IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Waverley Park, EDINBURGH, EH8 8EW

A street of tenements.

The former maternity hospital named after Dr. Elsie Inglis was the birthplace of many people now living in the Edinburgh area. After closure, it became a privately-run nursing home, which was closed down by the health authorities in 2011 after an inspection revealed inadequate standards of care and the company failed to remedy them within a prescribed period. Image

I think this block, apparently converted into modern flats, was originally the nurses' home.

Former hospital, now residential. The hospital opened in 1925 and closed in 1988.

The bust is incorporated into a tenement with no explanation whatsoever as to who it might be. A straw-poll among friends confirmed my suspicion - it's an unmistakable image of Rabbie. But what's he doing here? The street name recalls the vogue for Walter Scott, but it was built in the 1890s which seems a tad too late. The solution was supplied by another sculpture, equally unexplained, at the other end of the street. See Image

I was completely mystified when I came across this easily missed sculpture high up on the side of a late-Victorian tenement. I thought it must be somehow connected with the bust of Robert Burns at the other end of the street. I couldn't think of another literary figure it might be and started googling for images of Scottish poets who were near-contemporaries of Burns. Drawing a blank, I turned to other figures from the Walter Scott period (because of the street name) and, lo and behold, up came a portrait of the young Frederic Chopin with his very distinctive hairstyle and dress from the 1840s. So, could it be connected with his visit to Edinburgh in 1848? No. As I discovered while pursuing the origin of the name of nearby Tytler Gardens, this tenement was built on the grounds of Comely Gardens*, a Victorian pleasure park (hence the street name) where the leisured classes promenaded, took light refreshment and - ah ha - danced in the open air! One can just imagine those normally staid Edinburgh folk tapping their feet to a polonaise and maybe even whirling round to a mazurka. So, I deduce that the sculptures adorned the garden grounds and were rescued when they were built over in the 1890s. * "A wretched attempt to imitate Vauxhall for which neither the climate nor the gardens are adapted." -- Hugo Arnot, The History of Edinburgh, 1799 Image

The entrance from Waverley Park.

Tenements beneath Salisbury Crags.

A street of tenements.