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Maroon Sailor

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been here before
25 minutes ago, Radio Ga Ga said:

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Air raid shelters in East Princes Street Gardens. Im sure the story hehind that picture is that it was a drill or a test or something.

 

Not a gas mask in sight and it only seems to be the one nearest the camera thats emptying. Theres also still folk going about their business on Princes Street and folk chatting by the trams.

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1 hour ago, Radio Ga Ga said:

Long gone 

F3BBEC91-5FCB-4302-AB7E-4A687B21D71A.jpeg

My whole life it seems lives only in pictures, people, places all to be looked at but never again touched. Like that wee piece of road and buildings walked past it at least three times a day, sometimes more and five days a week, morning shift, afternoon shift and night shift now its all gone as if it never was,. Life is strange when you are young you have everything to look forward to and nothing really to look back at, suddenly you are old and the opposite is so true. But the memories make it all worthwhile.

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been here before
6 minutes ago, been here before said:

 

Air raid shelters in East Princes Street Gardens. Im sure the story hehind that picture is that it was a drill or a test or something.

 

Not a gas mask in sight and it only seems to be the one nearest the camera thats emptying. Theres also still folk going about their business on Princes Street and folk chatting by the trams.

 

Ive had a quick look at a couole of books and it seems I wasnt quite right. It was a false all clear that had sounded following an alert on 20th October 1939. The picture below is after the real all clear had sounded:

 

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Interestingly there were 2 false all clears so the picture above is of people following the 3rd one. A few more gas masks in evidence there. They would only have been issued a few weeks previously.

 

The Air Ministry announced later in the day the alert had been a precaution after an unidentified aircraft had been spotted flying high over the Forth. Despite fighters being scrambled there were no sightings so possibly just a recon flight.

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41 minutes ago, Radio Ga Ga said:

Now Peirshill Square 

B75CD395-F737-4597-A79F-6F87EBA8822F.jpeg

 After WW1 my mother who had left Inverness to go to Aldershot where she worked making shells for the big guns when it was all over moved to Edinburgh. The first job she got was as a nanny at Piershill Barracks to an army officer and his and their two children. She loved the job but he was posted to India with his family. He asked my Mum to go with them, but it just seemed too big a step for a young single girl. So she quit. Got a job as a conductress in the old cable trams, 

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8 minutes ago, Sharpie said:

 After WW1 my mother who had left Inverness to go to Aldershot where she worked making shells for the big guns when it was all over moved to Edinburgh. The first job she got was as a nanny at Piershill Barracks to an army officer and his and their two children. She loved the job but he was posted to India with his family. He asked my Mum to go with them, but it just seemed too big a step for a young single girl. So she quit. Got a job as a conductress in the old cable trams, 

Love reading your stories Bob, keep them coming 👍

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J.T.F.Robertson
29 minutes ago, Sharpie said:

My whole life it seems lives only in pictures, people, places all to be looked at but never again touched. Like that wee piece of road and buildings walked past it at least three times a day, sometimes more and five days a week, morning shift, afternoon shift and night shift now its all gone as if it never was,. Life is strange when you are young you have everything to look forward to and nothing really to look back at, suddenly you are old and the opposite is so true. But the memories make it all worthwhile.

 

Where is that, Bob?

 

Page #177, same as our old address in the Pleasance. :)

 

 

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1 hour ago, J.T.F.Robertson said:

 

Where is that, Bob?

 

Page #177, same as our old address in the Pleasance. :)

 

 

 Bristo Street at Marshal Street, the old Marshal Street beat. That and the Infirmary beaty were without a doubt the beats I likes working best. I believe now they detailed me there once in a while for a stay as therapy out of Niddrie and its environs, but it was always fun to get back there and deal with a whole different style of work.

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1 hour ago, Radio Ga Ga said:

Love reading your stories Bob, keep them coming 👍

 

Its nice of you to say, but I shouldn't get any compliments. As a young policeman working beats in the Southside area it was common to just stand at an intersection and see what was happening. Often while doing that an old long retired policeman would come and relate their tales of the past, I was not always as patient and compassionate as I should have been, if there is an after life I bet there are some of them laughing and saying ignorant young erse, now he is like us, everything is in the past, but he is lucky some people are nicer than he was to us and listen to him.

 

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Carl Fredrickson
6 hours ago, luckyBatistuta said:

 

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Great images. Looks like a lot of land was reclaimed to allow the harbour and surroundings to be built. 

