

“Preposterously Large and a Potential Rival to the Castle rock”: the thread about Argyle House

Brutalist buildings are the Marmite of architecture – passionately loved or loathed. It’s easy to assume that the term comes from their brutal appearance (adj. savage; violent; unpleasant or harsh) and not the French béton brut for raw concrete. One such specimen was much in the news in Edinburgh yesterday when it was announced that plans had been lodged for the demolition and replacement of Argyle House in the West Port area of the city. But while other news sources make much click capital out of it having briefly appeared in some Netflix police show or another, here at Threadinburgh I prefer instead to go down the rabbit hole of the hows, whys and whats of this much-critiqued building of the moment.

Argyle House takes its name from its developer; Argyle Securities Ltd. This was an Edinburgh-based property development company that had been formed in 1960 to take advantage of the wave of prominent civic redevelopment schemes sweeping the nation in that decade. Its chairman and managing director was Meyer (Mike) Oppenheim, a prominent local businessman, philanthropist and managing director of theJames Grant & Co. (West) chain of furniture stores.

Meyer had done very well for himself in life and he and his family lived at the historic Whitehouse in Barnton, that quiet and leafy quarter of the city to where the real money retreats behind tall hedges and well manicured lawns and driveways.

In October 1960 it was publicly announced that Oppenheim had acquired the Royal Lyceum Theatre from Howard & Wyndham. This coincided with a plan first mooted in 1956 to replace the adjacent Synod Hall on Castle Terrace, whose occupants included Poole’s Synod cinema, with a new opera and concert hall for the city.

Oppenheim wasn’t really that interested in running a theatre – instead he came up with his own, rival million-pound plan to transform the block into a “magnificent centre… for the Edinburgh Festival“. This would replace both the Synod Hall and Lyceum with a multi-purpose performance, entertainment and commercial venue replete with restaurants and a hotel.

The Town Council approved his scheme in 1962 with a promise to lease it back off of Oppenheim once it was complete. But as a businessman known for sticking scrupulously to budget and deadlines, he soon tired of rising costs and delays from the meddling of officialdom and walked away from the whole thing. Instead he gifted the Lyceum to the city in 1964. The city tried to take up the opera house scheme on its own and had the Synod Hall demolished in 1966, but each of its multiple subsequent attempts faltered and instead an ugly gap was left on the Castle Terrace site for almost 40 years.

Before that scheme had collapsed, in 1961 Argyle Securities acquired the long-established Edinburgh firm of garage proprietors, Rolls-Royce body builders, car hirers and undertakers John Croall & Son for £300,000, substantially outbidding a number of other offers that had wished to take it over as a going concern. Like the Lyceum, Oppenheim wasn’t actually interested in owning a garage for the purpose of running it, he was much more interested in the plot of land on the corner of Castle Terrace where Croall’s had their main works.

In 1953 Edinburgh had adopted its City Development Plan which had re-zoned much of the decrepit old housing of the West Port and High Riggs area for commercial purposes. This made what was then almost worthless residential land potentially very valuable to commercial developers; it was protected from rebuilding the housing and could be easily acquired on the cheap. Meyer Oppenheim was once such developer of the moment. Times were good – Argyle Securities had quickly gained a reputation for completing projects on time, on budget and for a handsome profit. It floated on the stock exchange in 1962 with a market capitalisation of £400,000 at which time it owned a portfolio worth some £843,000. Argyle added to the Croall’s site by buying up adjacent condemned residential properties between the West Port and King’s Stables Road Lane and formed a grand new redevelopment scheme. This would become the eponymous Argyle House and was approved by the Corporation Planning Committee in September 1966.

The architects were Michael Laird & Partners and the principal contractors were James Laidlaw & Sons of Rutherglen, probably best known for the enigmatic St. Peter’s Seminary at Cardross. Curiously, Laidlaw’s Edinburgh office at 24 Manor Place was shared with Argyle Securities. But this was no coincidence – Oppenheim had bought the firm in 1964 as he sought to vertically integrate his operations.

To mark the commencement of work, Laidlaws took out a half page spread in the Scotsman extolling the worthiness of their new construction.

Argyle House. A new building for the New Town will be worthy of the fine architectural traditions in this unique area

To finance the £1,500,000 development, loans were provided by Standard Life Assurance who also bought the site and leased it back to the developer for 175 years. At this time Croall’s business operations were sold to new owners and relocated to Corstorphine. Demolition commenced in 1966 with construction starting the following year. Argyle already had occupants lined up, a sixty-three year lease having been agreed with the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works for the entire building. This would allow the centralisation of existing government departments in the city including the headquarters of the Department of Health and Social Security and the Department of Employment and Department of the Environment in Scotland and offices of HM Stationery Office.

A two-storey L-plan block on Castle Terrace and Lady Lawson Street would contain public facilities such as enquiry counters, a job centre, and meeting rooms for the DHSS. This lower section, which the untrained eye can mistake for a separate building entirely, was faced in Blaxter stone with the pair of public entrances dominated by massive abstract concrete reliefs by George Garson: “bound to cause discussion and some bewilderment… if they have a message it is that the ways of authority are mysterious and that the symbolism of government through sculpture is a happily dead art“.

