I have just given a talk to the AGM of the Inverleith Society. It does not pretend to be an academic paper - more at pub quiz level - but it does contain some interesting snippets of information I found while searching for material. Many thanks to the Scottish and Edinburgh section of the Edinburgh Public Library for assistance; and to the Society for inviting me.
* * * * *
In the summer of 1973 we arrived in Edinburgh. I could not
pronounce Penicuik; I had never heard of Inverleith. Then sometime in October
the list of the coming Saturday’s rugby fixtures was posted on the board. There
it was: GHH – JA2s – Inverleith. A helpful colleague explained, “Oh that’s just
across Kinnear Road. You change at home.” He did not explain it was an away
match, so I changed as well. But my embarrassment as I shivered in the freezing
wind is another story.
So from my first months in Edinburgh I associated Inverleith
with rugger. In fact I was already acquainted with a fictional rugby match, between
Scotland and Australia, which begins “Castle Gay” by John Buchan. The hero
scores the winning try: “He was still dazed and panting when a minute later the
whistle blew, and a noise like the Last Trump told him that by a single point
he had won the match for his country. There was a long table below the Grand
Stand, a table reserved for the Press. On it might have been observed a wild
figure with red hair dancing a war dance of triumph. Presently the table
collapsed under him, and the rending of timber and the recriminations of
journalists were added to the apocalyptic din”.
In fact this book was published just after Rugby
Internationals had moved from Inverleith to Murrayfield; but I reckon that
while Buchan was conceiving his story he had Inverleith in mind. The SRU bought
the ground in 1897 for £3,800. International matches were held there from 1899
till 1925. There were many notable incidents:
1899 against Ireland: “Moneypenny kicked the ball past the
full back, over the line, and was running on to touch down when he was tackled
from behind and brought down” – Scotland converted the resultant penalty.
Some of the incidents show how the game remains the same. In
1903 against Wales “conditions were appalling. A fierce gale of wind and blinding
rain coming from the south west.” Others, though, are interesting evidence of
changes, In 1905 New Zealand played with seven forwards who packed down 2-3-2.
There was one “roving forward”. There were no substitutes in those days, of
course. In 1899 against Wales “Neilson had his nose fractured and some of the
fluency amongst the backs vanished”. I’m not surprised. In 1907 against Ireland
“MacLear handed off his man so severely as to knock him out and he spent a
while recovering on the straw on the touchline.”
There is a pleasant story from 1911: “The Scottish captain
on that day later gave his cap to a tribal chief in the Sudan, who wore it on
state occasions instead of his fez.”
I was astonished I my researches to discover that one G
Harris refereed the very first French match in 1910. I can identify with his
problems. “They were all inclined to get offside and tackle opponents who did
not have the ball; one claimed a mark from a kick behind him. But the referee
allowed them considerable latitude to keep the game flowing”.
It sounds as though that referee could have handled the JA3s
quite well. I only once performed in front of an international crowd. There
were so many matches one Saturday that we were dispatched to play in Inverleith
Park, against some appropriately lowly Stewart’s Melville side. As the game
wore on I became aware that our opponents had considerable support, who were
not inhibited about commenting on my refereeing. They were all wearing bobble
hats in what appeared to be Stewart’s Melville colours. I only gradually
realised that their helpful advice was all in Welsh accents. Their team was
playing at Murrayfield that afternoon.
I will end my Rugby reminiscences by mentioning a different
Welsh match, in 1901. “The match was postponed because of the death of Queen
Victoria, and as a mark of respect the spectators were predominantly in black.”
Of course the game most closely associated with Scotland
must be golf. The following extract from “The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker”
was written in 1771. It refers to Bruntsfield not to Inverleith, but the
quotation takes us back before Inverleith was part of Edinburgh at all.
“I was shown one particular set of golfers, the youngest of
whom was turned fourscore. They were all gentlemen of independent fortunes who
had amused themselves with this pastime for the best part of a century, without
ever having felt the least alarm from sickness or disgust, and they never went
to bed without having each the best part of a gallon of claret.”
In those days Inverleith was all the Rocheid estate. Henry
Cockburn’s “Memorials” give us a wonderful picture of one of that family.
