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Thirlestane Lane was built, piecemeal, during the second half of the 19th century.
From the 1860's Sir George Warrender 'feu'd out 'The Lands of Bruntisfield' to various developers who began building the characteristic terraced tenements of the area that we now call Marchmont.
('Feuing' was the Scottish equivalent of the English 'long leasehold'. It was abolished in 2000).
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Malcolm Cant, in his excellent 1984 book Marchmont in Edinburgh*, describes the Lane as accessing "a number of very elegant mews properties occupied by an interesting group of people". This still applies! He refers to the special character of the Lane, with its "narrow pavement, cobbled road surface, washing poles and miniature gardens resulting in an atmosphere and character quite different from the surrounding streets."
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The buildings were commissioned between 1878 and 1896 by the owners of the big houses of The Grange (on the other side of Strathearn Road). Many of the Grange residents were important businessmen and civic luminaries requiring to be picked up in the morning and taken to their offices in the City, and collected again in the evening. The Lane houses incorporated the stables for their horses and coaches, with the coachmen and their families living upstairs.
House number 6 was the first to be built, by a solicitor who lived in Oswald Road. Then number 5 and numbers 7 and 8, were built on each side. In 1884 no.9 was built as a workshop for James Duncan, Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer, a business which later moved in 1893 to larger premises at 2-4 Thirlestane Lane, and closed as recently as 2016. After that, no.9 was converted to a stable and coach-house, like most of the other addresses.
In 1885 no.1 was built. Originally a stable, it became a garage, then premises for W.T.Dunbar, Undertakers, and then The Marchmont Garage, which closed in 2016. In 2018 it was due for demolition and replacement with a modern block of four small apartments, but it's still there (September 2022).
Nos. 10 and 11 were built without stables, probably to house domestic staff for the owner, Duncan McLaren Jnr., who lived in St. Oswald's, in Oswald Road, and whose father was Lord Provost of Edinburgh and an MP.
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The last five houses in the Lane were built in the 1890's; no.13 for a brewer, 14 for a solicitor, 15 and 16 for stockbrokers, and lastly no.17 in 1896, for a retired shipowner who lived in Airlie Lodge at 5 Whitehouse Loan.
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11a, previously owned by Lord Provost Andrew McDonald, had, by the 1940's become an overnight shed for six Council rubbish carts!
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*ref: Cant, M. (1984) Marchmont in Edinburgh, published by John Donald Ltd.
The map above was clipped from www.edinphoto.org.uk with kind permission from Peter Stubbs. It is an extract of a map in the Post Office Directory 1870-1871.
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https://consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/sfc/marchmont-meadows-
bruntsfield-conservation-area-ch/supporting_documents/Marchmont_Meadows.pdf
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In 2021 we received a nice anecdote from Jenny Bell-Jones, now a professor of Native Studies in Alaska but in 1960 an intrepid 10 year old horsewoman!
"The disposal of horse dung was definitely a problem. The dustbin guys would not pick it up and I believe there were frequent complaints from the neighbours about the smell. The owner, Mr Castella, was a taxi driver and had a dray, a flat cart; we taught the larger of the three ponies, Terry, to pull the cart, and I was taught how to drive it. We would put all the horse manure into gunny sacks and once a week harness up Terry, put the sacks on the cart, and I would drive the cart across town to the Hearts Club where Mr Castella had use of a small field and drag the sacks over to the manure pile. I also on occasion drove the cart through the city to go and pick up hay and straw from St. Cuthbert's milk horse stables. Back then they were still delivering milk with horse and cart. I think I was about 10 when this was going on and definitely did not have a driver's licence! Of course there was less traffic than there is now but still I was negotiating buses and trams and lorries with my little horse and cart."