Nostalgia slideshow - All not quiet on the city's shops front

Published on Saturday 3 May 2008 11:06

AS Sixties-built Longstone Shopping Centre on Inglis Green Road is closed down to make way for dozens of new flats and shops, we are again reminded of the changing face of the Capital.

We take a look back to a time when Edinburgh was sprinkled with independent department stores, and when friendly assistants could help with all your shopping needs.

Take a walk along Princes Street in the 1960s, and you could find yourself peering in the windows of Binns, Smalls or Jenners, with Patrick Thomsons and JR Allan department stores just around the corner.

Smalls stood proudly at 104 Princes Street, with its eye-catching white shop sign and imaginative window displays.

Woolworths popped up around Edinburgh, including one in the more unusual location of a converted church on Portobello High Street.

In 1962 King Olav of Norway paid a visit to Jenners, and children lined the streets, waving their flags as a choir sang the Norwegian national anthem.

Goldberg's department store was ahead of its time when it opened at Tollcross in 1960. It was a modern construction on five floors, with an exotic roof garden. Customers eagerly queued outside Mr Munro's Grocery shop at Brandon Terrace to stock up for Hogmany or down at F Weierter & Sons in Corstorphine, where the men, proudly dressed in white overalls, were at your service.

A trip to James Scott & Co at Greenside Place meant taking your pick from a range of colour televisions, and Brunstfield Place provided a whole a row of shops from which you could choose to watch.

Street vendors still played a role, with an old fishwife selling food to passers by on St Mary's street.