“Except Mrs Siddons in some of her displays or magnificent
royalty, no one could sit down like the lady of Inverleith. She would sail like
a ship from Tarshish, gorgeous in velvet or rustling in silk, and done up in
all the accompaniments of fan, ear rings and finger rings, falling sleeves,
scent bottle, embroidered bag, hoop and train – all superb, yet all in purest
taste; and managing all this seemingly heavy rigging, with as much ease as a
full blown swan does its plumage, she would take possession of the centre of a
large sofa, and at the same moment, without the slightest visible exertion,
would cover the whole of it with her bravery, the graceful folds seeming to lay
themselves over it like summer waves. The descent from her carriage too, where
she sat like a nautilus in its shell, was a display which no one in these days
could accomplish or even fancy. The mulberry coloured coach, spacious but apparently
not too large for what it carried, - though she alone was in it; the handsome
jolly coachman and his splendid hammercloth loaded with lace; the two
respectful liveried footmen, one on each side of the richly carpeted step;
these were lost sight of amidst the slow majesty with which the lady came down
and touched the earth. She presided, in this imperial style, over her son’s
excellent dinners, with great sense and spirit, to the very last day almost of
a prolonged life.”
This passage reminds us that the word “play” encompasses far
more than organised games. Here is the first verse of a song that was going
round London in the 1690s that challenges Scotland’s reputation as a place of
dour, puritanical rectitude:
’Twas
within a furlong of Edinburgh town
In the
rosy time of year when the grass was down;
Bonny
Jocky blithe and gay said to Jenny making hay,
Let’s
sit a little (dear) and prattle, ‘tis a sultry day.
He long
had courted the black-brown maid,
But
Jockey was a wag and would ne’er consent to wed,
Which
made her Pish and Pooh, and cry out it will not do,
I
cannot, cannot, cannot, wonnot, wonnot buckle to.
I doubt if organised games were played on the banks of the
Water of Leith in past centuries, either. I found the following information in
“Sketch of St Bernard’s”, published in 1907 by John Turnbull Smith.
“The only playground or public park that the boys of the
village [Stockbridge] had in old days was a piece of waste ground on the banks
of the Water of Leith called “The Whins”. The ground is now occupied by ‘The
Colony’.”
By a happy chance we know quite a lot about the games played
there by boys and girls once the Colonies had been built, thanks to some
excellent oral history. Here old people remember their childhood in the early
Twentieth century:
“We played kick-the-can. Someone used to kick the can as far
as they could and the rest ran away and hid... The girls would play peevers on
the pavement…. We used to make tents out of old blankets and carpet on the
pavement. You put sticks in the cobbles and tied strings on an old blanket…I
used to sit and crochet these balls of coloured wool. We used to go and buy
them with our pocket money and sit on the steps and crochet. We were easy
pleased in those days, eh? We played among the bushes and slid down the hills.
We took dolls and played houses…One of our favourite games in the winter was
getting trays from my mother and going along the path in Rocheid Park where
there was a slope down to the Water of Leith, and when the snow was on the
ground it was super, a super slide, we used to slide right down…Skipping-ropes,
oh that was a great favourite…We played bowls, and cuddies loups – one would
lean against the garden paling and bend down and others would jump on top and
when one fell off he would join the one that was bending down and it eventually
all collapsed…Then Bella McBain, she was really good at diabolo - the only one
in the Colonies who could do it… And fire cans; that had a craze for a while.
You’d get an old syrup tin, get two holes in it and put wire as a handle then
you put paper and sticks and sometimes a bit coal in it and you lit it and you
hurled it round and round till it was red hot…We used to play dodge. You had
sides and you shouted your numbers and then you threw a ball at them…Our
fathers and mothers used to come out to play with us. They’d come out and hold
the skipping ropes for us, play rounders, or dodgy with us. Not just our
family, it was a right wee community down here…When Inverleith Pond was frozen
the Reid’s had ice skates and we’d get a shot of them. When we had snow we’d
build a fort at the bottom of the street and have snow fights. They’d come from
other streets, and VOOM!”
I get the impression from the Evening News that the great
age of Inverleith Park was in the twenty years before the First World War. It
was laid out in 1890. Only two years
later we read: “The avenues of trees are without exception in full leaf
and look remarkably well, as if they had been planted for years. The tree
guards which surround them were invented by Mr MacLeod and are of a special
design.” The Public Parks Committee of the Council frequently discussed the
facilities at the Park. We have already heard about skating at the pond. Well,
in 1897 the City Superintendent of Works was advertising for the right sort of
gardener: “Tender for Clay Puddle Works”. In 1902 there was a note in the
Evening News – “Edinburgh skaters will be able to practice their art in the
pond at Inverleith Park this evening, the surface having been cleared of snow
this afternoon”
Not everything went smoothly, mind you. Leaving aside the
unfortunate case of the cricketer who dropped dead in 1903, there was a sad
tragedy in 1905 when a four-year old drowned in the pond. His father took the
Council to court, but the Sheriff agreed with the Council’s advocate that the
arrangements were the same as at every other park in the country. It was not
until the 1950s that work was put in hand to make the water much shallower, so
as to remove – or at least reduce – the risk of drowning.
