IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Brandfield Street, EDINBURGH, EH3 8BN

An existing street (Upper Grove Place) has been extended at the west end to merge with a new development, Melvin Walk.

Tenements with rusticated stonework from 1865.

Housing for the industrial working class, erected in 1863. The English Football Association had just been formed, the Prussian prime minister, Otto von Bismarck, was wrestling with the Schleswig-Holstein question and the American Civil War had run half its course, reaching a turning-point with the Battle of Gettysburg. Of course, none of this was beamed in by satellite.

Not even on the OS map yet, so my location is only approximate. By the 1960s, this area had some of the worst slum housing in Edinburgh, so much so that the then Labour leader, Harold Wilson, was taken on a tour of it before the 1964 general election to see just how bad conditions were. The slums were finally swept away in the early 1970s, but it has taken another generation to regenerate the area. These buildings stand on the site formerly occupied by the Fountain Brewery of Scottish & Newcastle Ltd, which was not demolished until the 2000s.

City transport modes are catered for in this new development Image with cycle racks adjacent to a City Car Club parking bay.

Scotland has a long tradition of 'rags to riches' stories, but few can be as extraordinary as that of the working-class milkman in post-war austerity Britain who became an accomplished actor and the world's most glamorous male filmstar in the 'Swinging Sixties' and beyond. The plaque is on a block of modern flats in Fountainbridge, close to the site of the demolished tenement where Connery grew up and where his father worked at the nearby North British Rubber Company's Castle Mill works. "When I took a taxi during a recent Edinburgh Film Festival, the cabbie was amazed that I could put a name to every street we passed. "How come?" he asked. "As a boy I used to deliver milk round here," I said. "So what do you do now?" That was rather harder to answer." -- Sean Connery, Being A Scot, 2008

Redevelopment of the brewery site.

This building was formerly a Working Men's Home built around 1865 and was still in use as such up until 1987. It was designed by F T Pilkington who also designed the Barclay Church at Tollcross. Image

Where the new Fountainbridge meets the old: McEwan Square from the 21st century joins Upper Grove Place from the 19th century.

A shared-use space (pedestrian/cyclist) with a new development Image to the west, and hoardings to the east where I expect another development will arise.