Posts filed under 'This Broughton Life'
The Post Office closed and reopened as a DVD shop. Then the DVD shop closed and reopened as a shop selling…well, to be honest I’m not sure what it is selling, the window display does not tempt me to cross the street let alone go through the door, but it looks like they are selling ‘gifts’. Or to put it another way, more stuff.
Edinburgh’s New Street: not a ‘retail destination’ but the graffiti wall is well worth a visit
While Scottish high street retailers call for a freeze in business rates to help them combat the recession and online sales revolution, Broughton Street is an interesting case study in the evolution of the local shopping centre. Gone are post office, jeweller’s, clock-makers and hardware store. But butcher, baker, bookshop and florist survive among cafes, bars, dress and craft (or gift) shops.
Broughton is what the city marketing department would call a successful ‘retail destination’. Oh, dear god preserve us from marketing-speak. Part of me applauds Edinburgh city council for seeing the value of bustling neighbourhoods like Broughton and Stockbridge (where, incidentally, St Stephen street is ‘Scotland’s first retail destination to win a WorldHost award for customer service‘. No, I’m not sure what that means either but look out for WorldHost signs popping up in other Edinburgh ‘town centres’ – Bruntsfield, Morningside, West End, Grassmarket and maybe Leith Walk).
Encouraging people to enjoy their neighbourhood seems a thoroughly good idea. But my soul shrinks at the very word: retail. On Scottish television last week there was a long item on the plight of the retail industry and the hope that discounts would bring crowds back to those shiny shopping malls. Watching reporters and shoppers trying to get excited about Christmas shopping in, er, shops, I had a brief out-of-planet moment. Is this where evolution has led homo sapiens: from hunter gather to farmer, from farmer to manufacturer, from manufacturers to consumer? Our purpose in life to wander the streets, arms dragged ape-like by bulging poly bags ….? Or, more likely indoors, glued to the screen, in a brave new virtual world of faceless transactions?
Is this really our best hope for the future? So much for George Osborne’s talk of rebalancing Britain’s economy from consuming to making. And latest figures suggest we can’t even shop enough to lift the country back to growth.
San Anton Market, Madrid: a place to eat, drink and meet friends after the shopping is done
While Scotland’s retailers lobby John Swinney to freeze business rates, wouldn’t it be good if policy makers saw an opportunity to do things differently? There’s so much more than shopping to the art and craft of making a prosperous town centre. Cities, like any other environment, thrive on diversity. Good shops are good for local economies but only as part of a healthy mixture of businesses.
In many European cities, visitors can explore the spcciality of the neighbourhood – lace and leather making, woodwork and weaving – and of course tourism helps to keep them going. Instead of promoting ‘retail destinations’ Edinburgh might try nurturing the distinct character and culture of different neighbourhoods. reviving and creating local workshops to display the skills of local talent.
A Berlin side street, shop and cafe combined
December 28th, 2012
A sunny morning and cafe tables are out on the pavement. Pigeons strut, seagulls soar and two women sip a breakfast smoothie by the bus stop. Slowly, oh so slowly, Rodney Street is gaining a sense of place.
It’s always been a mystery to me why Rodney Street has taken so long to discover a new identity. Sadly, while Broughton Street blossomed, brassed up and acquired a smart urban look, Rodney Street withered and almost died.
It had its own character when we first arrived. I remember pushing a pram down the hill. Past St Cuthbert’s Co-op Store to Preacher’s Patisseries of Perfection, parking the pram outside Bruce and Mary’s fish shop, emerging with newspaper-wrapped, gleaming fresh haddock to find silver coins in the pram (lucky for the new baby).
Across the street a crumbling cinema (what was it called?) was demolished to create a building site that lay waste for a long time. Food shops just about held their own when William Low, Scotland’s own supermarket chain, occupied the dip by the traffic lights. Then Tesco took over and the lights went out: Co-op and chemist closed, bakers shut up shop.
New life flickered from time to time and some of it survived. Bike shop, ski shop, cake maker and booze store are still going. The florist blooms. But somehow the street never held together as a shopping centre, as a ‘destination’ in marketing-speak. Generally it was somewhere people went through – not to – even though the old cinema waste-land filled with new flats and the flats grew old enough to acquire weather stains.
Yet this year, while recession glooms all around, suddenly there is new life in Rodney Street. It has a lot to do with eating. Between the fast food cafe and the ski shop, there’s a sandwich bar and another cafe. But nearby there’s also a gift shop, a letting agency and a chiropractor. Long may they all last.
Actually, a cinema would not go amiss.
