Former entrance to meat market erected again at new offices

Published on Friday 22 May 2009 09:57

THE archways which stood for 120 years above the entrance to one of the city's historic meat markets have been returned to their former home.

The stone archways were carefully dismantled when the Fountainbridge meat market building, latterly occupied by restaurant Fat Sams , was demolished two years ago to make way for the Exchange Place office development.

Now, following months of restoration work, they have been re-erected on what is now a walkway leading through the financial quarter.

Work to recreate the two archways with their original look has been taking place for the last two months on the site of Exchange Place, the three offices behind the existing Scottish Widows headquarters.

When they were dismantled in 2007, each piece was taken into storage and now rebuilt.

Peter Bowman, a partner at Edinburgh-based Cre8architecture, the firm that designed the development, has masterminded the return of the arches.

He said: "They've been reconstructed on Fountainbridge, where they've always been, as a separate free-standing archway through one of the pedestrian routes into the development.

"It was like a reverse jigsaw carefully taking down the three arches, cleaning up all the stone work, identifying what was the original 1880s sandstone from the slightly poorer quality stuff added in the 1920s, and bringing it all back to life."

Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP), the site developer, had to get listed building consent to demolish the old Fat Sam's building.

"We want to show what the original historic monument was like," said Mr Bowman. "If it had been left as it was it would have continued to decay. I hope this will give the arches another 120 years' life.

"It would have been easy to say 'don't touch them – leave them where they are', but they will now have a much more positive contribution to the walkways and cycleways of Edinburgh as this links to the Millennium Way.

"It's one of these things cities need – things that stop you and make you want to find out more."

The restoration of the archways was a key part of the 50m scheme, which has created 210,000 square feet of office space and 6000sq ft of retail space.

Scott Moncrieff, one of Scotland's leading accountancy firms, has become the first tenant of the new development.

SWIP was not willing to disclose how much the restoration of the archways cost. A spokeswoman for the firm said: "All restoration costs were factored into the overall development cost."