Edinburgh 1925: How the city's skyline was saved
The conservation of Edinburgh’s unique Old Town today would not have been possible without that campaign a century ago
The 1920s changed Edinburgh. In the new age of popular entertainment there were three luxurious cinemas on Princes Street. On Clerk Street even a Mission Hall was converted to become a picture house. On the city’s outskirts, 70,000 people packed the new Murrayfield Stadium on 21 March 1925 to watch Scotland beat England to win their first Grand Slam. Hearts and Hibs no longer met on the East Meadows, but drew thousands to their stadiums in Tynecastle and Easter Road.
World War had shaken social attitudes. Women now had the right to vote, rode bicycles without creating a scandal, and did “men’s jobs”. In February 1917, the Cockburn Association’s Honorary Secretary, Victor Paton, had informed them that he had been called up for military service and “might have to leave at any day”. He recommended that the secretarial duties be shared by the Reverend William Stevenson and Mrs Louisa Sinclair, the Reverend’s sister. It had taken 42 years and a world war for the association to appoint a woman officeholder.
However, though William became a member of the association’s council the following month, Louisa did not. In January 1919, the council considered a letter from the Suffragette and successful author, Rosaline Masson, which asked politely whether “ladies” might become members of the council. In the following November four women were endorsed. All were passionate about Edinburgh and well connected socially.
As Christmas approached in 1925, many families across Scotland still grieved for fathers, husbands and the sons who did not return from the First World War. Warfare like never before had claimed nearly 135,000 Scottish casualties.
There was to be a memorial in Edinburgh Castle. The Eton-educated Eighth Duke of Atholl took the lead and Sir Robert Lorimer was appointed as the architect. Lorimer’s proposed design breached the skyline of the Castle. Concerned, the Cockburn Association convened a special general meeting in 1923 which was reported in The Scotsman.
Addressing the “large attendance of ladies and gentlemen” the Duke said that he was “there in character of the accused, as they say in the army… charged with vandalism”. Faced with a hostile audience, the Duke wriggled and backpedalled.
Lady Frances Balfour, aristocrat, Suffragette, and member of the Cockburn Association’s council, called for both the Duke and Lorimer to be hanged! As a military man, Atholl knew when it was time to retreat: he suddenly revealed that there was actually an alternative design that would not “alter the skyline in the slightest”.
“Hear, hear!” roared the audience. The skyline was saved for posterity, and the Duke became a Vice-President of the Cockburn Association.
Edinburgh’s population passed 425,000 in 1921, an increase of 175,000 from the 1875 figure. Boundary extensions had brought Leith, Colinton, Corstorphine, Cramond, Gilmerton, Liberton, Longstone and Portobello into the city’s administration, which now extended to 53 square miles, compared to a mere 17 a half-century earlier.
Leith Town Council and the local Leith Observer ran a referendum on the proposed merger with Edinburgh. The result was decisive: 26,810 were opposed and 4,340 in favour. However, the merger went ahead, as Leith lacked land on which to develop much-needed housing. It was an example of the tensions between local identity and managerial efficiency in public administration that would recur 50 years later.
Increasingly, bungalows for owner-occupation were being built on farmland, creating the now familiar suburbs in Prestonfield, Greenbank and Portobello, for example. Elsewhere, new “Homes for Heroes” were rented from the Town Council in Chesser, Northfield and Saughton and other districts.
The Cockburn Association had little to say about this transformation of Edinburgh’s built environment, as the threat of renewed clearances in the Old Town commanded its attention. A memorandum published by the association in 1920 declared Huntly House and the Canongate Tolbooth to be “in the very last stages of disrepair”.
“The Old Town of Edinburgh is not a slum,” rather it had been “shamefully neglected” declared the memorandum. The conservation of Edinburgh’s unique Old Town today would not have been possible without that campaign a century ago.
The Cockburn Association became very animated about the trams that were enabling the suburbs to spread. In 1920, Edinburgh’s tram system was cable driven, Leith’s was electric. Hence it was “All Change” at Pilrig and Joppa. Integration required the electrification of Edinburgh’s system.
However, there was widespread concern that “at present high prices” the tram project would burden the city with debt – a spectre that would recur decades later. The Cockburn Association objected to the proposed poles and overhead wires along Princes Street. The convenor, a prominent local businessman, Fraser Dobie, argued that the City Fathers held the whole of Princes Street in “a sacred trust for the citizens and for Scotland”, words that resonate today given its current sorry state.
In 1922, the association took a delegation to London to challenge the transport minister. Lady Balfour, aware of Irish politics, said “it almost made one a home ruler”. A public inquiry in Edinburgh was granted, but with a narrow scope on transport efficiency, the scheme was approved. However, the Cockburn Association secured a compromise and an improved design of the poles along Princes Street.
The Cockburn Association in 1925 was an organisation of comfortably off people born in the previous century, yet its work and concerns have relevance for today. Rosaline Masson’s determined campaigning for women’s rights; caution about the cost and environmental impact of big infrastructure projects; the duty of civic stewardship for Princes Street and the skyline of the castle; over-centralisation of government; conflicts between bureaucrats and citizens about the value of identity and local scale in public service provision – these civic struggles to protect Edinburgh continue today.
Cliff Hague and Richard Rodger are the editors of Campaigning for Edinburgh - The Cockburn Association 1875-2049
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