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ROUND AND ROUND IN CIRCLES

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Following a second round of public consultations in late November, we await with interest a new planning application from Ediston and Orion Capital Managers to develop the site bounded by Dundas Street, Eyre Place, King George V Park and Fettes Row/Royal Crescent.

We expect to see latest proposals for the New Town Quarter later this month.

Local resident, playwright, poet and Edinburgh's first makar Stewart Conn has lived alongside the disruptive demolition here since work began in 2022.

ALAN TAYLOR’S BOURGEOIS EDINBURGH

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Charlie Ellis recounts the launch of a new social appraisal of Scotland’s capital city

 

Most books on Edinburgh emphasise its historic and architectural qualities, especially the eccentric eruption of building which constitutes its Old Town. There are not many books which look at Edinburgh in a more socially analytical way. David McCrone’s Who Runs Edinburgh? (EUP 2022) is an excellent exception.

IN AT THE SHARPE END

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Local author Rosslyn MacPhail’s biography of her great great grandfather Captain John Orr (1789–1879) was published in October and will be launched later this month in Edinburgh Castle. 

 

Based on a previously unseen campaign diary and letters, From Fighting Napoleon to the Scottish Military Academy recounts Orr’s active army career in the Peninsular campaign from 1811 to 1814 (Salamanca, Burgos and the Pyrenees) and then at Quatre Bras and Waterloo (1815), where he was wounded in the knee and later pensioned off. 

 

INDUSTRIAL HALL (11)

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The final round  

We now enter the last days of the Industrial Hall, Edinburgh’s first purpose-built exhibition space on Annandale Street.  

No amount of roller-skating stunts, Christmas carnivals, circus troupes, galloping Cossacks and smoke-shrouded boxing collisions could disguise the fact that Scotland’s economy in the postwar Depression of the early and mid 1920s could not sustain a commercial venture of this kind.

RAIN AND REMEMBRANCE IN ROSEBANK CEMETERY

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In wet conditions yesterday, local resident David Harrison led a tour of Rosebank Cemetery to look at some of the graves there erected and maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

 

There are 273 individuals dating from the First World War remembered here, their deaths occurring between the start of hostilities in 1914 and the formal conclusion on completion of peace treaties after 1918 (the so-called dates of responsibility). 

 

INDUSTRIAL HALL (10)

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The end is nigh 

As 1925 drew to a close, rumours about the future of the Annandale Street Industrial Hall, Edinburgh's first purpose-built exhibition space were confirmed when the proprietors decided to sell the property.

 

Against all evidence, they insisted that the space was capable of supporting its original commercial purpose.

 

PROGRESS ON CANON STREET

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Work on 1–3 Canon Street appears to be progressing well, with the new roof taking shape in damp conditions yesterday.

 

Thistle Property Group's plans to redevelop Canon House and build new housing behind it (18/07826/FUL) were granted planning permission in 2018, with minor variations made to the proposal since.

 

Here’s what it looks like along Eyre Place just now …

INDUSTRIAL HALL (9)

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Too big, too small, too expensive … the problem with white elephants

As we saw last week, owing to the destruction by fire of the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow, the prestigious Scottish Motor Trade Association switched its annual motor show to the Industrial Hall and Waverley Market for the week of 13–21 November 1925.

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