Fragments of a lost Edinburgh townscape, 1969 (2): St Leonard's

Image: © Stefan Czapski Taken: 23 Jul 1969

Even at the time when I took this photo - in July 1969 - there was a good deal of dereliction in this area. Most of the buildings still standing were tenements, but the block directly ahead of the camera appears to be industrial - few windows on the ground floor, a hatch of some kind two storeys up. From contributions by M J Richardson, Richard Webb, and the late Martin York (Kim Traynor) I gather that this had been an area of coal-dumps, from which coal was distributed across the city. In the present photo, the posts in the right foreground may well be traces of old coal butts. I believe I've located the images in this sequence reasonably accurately (to within a few hundred metres) but would be only too glad of guidance from people who know the area better than I do! As with other items in this sequence, the original photo was taken with a Kodak Instamatic - and I've salvaged the image from an 80 x 80mm print. UPDATE, 21st February 2019: M J Richardson has responded to my appeal for help in locating this image by visiting the site and landing the following shot: Image My initial response to Mike was that the tenement at the end of the road in his photo looks a lot like the one on the right in mine. He confirms that it is indeed the same building. To my mind, the existence of the later image adds enormously to the interest of the earlier one. Mike has also drawn my attention to a striking change in the natural environment. Up until 1977 the steep slopes below Salisbury Crags were grazed by sheep, so in the 1969 image ground cover is limited - for the most part - to grass. In the 40-odd years since grazing ended, the slopes have been quite substantially colonised by scrubby woodland: Image One reflection, though: perhaps the townscape I saw at St Leonard's in 1969 is not quite as 'lost' as I'd imagined!

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