Darts and Television. The thread about Borlands of Croall Place
The closure and sale of Borlands of Croall Place marks the end of a 100 year chapter, but there's much more to that story than just the sign above the door for Darts and Television.
Threadinburgh
The home of unusual, overlooked and irreverent Edinburgh and Leith history
Latest posts
Up in Smoke: the thread about Princes Street’s fiery history
Two weeks ago a devastating fire gutted part of the former Debenhams department store. This thread looks at the history of those premises and also of other conflagrations that have broken out on Princes Street over the years.
The Sally Army, the “Scabby Lala” and X-Rated in the City: the thread about the La Scala Electric Theatre
The La Scala and the Classic were different guises of the same cinema. A remarkable survivor, a recent planning application for this long-vacant building provides an excuse to reflect on its surprisingly long, interesting history: at times pioneering, at times pious and at times seedy.
“The Station Nobody Wanted”: the thread about Leith Central
On this day, 123 years ago at 5:55AM, a little steam train puffed out of Leith Central Station. It was an unremarkable opening for a station about which everything was remarkable: its size, its cost, its short operational life, and the fact it was built by a company that never wanted it in the first place. These days if you stand in the car park of what is now the Tesco superstore at the foot of…
Chop Suey on Chambers Street: the thread about Edinburgh’s first Chinese restaurant 中式餐廳
Edinburgh is spoiled for restaurants serving global cuisine. Go back 100 years however and your options were far more limited and localised. That all changed with the arrival of the "Chinese Restaurant" in 1930. It is long gone and accounts of it are contradictory and vague. This thread provides a factual account of this lesser-known institution of the city's diaspora.
WHAT GOES AAAAAA…AAAAAARGH SPLASH? The thread about the Commonwealth Pool’s troublesome flumes
River Rapids. Vortex. Twister. Stingray. If you know, you know. And if you don't, you weren't fortunate enough to be growing up in Edinburgh in the late 1980s through to the year 2000. I am referring of course to the legendary flumes of the city's Royal Commonwealth Pool. The flumes have been gone now for more than twice as long as they were with us, but for many they remain a bittersweet memory.…
Rails to Trails: the thread about how North Edinburgh got its cycle paths
On this day, 40 years ago, a councillor cut the ceremonial ribbon and opened a section of cycle path in north Edinburgh. This was a rather special bit of cycle path however as it hadn't been built by the council. It was built by direct citizen action: over the course of a single week it had been reclaimed from the trackbed of an old railway a group of volunteers. Wind the clock forward four…
Problèmes à Gogo: the thread about the Bonnington Bridge Bar
If you're at all familiar with the district of Bonnington then you may well know a burnt-out ruin on Newhaven Road. It's been this way long enough that you might not remember it being anything else. It certainly poses many questions. For a start; what was it, and how did it come to be in this sorry state? What are those over-grown terraces on the riverbank beneath it? And just what does the…
Educating Newhaven: the thread about the Victoria and other Schools
When it closed its doors for the last time in 2022 the Victoria School in Newhaven was by far and away the oldest in the city still in public use. But this wasn't an end, it was merely the start of a new chapter in its long life. The old building soon re-opened as a community and heritage centre and - having finally outgrown the confines of its Victorian facilities - the school was moving to a new…
Dead CERT: the thread about Edinburgh’s disastrous dalliances with guided busways
April Fools' Day marks a suitable 30th birthday for the City of Edinburgh Council, a body which upon its establishment found itself in charge of a scheme promising a cheap and easy transport fix but which proved to be anything of the sort. It was a scheme hallmarked by political intransigence, a perfidious PFI consortium, chaotic project management, acrimonious landowners, repeated threats of…