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5 minutes ago, Carl Fredrickson said:

 

Hi Stuart - where are these images from? 

They depict the cinema that was created in the Albert Hall Building in Shandwick Place. It was a theatre for a long time before it became the  Princess Street Cinema.

 

27 July 1950 Princes Theatre, Shandwick Place, Edinburgh to be opened by 

Miss C Orr

3 February 1956

Princes Theatre Shandwick Place - to be turned into a Continental Cinema -

Mr Chaudhuri, owner and Mr T E Patrick, architect inside the theatre.

 

Edited by Stuart Lyon
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Carl Fredrickson
6 minutes ago, Stuart Lyon said:

They depict the cinema that was created in the Albert Hall Building in Shandwick Place. It was a theatre for a long time before it became the  Princess Street Cinema.

 

27 July 1950 Princes Theatre, Shandwick Place, Edinburgh to be opened by 

Miss C Orr

3 February 1956

Princes Theatre Shandwick Place - to be turned into a Continental Cinema -

Mr Chaudhuri, owner and Mr T E Patrick, architect inside the theatre.

 

 

Cheers. Been in all the current cinemas in Edinburgh and most theatres too but didnt recognise it. A few years before my time. Much appreciated.

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52 minutes ago, Stuart Lyon said:

Princes Theatre.jpg

Owner & Architect.jpg

I assume that's ashtrays on the back of each seat, must have been hell for non smokers trying to watch a movie through the thick smoke and not choking to death

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12 minutes ago, Radio Ga Ga said:

I assume that's ashtrays on the back of each seat, must have been hell for non smokers trying to watch a movie through the thick smoke and not choking to death

 

Yip it's ashtrays.

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Maroon Sailor

I never knew there was a cinema in Craigmillar but it opened in 1950 and closed in 1963 before becoming a Bingo Hall. Is that red building the Rex launderette then ?

 

large.jpg.f503705805cb62e8f4b67fcaed25c76c.jpg

Edited by Maroon Sailor
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Maroon Sailor

60's

 

Looks so much better than it does today

 

Can't even do a left turn now coming up from Waverley

 

20201229_102401.thumb.jpg.d34d69b41efc036208598f791ad807e6.jpg

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luckyBatistuta
1 hour ago, Carl Fredrickson said:

 

Great images. Looks like a lot of land was reclaimed to allow the harbour and surroundings to be built. 

It certainly was. As soon as I saw the image, I thought it was those flats. I knew there was a fair bit of reclaimed land down there, but just incredible to see the change. Oh for someone to work out time travel.

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luckyBatistuta
2 hours ago, Stuart Lyon said:

Princes Theatre.jpg

Owner & Architect.jpg

What a depressing looking place. My first thought was looking for a coffin. Even after spending a little longer looking at it, it still looks like a funeral parlour to me.

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luckyBatistuta
29 minutes ago, Maroon Sailor said:

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I’ve never lived down there, but they must have been hit hard by the opening of Javits. 

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luckyBatistuta
38 minutes ago, Maroon Sailor said:

60's

 

Looks so much better than it does today

 

Can't even do a left turn now coming up from Waverley

 

20201229_102401.thumb.jpg.d34d69b41efc036208598f791ad807e6.jpg

Can’t even drive on it now. Closed for social distancing I think and yet there is nobody there. Yet another fek up by the buffoons at CEC.

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Maroon Sailor
8 minutes ago, luckyBatistuta said:

Can’t even drive on it now. Closed for social distancing I think and yet there is nobody there. Yet another fek up by the buffoons at CEC.

 

I hope the closure is not going to be permanent. The tour buses won't be happy up at St Andrew Square - not as easy to attract business imo

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Maroon Sailor
20 minutes ago, luckyBatistuta said:

I’ve never lived down there, but they must have been hit hard by the opening of Javits. 

 

Only just spotted the Billiards sign on the cafe. Didn't think there would be enough room for that

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luckyBatistuta
8 minutes ago, Maroon Sailor said:

 

Only just spotted the Billiards sign on the cafe. Didn't think there would be enough room for that

Yeah, noticed that too. Never been in it, but as you say, it doesn’t seem big enough for billiards.

 

 

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luckyBatistuta
21 minutes ago, Maroon Sailor said:

 

I hope the closure is not going to be permanent. The tour buses won't be happy up at St Andrew Square - not as easy to attract business imo


No idea, but nothing would surprise me with these idiots. We are in the middle of this pandemic with everything falling apart and yet they decide to throw our money at a city wide blanket of cycle bollards. 

