Balmwell Terrace - A Street with a View

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 20 Sep 2022

The hills below the bright evening sun at the end of this suburban street are at the NorthEastern edge of the Pentlands, and are about two miles from here as the crow flies. The left side of the street is made up entirely of bungalows, which although not 'old' old, have certainly been around for a while. On the right side of the street the bungalows quickly give way to a new housing association low-flat development, completed around 2015. This is followed by a small cul-de-sac leading to what looked to be one bedroom council bungalows; these are all still part of Balmwell Terrace. Whilst I have to admit I am secretly a bit of a fan of these new blocks, with their square sides and different coloured bricks, I do think that the architect's blurb (this comes up near the top of the listings when an online search is done for the street), which boasts about "strong repeating patterns", is pushing things a bit! And the top floor of the block, set back a bit further from the street, is just weird - it looks like the walls are made from sheet steel. The street gets its name from a nearby old well - access to which is through a pub beer garden - which is labelled 'St Katherine's or Oily Well' in Gothic typeface on the OS maps. However, although there are several nearby street names that begin with 'St Katherine's', the only ones that reference the well are the Balmwells, of which they are a few. The 'Balm' part has something to do with the supposedly healing qualities of the water drawn up through it. In reality though it probably just meant that you didn't die from drinking it. I'm pretty sure that all the water in Edinburgh was so polluted at the time the well came along that the population there had to drink beer all day long in order to to stay alive.

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