Meg Lee, life in the Dean Village a century ago.

Category

Library Item

Item no

52243

Title

Meg Lee, life in the Dean Village a century ago.

Description

Meg Lee (1905 -1999) lived at 43 Well Court, Dean Village, Edinburgh. The recording of Meg’s reminiscences about her life in the Dean Village was made by Ian Cowie at Meg’s house in the Well Court during the centenary celebrations for the building in 1984.

Robin Lee remembers that his Aunt Meg 'was an avid fan of the Brains Trust which ran from 1941. She came across to our house to listen to it. It was over us children’s heads, but we listened anyway, although I certainly preferred Tommy Handley’s ITMA. Meg was quite the disciplinarian. She liked board games, card games such as Pelmanism and the Solitaire games which required a bit of thought, and of course quizzes. She would tell us tales of the Hebrides, Iceland and Germany, all of which places she had visited with the Walker family as housekeeper. Meg and my wife hit it off, and she visited us in Stornoway and Inverness.'

The Lee Family first appeared in the Dean Village in 1843, by the early 1900’s there were 4 families with the surname Lee growing to 6 families in the 1950’s. However by the 1980’s all these families had left the Village.

Ian Cowie lived in Well Court, Dean Village between 1979-1985, and was treasurer of the Dean Village Association from 1980-1983. By profession Ian was a sound recordist with the BBC.

Artist / maker

Cowie, Ian

Date

1984

Transcript of audio:
[Sound of rushing water in background]

Male voice 1
Not the Niagara Falls, the Falls of Shin. We’re deep in the heart of Edinburgh, just three minutes’ walk from the bustle of the city’s West End. This is the sound of the Water of Leith, as it flows through what was once known as the Village of the Water of Leith, now Dean Village. Dean Village was once the milling centre of Scotland’s capital and here along the riverside were eleven mills in all which were driven by the fast flow of the river. It’s [indecipherable] of today, the Millars and Bakers then known as Baxters have gone, but much of the character and community spirit still exists along with the remains of industrial archaeology.

Woman’s voice 1
My father and mother were born in it and, naturally we loved it and wouldn’t leave it. There were nine of us but, two had died in infancy you see, so seven of us grew up, and we were among several big families that lived in the village, and then as we got a bit older, we used to go with milk or rolls or papers in the morning before school you see, then we went into school and had really a very happy school life. There were about thirty or forty nearly in some of the classes. There were Caretaker’s children who came from Charlotte Square and different offices about the West End there. And there was from Rose Street, Thistle Street, they came down from Sun Brae there. Some came down from the Belford and some didn’t, some went to the Flora Stevenson. Of course, the whole West End at that time was more or less residential you see, and we knew quite a lot of the people, walking down different ways with their dogs and what have you. And the traffic of course, wasn’t the same either and believe it or not you could find when we were coming home from the milk or even delivering the milk you would see sometimes on the Dean Bridge at eight o’clock in the morning, you could see a flock of sheep a shepherd and maybe a couple of dogs and the same thing sometimes they came through the village, and of course, then there was a bit of traffic, but nothing like today. It was the old tram cars with the cable underneath and there were no buses whatsoever and then there was plenty of cycles about and there was a riding academy across here, Moncures over at Sun Brae there, and sometimes we saw them coming, getting their riding lessons. They used to come quite a lot through the village, and then the First World War, the Stewarts stables on Bell’s Brae both sides, one with cabs and one side had the horses. And when the war came the men from the Lothian and Borders Horse Regiment, they were billeted there. I don’t know if the soldiers, I think, were billeted on one side and the horses on the other. And that gave us great excitement in the morning to see them going away on horseback too, in the 14/18 war years.

Male voice 1
How did you manage to get up and down the Bell’s Brae in the winter with snow?

Woman’s voice 1
Well, it was sometimes very difficult, it always has been, and even sometimes of late years it was only transport and what have you, it can be very difficult and even delivering the store milk, there was one or two winters when it was so bad they couldn’t come down, the horses couldn’t come down and when they came to the top of this other hill, at the Dean Church end, and we went up there and got our milk you see, and then the cab office was at the end of Mr Stewart’s house, you know that bit? At the top of Bell’s Brae there. An old man, a Mr Dagger who lived across in a bit of that old building, across in number 10 Dean Park, he kept the office there, and the cab rank stood on Queensferry Street, on the left hand side between the two parts of Randolph Crescent and the old cabbies used to wait there for hire, and when Mr Dagger got an order, by telephone I expect, he used to come out to the door and whistle and the first cabbie they took their turn off going, you know, to whoever wanted the cab. And it was a common sight to see the cabs going round the streets in those days.

Man 1
But obviously the children couldn’t afford to use cabs in the morning when they went on the deliveries?

Woman 1
Oh no, no, no, we went up on our two feet and walked miles [laughs]. It was amazing you know, most of the boys, they went with papers, and for instance my brother went for a firm Urquhart’s in Queensferry Street, and he went out there to Lord Salvesen’s house on Queensferry Road. That’s Dean Park House which is now a boarding house for Daniel Stewart’s pupils, and they went round a bit of Buckingham Terrace I think, and Belgrave Place, then some other body would do Learmonth Terrace and then behind there in Clarendon and so on.
Well, I went round with the milk, round Rothsay Terrace and Lord Dunedin’s and a bit of Palmerston Place, bit of Douglas Crescent and Manor Place, then back to the shop.

Man 1
Was there much time for playtime?