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51 minutes ago, luckyBatistuta said:

Yeah, noticed that too. Never been in it, but as you say, it doesn’t seem big enough for billiards.

 

 

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Owned by the De Marco family - the grandfather or maybe even great grandfather of the current crop was well known snooker and billiard player in Edinburgh long before they created Marco's and the one at Craiglockhart now flats.

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20 minutes ago, Stuart Lyon said:

Owned by the De Marco family - the grandfather or maybe even great grandfather of the current crop was well known snooker and billiard player in Edinburgh long before they created Marco's and the one at Craiglockhart now flats.


Bert DeMarco, who was one of Scotland’s top snooker players of the day, according to my old man who spent part of his childhood down that way. 

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3 hours ago, Radio Ga Ga said:

I assume that's ashtrays on the back of each seat, must have been hell for non smokers trying to watch a movie through the thick smoke and not choking to death

It’s mad. I’m only 50 and remember as a young teenager lighting up at the pictures. For a while they only allowed it up the back of the theatre where you could see the smoke by projector light. 

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14 minutes ago, BarneyBattles said:

 

I'm the same age and can remember going to see a re-run of 20,000 leagues under the sea at the Playhouse in Dalkeith. Apart from the big squid, my biggest memory of being there was the clouds of smoke billowing across the theatre. Must have been around 1980.

 

Rank. Mind you go now (it's now a snooker centre) and the the biggest memory is seeing the local young team queuing up to powder their nose in the bogs😀

😀 changed times. 

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3 hours ago, Maroon Sailor said:

I never knew there was a cinema in Craigmillar but it opened in 1950 and closed in 1963 before becoming a Bingo Hall. Is that red building the Rex launderette then ?

 

large.jpg.f503705805cb62e8f4b67fcaed25c76c.jpg

 Spent some time in there, at the back having a cup of tea and watching the movie and seeing who was in there. Names are a wee bit vague now, but I think the owner a wee man was Mr Pauli, one of the girls was Jenny Mungall, she lived further down Wauchope Avenue, she and  her husband were Hearts supporters and on a Saturday night often went to the local Hearts club  with their friend Johnny Harvey. The other full time girl was Eva a Greek girl who I believe met her husband when he was serving in Cyprus. He was a baker and worked in a shop on Dalkeith Road opposite Prestonfield Avenue, she was a beautiful woman, typically Greek, they lived in Greendykes. When the County closed Eva got a job at the Odeon. 

It was all change when it went Bingo. Crime increased quite a bit, instead of the back of the cinema we spent more time in the backgreen as local thieves used the time with so many empty houses to climb drain pipes and through windows to empty gas and electric meters.

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Joey J J Jr Shabadoo
46 minutes ago, BarneyBattles said:

 

I'm the same age and can remember going to see a re-run of 20,000 leagues under the sea at the Playhouse in Dalkeith. Apart from the big squid, my biggest memory of being there was the clouds of smoke billowing across the theatre. Must have been around 1980.

 

Rank. Mind you go now (it's now a snooker centre) and the the biggest memory is seeing the local young team queuing up to powder their nose in the bogs😀

I saw Moonraker in the Dalkeith Playhouse. My flat is behind it (actually right behind the British Legion).

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Borrowed from the Friends of Dalry Cemetery Facebook Page:

Calotype taken of the cemetery lodge and original entrance arch, by James Francis Montgomery (founder of the Edinburgh Calotype Club) around 1850, from the National Library of Scotland! 
Calotype was an early form of photography introduced in 1841, the first widely available process by which paper negatives could be made in seconds. It was mostly replaced by wet-collodion photography, introduced in 1851.
The entrance arch was an intricate gothic construction with decorative pillars and (we believe) room(s) in the upper section.

Dalry cemetery.jpg

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3 hours ago, Maroon Sailor said:

 

Only just spotted the Billiards sign on the cafe. Didn't think there would be enough room for that

There was a full sized snooker table in the back room of the Jubilee back in the day. 

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Maroon Sailor
3 minutes ago, Tazio said:

There was a full sized snooker table in the back room of the Jubilee back in the day. 

 

Fair play to them for having a snooker table in those days as I doubt it was as popular a sport as the 80's.

 

I think it was Eddie Sinclair who always seemed to be the Scottish Champion.

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