Today's auction house artefact is this measuring gauge and conversion slide rule for ropes, wires and chains issued by the "Edinburgh Roperie & Sailcloth Co., Leith"
The Roperie was established in 1750 when a number of local merchants and businessmen combined their interests into a much larger operation, and occupied a large site off of Bath Street
This advert gives you an idea of the sort of things they were making in Leith
It became part of the British Ropes conglomerate in the 1920s, which was formed with the purpose of consolidating the British industry into a larger, more efficient concern
The Roperie employed over 1,000 people at its peak, including a lot of women (as spinning and weaving mills often did). It was heavy and dangerous work, with unguarded machinery everywhere and the ever-present silent danger of an atmosphere laden with fibres
There are some great photos over on "Edinburgh Collected". This one shows a rope walk (where the individual fibres were combined into the ropes) in 1906 and claims it is one of the "6th longest in the world".
We can also see the trademark of an X with E. R. Co. and the date 1750 and also some of the brand names of their produts; "Rising Sun", "Erasco", "Thistle", "Sovereign" etc.
Another 1906 image from Edinburgh Collected here, showing a view over the works looking north from Leith Links towards the Forth.
Until the mid-Victorian period, Leith was always critically short of clean water (despite the river running through it), therefore the Roperie had established a mill at Malleny, north of Balerno, to undertake the initial processing and bleaching of fibres
Here we see the company's steam lorry in 1906 leaving the works with a full load of packed balls of twine (pic from Edinburgh Collected)
"The absolute Guarantee of this company goes with every ball of twine it issues"
We can see from this page in the 1906 company publication just how wide a range of products they made, and from their offices around the country and world just quite how big a player they were globally. (pic Edinburgh Collected)
Here we see the bleaching green, where the dyed fabrics and fibres were dried. The women do the work as a foreman in bunnet "supervises". The looming presence in the background are the fertiliser and chemical works of Salamander Street. (pic = Edinburgh Collected)
The company celebrated its bicentennial in 1950 (as part of British Ropes), and investment was made to move onto production of synthetic ropes (pic = Edinburgh Collected)
But the writing was on the wall; the works were still old and antiquated, these 1965 images (again, Edinburgh Collected) show just how little some of the process was changed in hundreds of years.
The Roperie closed some time shortly after that, and the site was then taken over by the Leith company of Macdonald & Muir, whisky bottlers and blenders who are better known as the parent company of The Glenmorangie.
Bath Road, or as it was now known, Salamander Place, became the HQ and bottling and distribution plant for the company now known as Glenmorangie until they left in 1993 and headed for Livingston.
The site lay vacant before being snapped up by property speculators who demolished everything and then went bust in 2008 during the financial crisis. It then took the best part of another 10 years for things to get moving again and the final phase of redevelopment is imminent
The same spot and view in 2008 vs. 2014 vs. 2019
You will notice that one of the developers has branded its block "The Ropeworks" and the street names include the Ropemaker Stret, Sailmaker Road and Chandler Crescent.
Fans of Trainspotting 2 may recognise Sailmaker Road
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The derailment by strikers of the Flying Scotsman on May 10th 1926 has meant a much more serious and fatal rail accident in Edinburgh later that same day which claimed 3 lives and injured many has been somewhat overlooked 🧵👇🚂
The 1:06PM train from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Edinburgh hit a goods train being shunted across its path at St. Margaret's Depot just west of the tunnel under London Road. Due to the General Strike, most signal boxes were unmanned and only a rudimentary signalling system was running
The busy but confined St. Margaret's depot was on both sides of the LNER East Coast Mainline as it approached Edinburgh, with Piershill Junction for Leith and north Edinburgh to its east and the 60 yard tunnel under London Road constraining it to the west.
It's been hard to find time recently for any in-depth threading, but I think tonight we can sneak in the story of the lesser-known Leith shipyard of Ramage & Ferguson, builders of luxury steam mega-yachts to the Victorian and Edwardian elites. ⛵️🧵👇
In its working life from 1877 to 1934, the Ramage & Ferguson yard built 269 ships: 80, almost 1/3 of the total, were luxury steam yachts, built mainly to the designs of the 3 most prominent yacht designers in the world. It became the go-to shipyard for the rich and famous
When I say yachts, don't think about those little plastic things bobbing around in marinas these days. We're talking about multi-hundred (up to two thousand!) ton wooden and steel palaces, fitted out to the standards of ocean liners
As promised / threatened, there now follows a thread about the origins and abolition of the Tawse as the instrument of discipline in Scottish teaching. So lets start off with the Tawse - what is it and how did it evolve? 🧵👇
"Tawis" or "tawes" is a Scots word going back to c. 16th c., a plural of a leather belt or strap. In turn this came from the Middle English "tawe", leather tanned so as to keep it supple. Such devices were long the favoured instrument of corporal punishment in Scottish education
In 1848, George Mckarsie sued Archibald Dickson, schoolmaster of Auchtermuchty, for assaulting his son without provocation with a tawse "severely on the head, face and arms to the effusion of his blood". He was awarded a shilling but had to pay all expenses!
This pub has been in the news for the wrong reasons recently, but despite appearances it's a very important pub; a surviving example of only a handful of such interwar hostelries built in #Edinburgh - the Roadhouse. And these 9 pubs have a story to tell. Shall we unravel it?🧵👇
The short version of the Roadhouse story is thus: a blend of 1930s architecture and glamour used by the licensed trade to attract a new generation of sophisticated, Holywood-inspired, car-driving drinkers. That's partly true, but not the full story here
To understand how Edinburgh got its roadhouses we have to go back to 1913 when the Temperance movement was at the peak of its power and the Temperance (Scotland) Act was passed. This was also known as the Local Veto Act as it allowed localities to force referendums on going "dry"
In 1839, Dr. Thomas Smith of 21 Duke (now Dublin) Street in #Edinburgh tried on himself a purified extract of "Indian Hemp" - Cannabis sativa. He "gave an interesting account of its physiological action!". He was most probably the first person in Scotland to get high.
The medicinal and psychoactive properties of "Indian Hemp" had only just been introduced to Western medicine that year by Irish doctor William Brooke O'Shaughnessy, so it's unlikely anyone had done so before.
Cannabis seeds were advertised for sale in Edinburgh in the Caledonian Mercury as far back as 1761 (apply to the Gardener at Hermitage House in Leith), but these probably refer to Hemp: Cannabis sativa. 🌱
Between 1950 and 1973, #Edinburgh built 77 municipal, multi-storey housing blocks (of 7 storeys or more), containing 6,084 flats across 968 storeys. So as promised, I've gone and made a spreadsheet inventory of them all. Let's have a look at them chronologically 🧵👇
1950-51 saw the first such building - the 8 storey Westfield Court with 88 flats (and a nursery on the roof!) Built by local builders Hepburn Bros, it was heavily inspired by London's Kensal House by Maxwell Fry. It was a bit of a 1-off though and is rather unique in the city.
There then followed a series of experimental mid-rise blocks, variations on a theme, as a rather conservative local administration (headed by the Progressive Party) tried to work out what it wanted to do regards high-rise housing post-war.