Rising up behind this were the two J-shaped office towers which extended down to eleven-storeys at their deepest point and were connected by a central service core. Their construction made use of the Bison prefabricated large panel system (LPS) which promised reduced costs and quick, easy construction but resulted in a highly repetitive and monotonous “impersonal egg-box”external appearance of the 4.5 ton wall slab panels.

Argyle House was completed on schedule and on budget, as was the Oppenheim way, and was officially opened by John Silkin MP, Minister of Public Buildings and Works, on July 22nd 1969. At this time, with a floor plan totalling over 250,000 square feet of office space, it was both Edinburgh and Scotland’s largest commercial office and could house between 1,400 and 1,700 civil servants. At 320,000 square feet, the equally visually controversial New St. Andrew’s House at the St. James Centre took the city’s number one spot the following year (although it would not be occupied until 1974).

Colin McWilliam, the Scotsman’s architecture critic (“he admired modernism, but his taste was catholic and his judgement sound“) was quite taken with the end result and tried valiantly to compare the building’s scale and architectural effect with Playfair’s Georgian Royal Terrace on the Calton Hill. He summarised it as:

A huge three-dimensional balance-sheet set up specifically to show the maximum profit to investors.

He gushed over the “pencil-slim margins in limestone-concrete” and “backwards splay of the dark flint facing below each window“. His main complaint was that too much had been crammed in to too small a site, resulting in a building that was “preposterously large and a potential rival to the Castle rock“.

McWilliam hoped that subsequent development would show a similar “high level of care in layout and detail” so that they would “not be a denial of Edinburgh’s own character” and result in the “hell of over-intensive commercial use, of which London already [held] so many examples“. Given much of the output of the Edinburgh architecture scene since, his hopes were probably in vain.

Postscript. Architectural champions of Argyle House, Malcolm Fraser and the Fraser/Livingstone practice have proposed how a low-intensity intervention could make the existing building fit for the next 60 years of its life with a much reduced cost and environmental impact.

After Argyle House, Oppenheim’s next big scheme was through another company he controlled, the Scottish Homes Investment Company, buying over the rights to develop the private enterprise “new town” of Dalgety Bay, across the Forth in Fife. Laidlaw would make its mark on the city by constructing the Royal Commonwealth Pool in time for the 1970 Games. Meyer Oppenheim retired in 1971 at the age of 66, having grown the value of Argyle’s investments five-fold, its market capitalisation three-fold and its profits twelve-fold in a little over a decade. Standard Life Assurance, his long-term financial backer, bought over much of his shareholding and he retired to an active life of philanthropy. As well as the Lyceum and the vista of Argyle House, one of his lasting gifts to the city was founding and endowing the Water of Leith Walkway Trust in 1976. He passed away in 1982 at the age of 77, a year after the first section of what would become a fifteen mile walkway was opened to the public.

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

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

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Explore the new Delamar Westport, featuring Christian Siriano-designed suites, Mediterranean food

WESTPORT – When guests …
#dining #cooking #diet #food #mediterranean #MediterraneanDiet #MediterraneanFood #ChristianSiriano #connecticut #DelamarHotel #DelamarHotels #DelamarSouthport #fashionsketches #interiordesigner #Mediterranean #mediterraneanfood #westport
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2339047/explore-the-new-delamar-westport-featuring-christian-siriano-designed-suites-mediterranean-food/

A Ruddy Turnstone on the rocks at Gooseberry Island in Westport, MA.

#photography #birds #wildlife #birdphotography #nature #masswildlife #westport #massachusetts #wildmassachusetts #massachusettswildlife

A Semipalmated Plover at Gooseberry Island.

#photography #birds #wildlife #birdphotography #nature #masswildlife #westport #massachusetts #wildmassachusetts #massachusettswildlife

The thread about Bread Street and whether its name has anything to do with bread or baking

This thread was originally written and published in October 2021.

In October 2021, a certain celebrity chef opened a high-end chain restaurant in Edinburgh called “Bread Street”. Confusingly, it’s on St. Andrew Square, and nowhere near Edinburgh’s Bread Street.

The real Bread Street is on the other side of the city centre, between the West Port and Fountainbridge. But why was it called Bread Street? Let’s see if we can find out more. But first let’s understand some of the history of the street and the area… The West Port was the old western gateway to the city of Edinburgh and lends its name to the current road here, the principal route into the city from the west and southwest before the middle of the 18th century. On either side of the road lay the small burgh of Wester Portsburgh – no prizes for guessing how it got its name! This settlement was an partially independent jurisdiction which grew up right outside the city walls.

Looking at a map of the early 19th century we can see the “Three Great Roads” into the city; from Falkirk, Stirling and Linlithgow in yellow, known as Orchardfield; from Lanark, Glasgow and Mid Calder in Green, Fountainbridge; and from Penicuik, Peebles and Biggar in Blue, Cowfeeder Row. In Orange is the high street of Portsburgh and in pink is the West Port itself, where the gate once stood.