July 29th, 2011
A couple of bees are busy burying themselves in the private parts of bright pink geraniums. I have it on good authority that ladybirds often lurk among the leaves and grasses too. Oblivious to streams of noisy traffic, nature is thriving on an island of wildness in Broughton.
It’s this “slice of wilderness in the city”, to quote John Frater who designed and planted the borders in Mansfield Place, that stops me on my way home from the corner shop. On a sunny evening flowering grasses catch the light. Something about the planting reminds me of similar free-flowing borders I admired in Berlin a couple of years ago. Not a stiff municipal bedding plant in sight.
And right enough, when I contact Plantforms, Edinburgh garden designer John Frater tells me he spent a week on what sounds like an idyllic gardening course: the Berlin Royal Garden Academy Summer School studying gardens and public spaces in the city. In English. A day with Christian Meyer – the landscape architect who has made his mark with naturalistic plantings across Berlin and many other parts of Germany – inspired John to contact the city council when he got home.
That led to the pilot scheme at Mansfield Place – “a test bed if you like” – which began last year. The aim is to show the benefits of replacing annual plants with a softer more natural scheme of perennials which last for years and, once established, need little maintenance.
It’s a small but perhaps essential step for City of Edinburgh Council and with luck it will go much further. In fact this new kind of planting is beginning to appear on urban roundabouts and city borders across the UK. Under the Sustainability Charter all local authorities must demonstrate efficient use of energy and natural resources and Parks and Gardens departments are no exception. To put it bluntly, producing millions of annual bedding plants costs too much in time, energy, water, waste – and wages.
Now Mansfield Place displays a fine mixture of perennial plants – geraniums, sedums, salvias, spring and summer bulbs – all weaving their way through beautiful waving grasses. The Scottish tufted hair grass Deschampsia cespitosa ‘Schottland’ is the star of the show. “Grasses are the backbone of the planting scheme all year round,” says John “They add height and a soft airyness that can be seen from a distance.” The mix of plants is good for biodiversity – birds, bees, beetles and butterflies – too. And the borders need only a monthly weeding.
Room for growth: John’s picture of the newly planted border last year.
So far so very good. Last year, complimentary comments to the council far outnumbered complaints. This year, as photographs show, plants are bigger and better (most of them survived the harsh winter). In fact the beds look so good I hope the council will gain confidence to let John plant up the whole of the Broughton roundabout instead of asking him to leave space for annuals (in case passers by miss those bright colours).
But that’s far from the end of the story. John, whose first degree was in ecology, has also persuaded the council to allow a more ambitious environmental trial at their nursery. As you can see on his own blog, he is now busy experimenting with seed trials on a spare plot of ground. He hopes to produce a sustainable flowering perennial cover for tricky urban areas like roadside verges and woodland edges. Again there is inspiration from Germany.
So this is a good news story with full marks to City of Edinburgh Parks and Gardens for letting it happen. I am looking forward to following the seed trials – and hope to book a place on one of John’s classes on garden design in autumn and early spring. (And maybe that Englische gartenschule in Berlin!)
July 11th, 2011
What makes the concept of World Heritage exceptional is its universal application. World Heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located UNESCO World Heritage website
So who owns the New Town? The morning after blogging about the bin bags of the New Town, I am strolling along Regent Terrace enjoying the view when I find a pile of rubbish not far from the American Consulate. As it happens there’s a group of tourists right behind me, “What a mess,” says one of them, warily stepping her way round the grot.
Coincidentally Ray was taking a picture of a pile of bags in Great King Street (below) demonstrating an attempt to prevent scavenging gulls ripping them open before the bin men get there.
Why should I care? I don’t live in Great King Street or Regent Terrace (above) where ‘kerbside sacks’ are collected on Mondays and Thursdays. I live on the edge of the New Town (even that phrase can add a few quid to value of a property ) where wheelie bins are emptied once a week.
But, at the risk of sounding obsessed, I think there are two reasons why New Town rubbish is a public issue. The first is a matter of pride. To quote UNESCO, the world heritage site belongs to all of us. Besides, Edinburgh’s World Heritage status is exploited as a tourist attraction. Tourists are encouraged to explore the elegant New Town to admire the 18th century architecture and streetscapes that had a major influence on European town planning. At present the streets don’t look so pretty on Mondays and Thursdays.
The second is more serious. At a time when council tax is frozen, when council services are up for privatisation, when funding is withdrawn from support to the most vulnerable people in our city – in short, when every penny counts – then it is simply wrong to waste money on twice weekly collections plus the extra costs of clearing up after spilt bags. Oh go on, accept communal wheelie bins, they won’t look any less aesthetically pleasing than parked cars, and a whole lot better than garbage!
