Andy Arthur Profile picture
Feb 3 18 tweets 7 min read
Today's ESPC house of historical interest is a flat in this curious, mock Tudorbethan house at 1 Belford Road above the Dean Village.
The insides are almost entirely modern and not much to write home about, but the views are pretty.
Now split up into 3 flats/offices, it's quite a remarkable (and more than a little bonkers) structure.
And just what is that impressed motif in the stucco with a caligraphy H, and thistles and dragons?
The building was built in 1891, the architect was Sir George Washington Browne (1853-1939, who would go on to do Edinburgh's Caledonian Hotel.)
The house was built for Charles Martin Hardie, RSA, a fashionable and successful artist known for paintings of Scottish life and also portraits of Robert Burns and Walter Scott. Hardie (1858-1916) was a native of East Lothian
The "H" in the render is Hardie's initial. The thistle is for Scotland and the eagle (which I think called a dragon!) is for his first wife, Mary Lewis, an American. He divorced her in 1895 after she "ran off with an actor".
The house, Lynedoch House, when it was built, also had stables in the basement levels on Bell's Brae for the business of "Cabbie Stewart", the local personality who built the rambling fantasy pile of Kirkbrae House (CC © kim traynor via Geograph)
It was built on the site of the Drumsheugh Toll cottage, next to the original Dean Free Church. It looks to me like that bay window in the old cottage was re-used in the later house. The toll became surplus to requirements when the Queensferry Rd. was redirected along Dean Bridge
(last pic by Thomas Begbie, 1887 from the Cavaye collection of the Edinburgh City Libraries) capitalcollections.org.uk/view-item?key=…
This 1902 picture (Edinburgh Photographic Society collection of Edinburgh City Libraries) shows Lynedoch House, and that it was originally covered head-to-toe in render, not just the lower course. On the other side of the Free Church is the Drumsheugh baths.
Those 3 buildings in a row give a particularly un-Edinburgh scene. The tower of the house nicely mirrors that of the Norman-style church. By this time, Hardie no longer seems to be living there as his address is listed in the post office directory as Shandwick Place.
By this time, Dean Free Church had a new and more splendid redstone church at the other end of the road. I'm not sure how long the old building stayed in religious use, but it was for many years used by a joiner I think, before being demolished and is still a gap site.
A 2008-2020 Streetview comparison shows the passage of time, vegetation and weather on the steep slope have not been kind to the abandoned plot.
Of Lynedoch House, the ground floors are now offices and the west parts of the first floor are occupied by the Edinburgh Society of Musicians who have a recital room, bar, lounge and artists' rooms there edinburghsocietyofmusicians.co.uk
It was listed in 1970, Category B britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/200370826-drum…
And if you look closely above the front door (now no. 2 Belford Road)
Might be useful to include the property listing here if you want a nosy around inside. As I say though, don't expect many original features; espc.com/property/1-bel…

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More from @cocteautriplets

Feb 3
I can disagree with Living Streets sometimes, but the point here is sound. The design is unnecessarily complex and unsatisfactory, it's a "worst of both worlds", building in conflict and risk. The suggested change is quite simple and beneficial to both cyclists and pedestrians
The trams project has a *very* long history of we-know-best-ism. For years and years they have been coming up with drawings and proposals which are quite frequently head-scratching and bonkers.
Why not move that planting 1.5 metre towards the road and make a single, wider cycle lane, segregated from the pavement by the bus-stops where it's busiest? Particularly as it is the downhill (i.e. faster) lane which is being run right past where the biggest crowds will be.
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Feb 2
For whatever reason I decided to try and express our annual household gas usage (heating, hot water and cooker hob, family of 3) in Range Rover terms, and it's equivalent to 3,630 miles driven in a 3.0l diesel 2021 Range Rover
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A "hybrid" SUV like the Lexus RX will get you about 4,611 miles, or 62% of a year's average motoring.
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Jan 27
My new book is really, *really* interesting, not just about school buildings but about the social history that they go hand in hand with. A real work of labour and love of someone who (I think) spent their life working in Education.
There are distinct phases in school building programmes, as those charged with the provision of schools responded to legislation and the societal pressures at the time. What is very relevant to the current day is the effort they went to in responding to infectious diseases.
This became something of a guiding obsession in the period between WW1 and WW2 as the physical structure and design of schools was brought into service as a weapon in the war against infections diseases such as TB, cholera, typhus etc.
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Jan 27
Teasers. (Yes, I have been working on this off and on for the best part of 5 months)
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Obviously many, many features have had to be rationalised and simplified and while it's generally geographically faithful where possible, it's a schematic at heart so some places are in the "wrong" location. Junction directions are faithful, even if simplified.
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Dec 29, 2021
One thing that always fascinates me, as you probably know by now, is how a place name evolves over time, from century to century and map to map, and how the local pronunciation of the name either leads this or follows it. This morning my eye was caught by "Cammo". 🧵👇
Cammo was formerly a grand house and estate to the west of Edinburgh, now a local park / nature reserve finding itself being swallowed up by suburbification where the fields are replaced by car dependent new build estates with evocative names like "Cammo Meadows"
Cammo almost sounds biblical to my ear. You can imagine it sitting alongside Canaan or Jericho in the old testament. It's an old name indeed, but not quite *that* old, and is recorded on a charter in 1296 as Cambo or Cambok.
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Dec 28, 2021
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Gourlay proceeded too fast in the circumstances and passed semaphore signals which with the weight of snow on them had dropped from the danger to the clear position - but which he should still have treated as being at danger and passed with all caution.
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