IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Craigievar Square, EDINBURGH, EH12 8YP

Taken from a plane on its way into Turnhouse [now Edinburgh International Airport], approaching to Runway 30, now rarely used by passenger traffic. The green foreground is still there, but the fields in the middle distance are all now built upon. At the time of the photo they were part of the land of the Scottish Office Agricultural Scientific Services, now moved to a new site - see Image The 'new' Craigmount school, visible between flap and aileron, has been demolished and rebuilt in the playing field, to the right.

Large 1970's westward expansion of Edinburgh.

This is the main artery of the Craigievar development. It is rendered even drearier than the average modern housing estate by the dykes that run along the roadsides. The idea was that the estate would be divided into small neighbourhoods where the houses are all in little interlinked courtyards. In practice, it means that from a ground floor flat you have a fine view of nothing but a blank grey dyke, and you can't get your car near your own door. Provision for parking was inadequate from the start, because most residents don't bother to put their cars in their garages, and it has not improved as the number and size of cars has increased and parking skills, apparently, have decreased. Parking bays intended to accommodate eight cars now take only five, and cars parked in the parking bays are not infrequently blocked in by people who abandon, rather than park, theirs.

Relatively new housing on what was the land of a Scottish Office experimental farm [Scottish Agricultural Scientific Services].

East Craigs, at the time this photo was taken, was not a housing estate, but the laboratories and experimental farm of what is now the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency Image The year before, it had been decided that the land would be sold for housing, so was not cultivated over the winter. The resulting mass of poppies was spectacular, originating from a dormant seed bank in the soil, despite the fact that weed control in the fields, used for experimental plots and crops, had been practised for many years

I don't often remember seeing whole blocks being built to let, but the board on the perimeter of this block says specifically that these are apartments for mid-market rent. Whatever that means.

Part of a large residential development on the site of what was government agricultural and plant health laboratories and plant breeding station. Under various names they had been there since 1925. The farmland was rezoned for housing and new laboratories were built and occupied at Gogarbank in 2006 Image The East Craigs laboratories were demolished and replaced with houses.

Detail of the poppies in the field at East Craigs Image

Some of the new housing developments on the west side of Edinburgh.