Black canvas sacks hung on the railings in Gt King St, emails Ray, an attempt to beat the foxes and seagulls no doubt. But some residents still use bin bags.
June 5th, 2011
Oh contrary Edinburgh. While the people of Leith Walk are (rightly) angry with the council for messing up their street (see comments on Ray’s recent ‘rant’) round the corner residents of the posh New Town are turning their neighbourhood into a tip all by themselves.
In fact they seem determined to prevent the council from keeping their streets neat and tidy. Up the West End, according to the Evening News, householders are manning the barricades to stop the council supplying communal wheelie bins which would keep their rubbish in the right place.
Good to know Auld Reekie gets priorities right: we let bankers away with daylight robbery but take to the streets to prevent the council delivering waste bins.
Black bin bags are so much more acceptable in the parts of town where properties fetch an eye watering price (even during the recession). To be fair, Edinburgh New Town is not the only urban area to resist the arrival of the wheelie. A quick online search brings up newspapers across the UK making rubbish puns about community campaigns opposing the wheelie bin. Sometimes they make jokes without realising it: the Wimbledon Guardian (as read on BBC Radio 4 News Quiz) reported a local councillor protesting “It is nonsense to say we are trying to bring wheelie bins in by the back door”.
In Edinburgh the argument seems to be that New Town dwellers couldn’t get the bins in by the back door or out the front door either. They simply have no room for bulky bins inside or outside their well proportioned Georgian buildings. And, oh dear, communal bins in a heritage site would be far too common.
So these fine flats and houses insist on putting their rubbish out in black bags for hungry foxes and gallous gulls to rip open in search of a ready meal (imagine their disappointment on finding underwear instead) and it gets spread all over the pavement. Lovely.
The May issue of the Broughton Spurtle reported a council plan to introduce a pilot scheme for waste collection – some bins, some (gull proof) bags, some communal skips. I feared my picture of the bra might become outdated before I got round to posting it but I needn’t have worried. It does look as if garbage guerrillas are intent on keeping up the fight. Its none of my business – unless of course my (frozen) council tax is helping to pay for the extra cost of picking up their rubbish each week. But I can’t help wondering what they did before the arrival of the black bags in the days when we all had dustbins.
May 30th, 2011
I finally found James Grieve beneath a holly bush in the cemetery. At least I think the bare stone plinth marks the spot where he was buried but dense prickles prevented me from burrowing too deep. I left the graveyard with a new curiosity about the man who made such a mark in life. Why has his headstone disappeared?
The gravestone is a symbolic resting place when you are on the biographical trail. But of course the story rarely stops there. I remember the sense of satisfaction when Ray and I found the grave of Comptom MacKenzie in a sheltered corner of Barra – a surprisingly modest stone for such a flamboyant man. In another seaside cemetery much further down the west coast, I was oddly moved to find Agnes McDouall’s name on a stone covered in moss – this was the woman whose love of gardening inspired her sons to create the sub-tropical fantasy that is now Logan Botanic Garden.
In the case of James Grieve an unmarked grave seems to add an intriguing layer of mystery to the man who gave his name to an apple more than 100 years ago. His face is in the National Portrait Gallery, his name is on a plaque outside his birthplace in Peebles, James Grieve apple trees still grow in old private gardens and some new community orchards. So why is his grave unmarked?
The reason for my search was a request from John Dickie of Broughton History Society to write a short biography for the latest newsletter. Kate Love, a member of the society, had rightly thought it would be interesting to feature the once celebrated nurseryman man who lived and worked in the area between 1859 and 1924.
So that’s why I was wandering round Rosebank Cemetery, mobile phone in hand. Apart from anything else it was a wonderful excuse to explore a space where the robust character of Leith is carved in stone (ship masters and wine merchants, candle makers and brass founders, along with their less publicly celebrated wives, mothers, sisters and daughters. In the good old days, women were best defined by their relationships to men.)
Luckily I was in no hurry; it’s not always easy to find a grave in a graveyard. And the plots on the ground were not quite as neat and orderly as they looked on the map provided by the very helpful man at Mortonhall Crematorium. I got there in the end and the story will appear in the next Broughton History Newsletter. But I feel it might be just the first episode, there could be more to come. If nothing else perhaps one day we could make it easier to find James Grieve by planting an apple tree beside that holly bush.
No, neither an apple tree nor a holly bush just a terrific old tree near the Pilrig Street entrance to the cemetery. A Camperdown elm maybe?
