Metropol

Some months ago I was talking about old pictures of - well, particularly Edinburgh, but your home town.

This weekend a group set up on facebook called "lost Edinburgh".

So far there are HUNDREDS of pictures and some videos - some so old they show Edinburgh Castle without the Victorian add-ons, and before the iconic Jenners store was built.

This pic shows the original site, ravaged by fire...



And the "new" store which was built thereafter...



I could, and indeed will, add to this thread with some of the more jawdropping images of the city - but you can be the 7,000th member of FB to like this page since it went live just a few days ago.

https://www.facebook.com/lostedinburgh

http://retrodundee.blogspot.com/ is a fab little blog of old Dundee images. The pictures of the multi story flats from their grand opening being showcased as marvels of modern design are a particularly nice example.

I like the red stripe on those flats.

This is something I love -- the whole "then and now" beeswax. Plus, one of the benefits of working in a library/museum: I have collected loads of Newport. For one reason or another I already have three in my upload space so I'll post those now and add a few more later:

The following are all of Clytha Park Road / Bridge Street over the railway, most of which was obliterated when the new Queensway was built and a roundabout took the place of most of the houses.


is here

Looking the other way,

is here-ish

And further down we had this wonderful building, the Lyceum Cinema / Theatre

which was lost to this brutalist monstrosity, itself formerly a cinema, now a Travelodge. The Queens Hotel on the left survived though, and is now a Wetherspoons (as you can see from GSV, it was once a Walkabout).

Even though I'm not originally from here, I love searching through the extensive archives at http://www.leodis.net for photos of Leeds. It's a shame the interface isn't brilliant and searching for anything in particular is somewhat cumbersome, but the sheer amount of photos and comments from community members is pretty invaluable.

OMG.

So, I'm chatting to a pal in the poob last night, and mentioned this great picture resource. We were discussing the various areas of the City that were more or less built over.

He mentioned Bristow Square, home to the University buildings and (at this time of year) Channel Four's big purple "Udderbelly" cow - which is basically a temporary theatre space.

He tells me that a couple of weeks ago, when one of the 40ft wagons arrived with the equipment, it reversed over the paving stones on the square, and the back axle broke through the pavers. It seemed to be a subsidence problem, and they found there was a cavity under the slabs, once the truck was moved off the site.

When they put torches inside the hole, they saw - and I'm quoting him here - a chair, a table and even wallpaper.

Here's a pic of the buildings from that site



I asked (naturally) if anyone took pictures of this - my pal thinks so - but then told me, to my horror, that they back filled the entire void in concrete and told no one about it, as they knew it would delay the fringe works.



Needless to say I'll try and get hold of some snapshots.

EDIT
The image below must be the building they refer to, as it stood where the skateboarders play today.



To compare, the McEwan hall was built just behind - presumably excavated to lay foundations, but the square in front of it wouldn't have had the same preparatory works - another presumption, but it would seem logical.

I really love this old picture from Eldon Square here in Newcastle when it first opened, mainly for the fact that it looks like some horrifically dated sci-fi impression of a utopian future:


The same area now looks like this, though it's not long since that Bainbridge's / John Lewis 'space ship' cafe was removed and the new escalators inserted in its place:


The City Library has put thousands of archive images of Newcastle on Flickr... I really enjoy having a flick through them now and again!

That space ship is fantastic! Love those lights too.

When we were over in Edinburgh earlier in the year we did one of those spooky tours. The guides were quite good at a bit of history mixed in with some entertaining bollocks. Suppose they have to do something now that The Bill isn't on anymore. Anyhoo, by far the most interesting bit was the tour of an area around the South Bridge which had been dug out of basements. Workshops and passageways which were just built over when they wanted to improve the area. Worth doing, if only for that wee bit.

Gavin Scott wrote:

They would've been better leaving that up instead of knocking it down in favour of the hideous Potterrow that sits on that side of Bristo Square now.

PS - Turns out you were ahead of the trend with this topic!

marksi wrote:When we were over in Edinburgh earlier in the year we did one of those spooky tours. The guides were quite good at a bit of history mixed in with some entertaining bollocks. Suppose they have to do something now that The Bill isn't on anymore. Anyhoo, by far the most interesting bit was the tour of an area around the South Bridge which had been dug out of basements. Workshops and passageways which were just built over when they wanted to improve the area. Worth doing, if only for that wee bit.

I've never done the tours, but I think I should. Talking to another pal last night (about Lost Edinburgh - again) he mentioned Bannerman's bar - not far from the tour site - has a wooden panel on the wall which can be unscrewed to reveal a passageway that takes you under the street to various abandoned rooms and corridors. Apparently no one will go down because they're shit scared.

Mary King's Close is now the most famous of these tours, taking you under the City Chambers to the 17th century street that was bricked up and built over during the plague - I think with sick people still inside there.

The picture below shows how it appears now. It looks like an outdoor street - it was, 300 years ago, but now its 50ft (or more) underground.



This building is on top of it.

scottishtv wrote:

Gavin Scott wrote:

They would've been better leaving that up instead of knocking it down in favour of the hideous Potterrow that sits on that side of Bristo Square now.

PS - Turns out you were ahead of the trend with this topic!

Haha - good old Edinburgh Evening Snooze. They probably were tipped off by Grant Stott announcing the site on his lunchtime show on Radio Forth. The "likes" went up by about 3,000 immediately.