It is Orchardfield that would become Bread Street, but not until 1824, when it begins to be mentioned in newspapers. The old name is one of some antiquity, recorded as far back as a charter of King David I in 1120 where it is referred to as the King’s Garden. It’s a fairly simple etymology, when taken with the nearby King’s Barns, these were Royal orchards and market gardens for Edinburgh Castle, and barns for the storage of produce. A map of 1784 by Alexander Kincaid shows that the although there were a buildings lining these roads at the end of the 18th century, the areas was still largely pastoral in character, covered in orchards, fields and market gardens. Ainslie’s map of 1804, as seen above, again shows much of the land remains undeveloped. But by now the city is beginning to creep more visibly westwards along the roads..

The town plans from 1804 to 1831 show a range of development proposals for this area. This latter map, by John Wood, shows that Bread Street has now acquired its name and a blocks of new tenements have been completed (in grey shading) along Lothian Road and the south side of Bread Street, and further blocks are planned (red shading). This plan would never be fully realised; the buildings along Lothian Road were completed, the space for “Brunswick Place” was left, but the public square never really materialised, and only the block between Grindlay Street, Bread Street and Lothian Road would be completed, and to a different and less formal layout.

By the time of the first detailed Ordnance Survey town plan, in 1849, Bread Street is formed more or less as it is to this day, although to its eastern end it is called Orchardfield Street – so we can suppose that whatever Bread Street is named for is centred around its western end. Note too that the individual blocks of Lothian Road still have their earlier names, the part here being Downie Place; the Road referred to the whole length, a common Edinburgh practice.

But why Bread Street? Well, there is perhaps a clue in the name of the confluence of the “Three Great Roads” at Portsburgh, an area known traditionally as the Main Point; or to a different sort of person (invariably a tourist) as the pubic triangle (on account of the triangular portion of land, aptly called a gushet in Scots, and the sort of entertainment offered at the bars on the corers of the street here).

You see, in the very olden days, Main was the name given to the best bread (that’s Main, not Plain breid!). This is from the French Paindemain, which in Scots became Maine.

It is … ordanit that na baxter baik na mayne breid to sell fra hine furthwart, saiffing allenarly at Witsounday1

Edinburgh Burgh Records, 1443

1. English – It is ordained that no baker bakes any main bread to sell from henceforth, except only at Whitsunda) ↩︎

Was this an area where bread was once baked? It’s a nice idea – although we have no specific record that this is the case. It would not have been where the city of Edinburgh baked its bread, given it was outside the city walls and therefore the restrictions of its trades incorporations. The area name is recorded in a post-office directory of 1775, and by the end of the 18th century a baker was established here and apparently too a “bread society”. It may be all to convenient however, as I think by this time the word main for the best bread had fallen out of favour for the best part of a century and had been replaced by the concepts of plain and fancy bread to distinguish between cheaper and more expensive loafs.

Whether or not the bread theory holds any weight, it should be noted that the Main Point was the name of the building, not a reference to it being at the point of the two gushets (Gushet. n. Scots. “A triangular piece of land, esp. one lying between two adjacent properties“) formed by Bread Street, East Fountainbridge and Cowfeeder Row. This spot was long the location of a toll house known as the Tupenny Custom. This toll has nothing to do with the local placename of Tollcross. It also has nothing to do with even a cross or a cross roads. It’s an 18th century corruption of the much older name Tollcors, a Brythonic toponym meaning a boggy hollow. It’s written as Tolcors in the 15th century and Towcroce and Tolcroce in the 16th.

Anyway even if it is fanciful that Bread Street and the Main Point are named after baking, it’s somewhat appropriate, as much of the block on the south side of Bread Street would from the late 19th century onwards, and well into the 20th, be acquired by and rebuilt for the St. Cuthbert’s Cooperative Society as a showpiece department store.

Fountainbridge is the spiritual home of the St. Cuthbert’s, named for the parish to the west of the city in which it was founded. Its original store was here, and later its administrative offices, its main bakery, its dairy, its transport department and its workshops. The litmus test of a real Edinburgher of a certain generation is to mention St. Cuthberts; if their eyes glaze over and they drift off into pleasant reminiscences for at least a few hours about getting taken there for school shoes and can still tell you their Divvy number, then you know they are the real deal. (Leithers went to Leith Provident Co-op of course.)

I’m afraid I can’t find many decent photos of Bread Street and St. Cuthberts that have appropriate permission to share, but there are loads on Scran, here (top tip, use your library card option in logon and see them all in high res) or some on Canmore, here. And the seemingly endless collection on Flickr of Mike Ashworth has this lovely promotional cover with a coloured illustration of the store (before the 1930s additions)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/3552162236/in/photolist-mipbgh-mio4Hi-mio6Jx-mio6ZH-aFev4c-2kWTNSz-kWJ9Se-6pTL5u-moR6zG-FJhwEU

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

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

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.