Whose Town? Bill McLean

Whose Town? was an educational resource built on the heritage collections of the City of Edinburgh. It was developed by Edinburgh City Libraries in partnership with Edinburgh Museums and Galleries and Edinburgh City Archives. The resource was launched in 2011 and unfortunately is no longer available in its original format, however, we have created exhibitions here on Capital Collections to provide schools with access to even more material and to allow a wider audience access to the fascinating stories told in Whose Town?

We are also working on recreating the life stories as digital trails on Our Town Stories.

Whose Town? looks at Edinburgh from 1850 - 1959 to discover the city's past through the lives of the people who lived there. We have used people who lived in Victorian times, at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the Second World War and in the Fifties. There are fourteen lives to discover as well as exhibitions about each of the four eras.

Bill McLean was a child of the Fifties. He lived in Craigentinny and then moved to a new green-field development on the south side of the city in 1958 but continued to attend Leith Academy. Bill was a Boy Scout and has shared some great photographs of his time at scout camp in Peebles. He has a love of the cinema, especially the musicals of the time; partly because his father was the cinema projectionist at the Dominion Cinema and he used to occasionally help his father out in the projectionist's box. Bill's exhibition recounts the beginnings of TV, the Coronation being televised and the young Queen's visit to Edinburgh to celebrate her Coronation.

Find out more about life in Edinburgh in the 1950s.

Whose town? was supported by funding from The Heritage Lottery Fund.