Our account of Edinburgh's first purpose-built, permanent exhibition space on Annandale Street continues in early 1924.
On 2 January, a record crowd of 26,500 people attended the World's Fair and Carnival in the Industrial Hall (today's Lothian Buses depot) over the course of one day.
The following account is from the Scotsman, 3 January 1924..
One week ago, we began this series with a
Edinburgh Council and Edinburgh street performers have recently been discussing how to better manage street performances in the city centre.
The problem of amplified music (Issue 334, p. 3) may be comparatively new, but the difficulty of preventing music-related nuisance has troubled Edinburgh authorities for years.
From the Edinburgh Evening News, 19 January 1904.
The new East branch of the Edinburgh Public Library, situated at the corner of M'Donald Road and Leith Walk, was opened last night, when Sir Herbert Maxwell delivered an address to a large gathering in the reading-room.
Public libraries have been squeezed and under threat for many decades; a manifestation of a long-running assault on the public domain, writes Charlie Ellis. Thankfully, many in this city seem to be in good health. One of Edinburgh’s busiest public libraries, McDonald Road, is currently celebrating its 120th anniversary. They have been commemorating this with exhibitions and a series of talks.
A cautionary tale for visitors, from the Edinburgh Evening News, 3 Oct 1898.
The Edinburgh detective staff are at present investigating a case in which a young tailor, belonging to the Isle of Skye, got swindled out of close upon £10 by means of the confidence trick, in Picardy Place, on last Friday night.
The Living Memory Association, based at Ocean Terminal, has recently been given a Heritage Fund award, writes project worker Russell Clegg. We’re using it to start a new reminiscence project – ‘Away for the Messages’ – on shops and retail history in and around Edinburgh.
We are looking for folk to contribute their stories, lived experiences and indeed photos and shop-based ephemera to the project (we can scan these and include in our current exhibition).
Recent work to restore the exterior basement stonework of 19 Hart Street has revealed traces of an old shop frontage.
On the Broughton Place elevation it reads, ‘CONFECTIONS—M.T. SCOTT—CIGARETTES’. Round the corner on Hart Street, we think we can decipher a palimpsest of ‘GROCERIES’ and ‘CONFECTIONER’.
To discover more about the place’s history, Spurtle embarked on a tumultuous rummage through censuses, statutory registers, valuation rolls, Post Office directories and local newspapers. Here’s what we found.
For the last 10 years, Spurtle has been photographing the street-name signs of Spurtleshire.
The aim has been to record their variety of design, aesthetic appeal, interesting history, and the effects of time and human interaction.
Today, we concentrate on the haunting presence of Spurtleshire street names long since passed away.