March 8th, 2011
Does Edinburgh get the kind of Tesco it deserves? I am intrigued to find that old Tesco stories on my blog still attract new comments, curiously some of them are from people who indignantly defend the supermarket but there is an encouraging majority from people who want to support local shops.
Tonight I peered through the window of the old bed shop in Picardy Place which is being fitted up for the new Tesco Express. It’s still a building site but under bright lights you can see a handsome space that might have been all kinds of creative things. Or even a more imaginative kind of supermarket. It’s not so fanciful, take a look at what Tesco does in other parts of the world.
A few years ago Ray and I discovered that shoppers in Prague and Budapest enjoy a distinctly different kind of Tesco experience. Perhaps it has changed now but in 2007 the newly colonial retailer was almost unrecognisable in both cities and not just because of the old communist architecture.
This is the real market but Tesco was selling the same kind of sausage
In Budapest, Europe’s biggest Tesco hypermarket (then run by Yorkshireman Paul Kennedy) stocked an astonishing 90% of local produce. Likewise in Prague – where Tesco occupies a rambling old Soviet department store – the Czech supermarket sells mainly Czech goods. And the busiest part of the store by far is the area selling fresh meat, chickens with heads and feet, fish, cheese and local fruit and veg. The kind of stuff Czech people buy in markets and local shops.
Britain moans about EU regulations but rolls over backwards to accommodate US retailing culture: fast food, heavily packaged and laden with fats and sugars. In the rest of Europe even McDonalds looks and tastes better – Dougal discovered a McDonalds in Bratislava where they served delicious goats cheese salad, long before they decided to offer healthier options in Britain. (Other travellers make equally surprising discoveries)
So I am sure Edinburgh could successfully demand more and better of supermarket chains. The increasingly dysfunctional city council hides behind planning regulations but consumers, Facebook groups and even good old fashioned voters could combine to persuade both retailers and councillors to do things differently. We could start by electing a different council next year.
Meanwhile of course local residents can keep on supporting Broughton Street’s excellent independent shops where we can find almost everything we need.
Központi Vásárcsarnok, the Great Market Hall in Budapest. Wouldn’t it be great to have one of these in Edinburgh? If the City Council wants to mess about with the Assembly Rooms they could at least do it in style…
January 6th, 2011
Never look a gift horse? I’m wandering up Broughton Street in two minds. It seems churlish to complain about bright new shops opening so soon after the old businesses closed down. In the age of austerity too. But the old curmedgeon in me can’t help feeling it’s a shame there are so few shops selling things people need. How many gift shops can Broughton actually support?
Whatever happened to places where you could buy purposeful things like string and nails and steel wool; stores with floors that creaked welcome and oozed no-nonsense smells: paraffin, jeyes fluid, linseed oil and maybe just a heady whiff of glue.
When we first came here there were at least four hardware stores within walking distance, two of them in Broughton Street. There was Alec’s and a basement place on the corner where you could buy buckets and brooms and get keys cut and shoes mended (or am I rolling several shops into one). It was a long time ago, so long B&Q had not arrived in the neighbourhood, if you wanted paint and plaster board you went to Dodge City down by the Water of Leith.
Alas poor Grays: will this be the most interesting display to appear in the new shop?
Now they are all gone. Even Grays has turned into White Stuff. The old Edinburgh ironmonger hung on a surprisingly long time in George Street while all around banks turned into bars. Unlike the venerable Crockets – still going strong in Glasgow – Grays seemed to lose its way in the last few years: neither ironmongers, electricians, nor furniture store. But it was a comforting break between bistros and fashion chains.
This is grumpy old woman stuff. The other night we went to see The Illusionist (as beautiful a film as friends said it was) and I found an unexpected nostalgia welling up inside me for the days when Patrick Thomson ruled North Bridge, when Jenners was Jenners and shops were shut on Sundays.
Things change. Two months ago I wrote about the energising pop-up culture which sees opportunity in empty shops and I was really encouraged at the comments which appeared on my blog, along with news of imaginative new enterprises. One of them, Frugal in Musselburgh, has now graduated from being a temporary pop-up to a growing business in permanent premises.
On Broughton Street two of three empty shops have quickly reopened as gift shops, The third is a lovely space which used to be Alec’s hardware store full of nails, timber and steel wool. I don’t suppose there is any chance a pop up ironmonger will reclaim it?
November 9th, 2010
A pop-up opportunity until the next tenant comes along?
The old hard-ware shop is long gone and now the bright new baby-ware shop that took its place has gone too (though only as far as the next village). I’m sorry to see empty windows and To Let signs in Broughton Street but maybe, just maybe, this is an opportunity for the kind of pop-up enterprise which turns derelict petrol stations into cinemas and transforms the top floor of a multi-storey car park into a stylish bar. Well, why ever not?
