Although entitled, "Canongate and Corstorphine &c Improvement Scheme", the photographs from this housing survey cover a wide geographical area including Morrison Street, Greenside and Broughton Road. The areas aren't covered extensively, only pockets of housing in these areas which were highlighted as needing improvement.
While most of the images show the old tenement buildings of the Canongate which housed many families, the images of Corstorphine show very different properties. Corstorphine had only become part of the city of Edinburgh in 1920 and most of the properties that were earmarked for improvement were farm cottages and buildings.
Despite now being part of the Old Town of the City of Edinburgh, Canongate is a former Scottish burgh. The adjoining burghs of Edinburgh and Canongate were founded around the same period, by King David I, the first monarch to establish burghs as a formal administrative authority with rights to govern within their boundaries and to trade outside their boundaries.
Many traditional trades became established in the area, including brewers, masons and tailors. The south side of Canongate attracted wealthier residents, with many of Scotland’s landed gentry building large townhouses with extensive gardens stretching down to the South Back of Canongate (now Holyrood Road) to be close to the Royal Court based at Holyrood Palace. Land to the north of Canongate was more densely packed, with the lower classes filling the tenements fronting onto the street and squeezed into buildings down to North Back of Canongate (now Calton Road).
By the late 1800s and early 1900s overcrowding and poor sanitation was proving to be the main problem for the Town Council who had gained powers to make substantial changes within the Old Town through the Edinburgh City Improvement Act 1867. Under this act tenements were improved, enhancing living conditions for residents. Over the years, buildings had been repaired, adapted, sub-divided and generally altered beyond the point of being capable of improvements to provide accommodation to meet standards that were being promoted among public health movements across Scotland and the UK.
Further redevelopments undertaken tended to be part of improvement schemes. This was particularly so under the Edinburgh (Canongate, Corstorphine etc) Improvement Scheme of 1927 and implemented in 1930/1 by the City Architect, Ebenezer James MacRae. His main workload would be the provision of high-quality social housing with good space and light standards.
MacRae was one of the first pioneers of conservation. He renovated a number of Old Town buildings and where that was not practicable he re-built facades in their original form.
Following his participation on a Department of Health tour looking at housing estates across Europe, MacRae brought back ideas which influenced the design of local authority housing across Edinburgh in the 1930s.
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