À la recherche des pints perdus

Dear Spurtle

I remember the dairy in that location well [Breaking news, 23.4.14].

It had a milk machine outside from which you could buy milk 24 hours a day. No such service now exists, although there are some 24 hr shops. The service was used by those of us walking home from the various venues in the wee small hours.  

Milk was hugely promoted in those days, with a blonde girl called Zoe Newton urging us to 'Drinka pinta milka day'. Her picture was in adverts everywhere.

More recently, I often wondered what happened to her until I read that she was the wife of one of the Barclay twins.

The Spurtle article goes on to talk about the Dummy, and makes mention that it had a dairy in Grove Street and that Sean Connery worked for them.  The Grove Street Dairy was part of the store (i.e. St Cuthbert's) and Sean Connery did in fact work for them as he lived just across the road.  He actually delivered milk to Fettes College where James Bond was supposedly schooled.  Going on to play Bond so well must have amused him with the Fettes connection.

St Cuthbert’s also delivered milk to the Bellevue area with their horses and carts, and were the last dairy to use them.  A photograph was taken in Bellevue Place with the last of the milk horses on its last day, and this can be found in some E News publications [or in the excellent website Edin Photo].   

The Dummy had premises in Bryson Road behind the tenements at 65 Harrison Road. It was there they kept their horses and carts, and then when they stopped using horses, electric milk floats. They covered the city with them and this included the Bellevue area.  

The Dummy had a shop in Bellevue Road and milk was delivered by local young people, before school, using barrows with large wheels. This made them easy to push and very stable. There were a lot of those barrows so they did deliver a lot of milk locally.  After the shop closed during the 1950s, the deliveries were made by the electric milk floats.

Jim Suddon

[Fife] 

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There was also a milk machine on Princes Street.

Thank you. I imagine there must also have been quite a few udders.

You have a good pint there.