Empty spaces in city centre villages like Broughton and Stockbridge – not to mention edgy towns like Leith – are crying out to be filled with here-today gone-tomorrow galleries, shops, cafes and offices. I long to see Edinburgh develop the spark of cities like Berlin where the excitement has a lot to do with the fact that café and shops have a slightly precarious DIY feel about them.
Could there be signs of a new edginess in Edinburgh? I hope so.
Residents of Abbeyhill have been turning their own homes into a kind of pop-up art exhibition once a year for the last four years. Against the odds, during the festival, the third annual Retreat ‘DIY pop festival’ filled Pilrig church hall with local rock bands and their fans and this weekend another home-spun community festival brings jazz to Broughton, occupying not just pubs but also the very elegant Broughton St Mary’s church with local jazz musicians and music lovers of all ages.
Then there’s Dance Base coming to the old Thomas Morton Hall in Leith in October (a wonderful space sadly underused). And, come to think of it, the World Kitchen in Leith, popped up in the Drill Hall Arts Café in August and with luck we will pop up again.
But that is just scratching the surface. Take a look at the excellent Pop-Up Culture blog created by Tom Lousada. How about that cinema in a derelict petrol station? Or Frank’s Café and Campari Bar on top of a multi-storey car park in Peckham with a fantastic view of the city in a space which will probably not be there for much longer than the three weeks it took to build in the first place. The thrill of these places seems to be at least partly because even when they are legal they feel like they are not and partly because you are lucky to catch them while they are there.
This is a different kind of consumer society; a rebellion against the clone city: creative, local, and street-wise, endlessly inventing and re-inventing the space to meet the inspiration of the moment and allowing opportunities to a succession of imaginative enterprises.
Let’s do it. Right now I am thinking of Ocean Terminal. Sadly the waterfront of Leith looks like being a monumentally wasted opportunity. But maybe not. As an Edinburgh planner once said to me, it is a pity the Ocean Terminal car parks have the best view in the whole building. Isn’t that just a pop-up restaurant waiting to happen?
Pop-up art in Princes Mall during last year’s festival season
September 9th, 2010
A new dawn, a new neighbour, a new kitchen
Poor old house. I can almost hear it groaning through the adjoining walls as the banging and drilling, the sawing and sanding, the breaking down and tearing up begin all over again. Yet another new neighbour means new paint, new carpets, new bathroom suite and, of course, a brand new kitchen. Even though the one being ripped out was put in just three years ago. White units, so very 2007!
The house next door has changed owners six times since we moved into the terrace. Admittedly we have been here a very long time – so long Abba was topping the charts with Dancing Queen (or so it says here) the month we were moving in. Come to think of it that doesn’t seem so long ago but the same year Concorde made its first trans Atlantic commercial flight and Apple launched their first computer.
Those were the days … building societies insisted on deposits before lending money to young couples, people bought records and a computer was so big it would fill an ensuite bathroom (though no-one had ensuite). Just about every other house in the street was a B&B and the one next door was pretty rough.
Now there are no B&B’s, even the upmarket guest houses have turned into stylish private houses and only two other families have lived here longer than us. Why do some houses seem to hold on to their occupants? Our house has changed hands only four times since it was built in 1860. Next door, people come and go with increasing regularity and with them come and go their kitchens and ensuite bathrooms.
We never intended to stay in one place for so long but I like the feeling of continuity (if not the decades of clutter). Thanks to our lovely neighbour on the other side I know a little bit about the previous owners who had lived here for more than 50 years. Very intriguingly, they held bathroom parties to which guests arrived by climbing the drainpipe on the back wall – sadly the building society made us replace the old cast iron bath with claw feet but in a cupboard in the bathroom there is still a fragment of the original wallpaper. And the family left their handsome clock in the hall because it had been there so long they didn’t think it right to remove it.
So our house has always been a home though property prices round us go through the roof. It was a stretch for us to buy the place during the recession of the 70s (1970s I mean); even more sobering to think that if we wanted to move into the street now we wouldn’t be able to afford our own house.
I like to think that the next owners might also be looking for a home. Maybe like us they would live with the old kitchen for a year or two. In our case that included a distinctly dodgy museum piece of a gas cooker. In fact we didn’t get round to a fancy fitted kitchen until 2000. By that time Madonna topped the charts, Concorde had only three years to go. Apple of course is still going strong, even as I type. And so is the kitchen.
April 13th, 2010