Nostalgia: New look at old streets

Published on Saturday 17 January 2009 10:03

IT'S getting to the point where Malcolm Cant will have to change his name by deed poll to Mr Edinburgh.

The 68-year-old author has just published his 20th volume of old Edinburgh pictures, complete with pertinent commentary – which must make him the leading expert on the streets of the city past.

But this particular book is a bit of a departure for the former insurance company worker – previous tomes have concentrated on the Capital's suburbs, whereas Edinburgh's Old Town and Its Environs, as its name suggests, examines sections of the city centre.

"When I first started I avoided the city centre because I thought it had been well done but over the years I have gathered so much material," Malcolm explains.

The result is a collection no less fascinating than his Villages of Edinburgh books – which have sold more than 16,000 copies – and perhaps even more so, because they focus on streets most of the city's population will have walked at one time or another.

The city's most well-known thoroughfares are a little less familiar in many of the pictures, though, including Malcolm's favourite shot, of George IV Bridge from the 1890s.

The picture, which was taken from the window of a tenement on the site of the present-day Deacon Brodie's Tavern, appeals, he says, because it includes so many aspects important to the city, such as its architecture, demonstrated by the unfamiliar building on the left. "There is no way in which anyone would have designed that to face on to a main street," he says. "And they didn't – it was there before the street was built." It is the back of County Hall built in 1816 to face St Giles' Cathedral – George IV Bridge was built in 1827. The building which stands there now, the former Midlothian County Council HQ, was not started until 1900.

The picture also reveals a fact about trams – the rails at the top of the bridge curve around onto the Royal Mile; they don't go straight ahead because the gradient of The Mound was too steep.

Another trams picture comes with a small warning for transport chiefs – the 1950s shot of car 235 on George VI Bridge shows passengers waiting on an "island" in the middle of the road, a system which, Malcolm says, was already becoming dangerous by the time the trams were scrapped in 1956.

The collection looks set to fly off the shelves of the city's bookshops but Malcolm's not resting on his laurels – he's already in the process of producing his 21st book.

"It's time I retired but I just keep thinking of another idea," he laughs.

• Edinburgh's Old Town and Its Environs by Malcolm Cant is published by Malcolm Cant Publications, priced 14.99