Overlooked stories of Edinburgh, Leith & Scottish local history. Expect the unexpected: people, buildings, transport, maps & occasional attempts to be funny
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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 
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.
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. 
It was a frosty Sunday morning, between 1-130AM. Two policemen on duty paced their beat between Baillie Fyfe's Close and Paisley Close on the High Street. Sergeant Rennie crossed the road to investigate a shout. As he did so, the entire building behind him suddenly collapsed.
Once upon a time, there was a man. That man's name was James Gowans and he was a stone mason. He was also a quarry master. And a builder, an architect, engineer, railway contractor, a philanthropist and a local politician. And he was a theorist, with big ideas. 
The accident on the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway's short section of track on the south shore of the Forth took place on the evening of Sunday 8th August 1860. It would claim 4 lives, injure 6 people, and cruelly impact upon one family in particular.
Elizabeth (Bessie) Banner Watson was born in Edinburgh 1900 to Agnes Newton and Horatio Watson - a bookbinder. The family lived at 11 the Vennel, off the Grassmarket, in Bessie's own words "in the very shadow of the castle". 
Let's begin.
No, the Georgians weren't future-proofing the street corner here for a 20th century traffic engineer's filter lane. This has to do with something much more predictable than that - land disputes! π¨ββοΈπΊοΈ
Mulberrys A & B - 1 each for the British-led Gold and US-led Omaha beaches. Were temporary, prefabricated harbours to rapidly offload supplies onto land after the initial assault, until other ports could be captured. Each enclosed an area larger than the harbour of Gibraltar. 
Moira Terrace. Whoops! The Moira name comes from the village and parish in County Down. There's a few suggestions as to how it came to be named as such, perhaps from the 2nd Earl of Moira, Francis Hastings, who was one time resident of Duddingston House 
The scheme was the brainchild of Matthew Steele, a Bo'ness-born architect (whose work focused on retail and housing in an Arts & Crafts and later Moderne style and includes the Hippodrome cinema) - and John Jeffrey, a Bo'ness hotelier and burgh councillor 
h/t @NeilBriogaisean for the explanation: "rapid urbanisation left many city communities entirely unchurched. Limitations on how churches and parishes were authorised hampered "planting" churches... So Territorial churches were established to meet the need."
You see, this isn't just any old random boulder, in fact this is a very particular boulder and it's not even random, it was placed here intentionally during the landscaping of the car park for Seafield Sewage Works technical department in the late 1970s. 