Woman 1
No, not during the week. Sometimes in the winter. That was another thing, we would be in the shop quite sharp, but we had to wait for the milk coming in, and sometimes it was, we really had to run and sometimes couldn’t get all the milk delivered because we had to leave it and the van man, he had a round of his own, but he had to go with the milk we couldn’t get delivered. That didn’t happen very often, but it happened and sometimes you would be half an hour in the shop waiting for the milk to come in, from the farms and the outlying places, you see. And we lost time on that occasionally , but it didn’t really happen often and it was a case of everybody flying as hard as they could, and when we rung somebody’s bell and you couldn’t get an answer and you couldn’t get empty bottles back, then you went back to the shop and you got a row because you didn’t bring enough bottles back to do for the next morning you see, and sometimes the van man had to go out and collect them later. That was serious at the time because you see, we had to be at school at 9 o’clock and we’d to come home, get breakfast and get tidied up a bit and away again.

Man 1
What about life at weekends, you weren’t at school then. Were you expected to work at weekends and that?

Woman 1
Oh, we worked at the, with the milk on Saturday and Sunday, there was no holidays, never a holiday. You were out constantly, seven days a week with the milk. Papers weren’t so bad, I think they, some didn’t work on a Sunday, only Saturdays and when I started we got one and nine a week, thruppence a morning. And when I finished working with the milk, I had 3 and six a week [laughs] so you know we worked practically all the time we were at school, and, but oh, Saturdays and that, we had some good fun because in weather like this, the water there, wasn’t a tenth of that growth there. See there were so many of us played down there continuously, there were bits of the riverbank, that sometimes we had to plunk down and practically enter the water. But we could, if we were very anxious, we could walk all the way up to Roseburn. And then they learnt to swim, there’s a Leggett’s Dam up there, a lot of the boys learnt to swim up there. I never went of course, we never went up there, we were too timid (laughs) or there was an old pipe that went across the dam, down just a wee bit below the bridge, it had something to do with the old distillery, and it went across the dam to the opposite side, to the West Mill. They used to crawl through that pipe when the mill wasn’t in use, from side to side. I don’t know how they had the nerve, but some of the boys used to do that you know, that was the mischief we got into I suppose [laughs].
But we had an old Baillie, a man, Sharp, and we would run a mile from that man. If he caught us there, he didn’t touch us if we were on wading or something, but if he thought we were doing anything he would shout at us and that was the Baillie, and we used to be afraid of him as we were the policeman [laughs].

Man 1
Did you ever fish in the river?

Woman 1
No, I never did, but some of the lads did, but they guddled for minnows and things like that you know. And they had nets and occasionally there was hardly a child in the village that played there who didn’t fall in at some time or another and another thing there was for a while, the people on the hill, they had two peacocks, at Mr Skinner’s place there. There were two peacocks inside where he puts his car for garaging, and they also had two goats and they tethered them at the opposite side of the hill, which is now that, these office people have put plants and things on it. But the goats were tethered on Granny Hill there, they had two of them. We really had a kind of Country Life when you think of it. And then there were people who had hens across there, what we called The Tip, that’s that bit coming down to the water, behind Sun Brae and there was a person over there, who had also Turkeys and the Bubbly Jocks, sometimes you know the bit that goes down to Sloan’s Garage, that opening you would sometimes see the Bubbly Jocks running across there when we went up and down that way. It was more rural in that sense, the place, don’t know we seemed to get an awful lot to enjoy ourselves with, natural things, and then if we went along the length of Queensferry Road, there was a piggery along there and there was see from the lower parts of Ravelston was harvest fields.

Man 1
What about the adults in the community in the village, what kind of activities did they have, was there a public house at all to go to or what?

Woman 1
In Mother’s day, they had been a little. She used to talk about a little Shebeen there, a kind of illicit still you see, I don’t know whether they went in there and drank or not. But then Mr Binnie had a licence, they didn’t drink on the premises, but they drank outside. The Tannery people used to come out in the middle of the day and take their drink or maybe on a Saturday or anytime, but they went there, but they more or less drank outside. Mrs Rossan, I believe they could take the beer or what have you in her place you see, but other than that they had to go up elsewhere for places to actually maybe sit in or anything, but then the men, if I remember rightly, a lot of them in Mother’s day had worked either in the fields or at the Craigleith Quarry, and some of them were on the railway. But of course, in my day there was more boys getting apprenticeships to electricians, joiners. Waterstone’s was in Queensferry Street, they had different joiners and builders and what have you. But quite a lot of them worked, like in my Mother’s day, there’s the Quarry, railway and my father was with the Corporation, he was with the drainage, the Burgh Engineer Department, and my uncle Sandy was in the Tannery and Jimmy was the Stone Mason, you see and then there was quite a lot of glaziers around the village, and there was a lad Blair, I don’t know if he’s still alive, and he went from the ordinary glazing and now I think he works for himself and he’s very high up in the stained glass.

Man 1
How important was the Tannery to Dean Village?

Woman 1
Oh, quite important. At one time they used to go along there in the mornings, they used to start at 6 o’clock in the morning and they wore clogs in those days, and we used to hear them going along, and sometimes we met them, and they came up sometimes from India Place. That was another thing, children came up from there, India Place which is just at the front of Waterside there.

Man 1
What about the smell, was that pretty objectionable?

Woman 1
At times, but not really too bad on the whole, it wasn’t. I’ll tell you what plagued people latterly was flies. My brother for instance across there, would always say they could hardly open their window, but they almost had like a plague of flies, but the smell wasn’t really, either that or we were so used to it we didn’t notice [laughs].

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People > Communities

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Places > Edinburgh areas

Places > Edinburgh areas > Dean

Places > Edinburgh areas > Water of Leith