A typical Portobello terraced house reflecting in a car sunroof.
This photo is available on Redbubble: Reflecting House.
21 October 2008
29 September 2008
23 September 2008
Dudley Road roof reflected
Many of the houses just east of Victoria Park in Edinburgh have these fancy cast-iron fences edging the roof.
This photo is available on Redbubble: Roof reflected.
9 September 2008
29 August 2008
Coburg Street: house reflected.
The house reflected in the window is the one we saw last week in Still Building Edinburgh.
This photo is available on Redbubble: House Reflected.
1 August 2008
20 July 2008
Morningside Gallery
Morningside Gallery reflects Morningside Road. The gallery claims to “showcase original paintings and limited editions by some of Scotland’s best known painters alongside the work of promising young Scottish artists” … and the art is obscured by the glass reflecting the houses opposite more perfectly than any painting.
This photo is available on Redbubble: Art and reflections.
16 July 2008
Homeless need shelter
There are thousands of homeless people in Edinburgh. Shelter is one of the charities that helps. Another charity is the Homeless Outreach Project – currently in need of funding, if you’ve got any to spare. At any one time, there are probably at least three dozen people literally sleeping on the streets (Rough Sleepers Headcount) and three dozen more at the Cowgate night service shelter. The housing crisis is responsible for this – most homeless people don’t sleep rough: they simply can’t afford to pay rent or pay a mortgage. The Scottish Government have a target of a home for everyone by 2012… but we need good, affordable houses being built for ordinary people earning less than £20K a year to live in. Edinburgh is full of good, solid houses and flats – like those reflected – that once were affordable to ordinary people and families, that were built so well they are still good to live in a hundred years and more later. We should be building more places like that – investments in public housing where people want to live.
This photo is available on Redbubble: Shelter.
28 June 2008
14 June 2008
The King’s Wark on the Shore
The old King’s Wark was “an extensive building that appears to have occupied the whole ground between the Broad Wynd and Bernard Street. The exact purpose for which it was maintained is not clearly defined in any of the early allusions, but it probably included an arsenal, with warehouses, and resident officials, for storing the goods and managing the revenues of the port.”
This building was burned down in 1544, during the Rough Wooing. Henry VIII had ordered “Put all to fyre and swoorde, burne Edinborough towne, so rased and defaced when you have sacked and gotten what ye can of it, as there may remayn forever a perpetual memory of the vengeaunce of God lightened upon them for their faulsehode and disloyailtye. Do what ye can out of hande…to beate down and overthrowe the castle, sack Holyrood house, and as many townes and villages about Edinborough as ye may conveniently, sack Lythe and burn and subvert it and all the rest, putting man, woman and child to fyre and sworde without exception, where any resistance shallbe made agaynst you” – this was Henry’s idea of diplomacy.
Mary had the King’s Work rebuilt in 1564 by John Chisholme, “comptroller of artiller”, and in 1575 it was converted to a hospital for the reception of patients recovered from the plague. In 1614 the King’s Work was given by James VI to his favourite chamber-chield, or groom of the chamber, Bernard Lindsay of Lochill, by a royal grant which empowered him to keep four taverns there. The area was called Bernard’s Nook, even after the Magistrates of Edinburgh took possession of the area in 1649: Bernard Street is named for him.
The pub called The King’s Wark reportedly does very fine breakfasts.
This photo is available on Redbubble: The King’s Wark on the Shore.
PS: Today at 2pm till 5pm – Baking for Asylum in Artisan Roast on Broughton Street.
