The way the media of Scotland, the UK and the world were going on you’d think the whole Old Town from the castle to the Cannongate had been destroyed. I could tell from their diagrams that it was nothing like that; it was one small city block that had no historically important buildings. Sure, one was built in the 1790s, but it wasn’t particularly attractive and there are hundreds of older buildings in the city. The loss of property is terrible, but that’s the one thing that wasn’t overhyped.
So yesterday I went for the first time to as close to the site as you can get. You have to be within 100 yards to even know anything’s changed; Edinburgh has a large centre for a city of its size, so all this about “the heart of the city has been changed for ever” is total crap. The block is only about 50 yards wide on each side and from Chambers St nothing looks different (although I don’t know how badly damaged the interiors are). Some of the buildings were 7 stories (again there are taller, older buildings in the Old Town), but they were at Cowgate level, which means that from South Bridge or Chamber Street they were only 3 or 4 stories. The most dramatic difference is on South Bridge from where you can now see St Giles’ Cathedral, and the smell of charcoal is still very strong.
I was worried that they might have to rebuild the South Bridge, as these arches are about 200 years old; I did like the windows on the underside of the South Bridge as it crossed the Cowgate. Traffic is running again there so presumably it’s safe.
It’s not like this is the first or by any means the worst fire that’s ever happened in the Old Town. Apparently a 13 storey tenement in Parliament Square burnt down in 1824. Now that altered the skyline forever.
The damage extends further into surrounding buildings than is immediately apparent, or so I’ve been told. The won’t-somebody-think-of-the-buildings hype was slightly overblown (some of those buildings were just horrendous) but the loss of the Gilded Balloon and the School of Informatics’ AI library were possibly as unfortunate as the architecture itself.
I read that the AI lab’s stuff was backed up elsewhere, and the Gilded Balloon can always fall back on their annexe at Teviot Row.
I’m pretty cheesed off about La Belle Angele getting destroyed as I’ve some fond memories of the Yip Yap club that used to go on there. I just hope that the rebuild improves on what, to be honest, was a pretty skanky part of town.
The idea of the 13 storey tenement is less impressive than it sounds when you remember the split-level nature of the Old Town. The bottom of the tenement was on Cowgate so that at the level of the High Street its height was unremarkable.
Sure the media hyped the Edinburgh fire, partly because it happened on a slow news day and partly because the firemens’ dispute makes big fires particularly topical.
From what I read, the main thing was that developers wanted to put in modern looking buildings to replace the burnt ones and that was what all the “change the look forever” fuss was about.
Oh, right, thanks. I’d had the impression it was tall on both sides, like the buildings on the Lawnmarket; something like Gladstone’s Land with another 5 wooden storeys on top.
The main point I was trying to make in my OP was that ex pats and past visitors now think that they won’t recognise the centre of Edinburgh any more. Tourists planning to come here think there’s nothing to see. The reality is that you could spend a couple of days in the Old Town and not even notice the damage.
I seem to be having trouble with spelling words I should know just now; it’s the “Canongate”, not what I wrote, and “Hogmanay” (in another thread), not “Hogmannay”.
The firemen’s quote jsut irritates me. It’s obviously designed to encourage you to think “see, if we strike you couldn’t deal with this situation, so pay up!”. My reaction is to think “well moderate your demands rather then blackmailing us!”.