The pursuit of progress has seen buildings and infrastructures created, modified and dismantled, and while some elements of our heritage remain visible, others have vanished. Recently reissued by Scottish publisher Birlinn is a series of titles shedding light on our lost heritage, concentrating on Scotland’s cities and regions but with forays further afield that also reveal our changing way of life. Each title contains a wealth of fascinating historic photographs and drawings that, along with their informative texts, offer insights into our past. Here are a handful of images from among their pages that caught our eye.
Lost Aberdeen by Diane Morgan
Exemplifying the cycle of renewal, Aberdeen underwent significant transformation in the early 1800s, with much of its medieval townscape swept away in the creation of the Granite City. Since then, many of its grand buildings have also fallen victim to changing needs and fashions, including those around St Nicholas Street and George Street which have been superseded by an enclosed shopping mall. Among the casualties was the Northern Co-op headquarters, built in the late 19th century between Gallowgate and Loch Street and demolished in 1986.
Lost Edinburgh by Hamish Coghill
Originally one of the finest of Edinburgh’s living areas, Cowgate had become a slum in the 19th century and a clearance programme removed almost all its ancient houses. Included in the destruction was Cardinal Beaton’s House with its hexagonal turret – once fine enough to entertain James V, after passing out of ecclesiastical use it became a shop for a lorimer in the late 18th century. Having been split into small dwellings it was recorded in the 1860s as being in ‘a ruinous state’ and the site of one of the parish’s cholera outbreaks.
Lost Ayrshire by Dane Love
Between 1947 and 1966 Scotland created five ‘New Towns’, and while most of these were built on greenfield sites a different approach was taken in Irvine, where much of the original town centre was replaced. Among the images in this volume is a drawing of a building at the corner of Irvine’s Bridgegate and Main Street known as Timmerland – the name derived from the wooden timbers and canopy of its extended frontage. One of the last examples of a traditional burgh house, it also featured two small gables at the roof level, known as nepus gables, which were common in old Scots vernacular architecture.
Lost Bristol by Victoria Coules
While some examples of our architectural heritage were deliberately replaced, others have been lost through fire or warfare. One such casualty is St Peter’s Hospital, a timbered mansion which was built on the banks of the Avon as a private residence in 1402 and, over the centuries, was repurposed as a sugar refinery, operated as Bristol’s mint, and adapted to accommodate as many as 390 people when it was used as a workhouse in 1698. It retained this function for several decades and housed those who were sick, mad or disabled as well as the poor, earning the name ‘hospital’, and was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War.
Lost Cornwall by Joanna Thomas
As the 20th century dawned Cornwall’s traditional sailing luggers and rowing boats were replaced by motor-powered trawlers that allowed fishing over wider areas, and the new railways enabled the sale of the subsequently larger catches to markets more distant than the local shoreline. In sharp contrast to these industrial developments were the small-scale operations of local cockle pickers and the ‘Downderry Cave Dwellers’ who, as late as 1906, eked out their survival by eating and selling shellfish.