A plan for a ride, with a track for horses right round the
Park, was considered but not taken up. However, in 1898 we read advertisements
for a gardener who can make a bowling green. Then in 1900 there was a triumphant
announcement: “The Public Works Committee of Edinburgh Town Council had before
them today proposals for the provision at Inverleith Park of a cloakroom for
skaters, store room for model yachts, a football pavilion and a covered space
for the storage of goal posts, ladies lavatory etc. It is proposed to convert
the farm buildings and the cottage at the east end of the pond to these
purposes.”
The park and its facilities came in very useful a couple of
years later in June 1902, there were The Scots Children’s Sports, Coronation
Festivities. Not all Scots children were here, you understand. Inverleith Park
hosted children from Broughton, Canonmills, Dean, Flora Stevenson, St Bernard’s
and Stockbridge Primary Schools. There
was another big children’s sports event – the Interpark Sports – in 1939. The
programme included touch rugby, Danish Handball, and Girls Open Tenniquoits.
Skaters in winter. Model yacht enthusiasts in summer. In
June 1930 the “Scotsman” had a fine photo (along with photos of the first day
at Ascot) of model yachts on Inverleith Pond. The size of some of the craft is
striking. It is hard to tell from a photo, but I would put some of the masts at
four or five feet. In 1924 there is a note of the racing for the McLennan
trophy. The final was won by J.S.Kelly’s “Peggy”, with G McDonald’s “Maggie”
coming second. In 1966 permission was given for the model yachts to have use of
the pond one Sunday in each month. In 1981 the first Scottish Model Yacht
Racing Championship was held here.
There were frequent soccer matches – Cockenzie Star, Granton
Oakvale, Leith Victoria. In fact in the 1930s there was a request for more
soccer pitches, but this was rejected on the grounds that this could only be
achieved by making the pitches slightly too small. But, as I mentioned earlier, “play” does not
only mean organised, or disorganised games. There were also many brass band concerts.
For example, the Edinburgh and Leith Postal Band: such composers as Ellenberg,
Volti, Waldteufel, Myddleton. I was struck, though, by several references to
riots on these occasions. 1906 seems to have been a turbulent year. On the 30th of June some 40 youths
started throwing stones, bottles and turf to the danger of passers by. Later
that year we hear of a similar gang using “filthy language” and annoying people
listening to the band. Later that summer some rioters appeared before Sheriff
Guy, who said that “this had been nothing short of an attempt by the mob to
rule the police”.
So with relief, perhaps we can conclude by leaving
Inverleith and crossing the bridge to Canonmills, as I am sure many people from
this part of town did in the late nineteenth century, to visit the Great Sea
Serpent.
By a happy chance when that excellent book by James Grant,
“Old and New Edinburgh” was written in 1880, the Royal Patent Gymnasium was
part of new Edinburgh. While you look at the photocopy I will read what Grant
had to say:
“In this quarter we find the Patent Royal Gymnasium. Few
visitors leave the city without seeing it. It was constructed by Mr Cox of
Gorgie House for the purpose of affording healthful and exhilarating
recreation. In April 1865 it was opened by the provosts, magistrates and
councillors of Edinburgh and Leith. Here was a vast rotating boat, 471 feet in
circumference, seated for 600 rowers; a giant see-saw named “Chang”, 100 feet
long and seven feet broad, supported on an axle and capable of containing 200
persons, alternately elevating them to a height of fifty feet and then sinking
almost to the ground; a velocipede paddle merry-go-round, 160 feet in
circumference, seated for 600 persons who propel the machine by sitting astride
the rim and pushing their feet against the ground; a self-adjusting trapeze,
enabling gymnasts to swing by the hands 130 feet; a compound pendulum swing
capable of holding 100 persons, kept in motion by their own exertions.
Here too are a vast number of climbing and vaulting poles.
Rotary ladders, stilts, spring-boards, quoits, balls, bowls and little boats
and canoes on ponds, propelled by novel and amusing methods. In winter the
ground is prepared for skaters, and when lighted up at night by hundreds of
lights, the scene, with its musical accessories, is one of wonderful
brightness, gaiety, colour and incessant motion.”
One young man who enjoyed it was Robert Louis Stevenson. He
wrote that he particularly liked the café. I shall end with his comment: “Here
was advertised café au lait, with or without milk”
