Lmst

The thread about the other bits of Wester Hailes; how the dream of a suburban New Town went sour

Wester Hailes is a name often used (from outwith) to describe the whole area, but really it’s a set of discreet neighbourhoods, each with their own name with its own derivation. We covered Clovenstone in our last thread, so let’s look at some of the others in turn.

Wester Hailes

Let’s start with Wester Hailes itself. Hailes is a really ancient name, almost 1,000 years old, first recorded in the area in 1095 when Ethelred, son of Malcolm Canmore, gave land in this area called Halas to Dunfermline Abbey. It likely refers to land by, or between, river(s). The estate of Hailes was split into three main parts by the 15th century

Over or Easter Hailes – of which some was later incorporated into Redhall
Kirkland of Hailes – which refers to Colinton Kirk, in which parish it lay
Nether or Wester Hailes.

Blaeu’s map of 1654 shows the East and West Hales between the two watercourses which may give the area its name; the Murray Burn to the north and the Water of Leith to the south. Fast forward to an Ordnance Survey 6 inch map of 1852 and we see a farm of Wester Hailes (where Clovenstone housing scheme is now centred), a quarry village at Hailes, just south of Kingsknowe – where Hailes Quarry Park now is, and Hailes House, which is still hiding there off the Lanark Road surrounded by streets of its name, if you look for it.

Blaeu’s map of Lothian and Linlithgow, 1654, showing West and East Hales. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

It was Wester Hailes Farm and Hailes Quarry (which had been reclaimed by backfilling with landfill) that the Corporation would purchase in the 1960s for its new housing scheme and from where the overall name was taken. The Wester Hailes Road though was first built and so-named over 30 years before in 1931, to connect Lanark and Calder Road.

Dumbryden

But it was the name of Dumbryden which was applied to the first part of the scheme to be built, in the northeast corner on a mix of land formerly occupied by quarry cottages and also the Wester Hailes Smallholdings. Dumbeg and Dumbryden are old Gaelic-derived names in this area. Dumbryden itself (or Dumbredin, Dumbraiden , Dumbrydon etc.) probably means the same thing as Dumbarton – township or fort of Britons. A farm of this name is recorded in 18th century maps. As such, it’s an ancient name and a remarkable survivor in the streets of a 20th century council scheme.

Dumbryden neighbourhood outlined on Google Earth aerial photo.

That building that you know and love as Lothian Buses’ Longstone Depot? It was actually built in 1949 as the administrative block for the Dumbryden Works of John Wight & Co., building contractors. The Corporation didn’t acquire it for conversion to a bus garage until 1954.

Longstone Bus Depot, cc-by-SA 2.0 Kim Traynor via Geograph

Murrayburn

Next along from Dumbryden is Murrayburn, built from 1969-72. It takes its name from the Murray Burn, the stream that once flowed through this area and which, ironically, was buried in a conduit to make way for the housing scheme!

Murrayburn neighbourhood outlined on Google Earth aerial photo.

You can catch sight of the Murray Burn at Sighthill, where it passes under the Union Canal below you, before entering its culvert under the district which it lends its name to. The name is a corruption of the Scots Muiryburn, a burn that drains a muir (moor). Confusingly, much like Wester Hailes Primary School was actually in Sighthill, so is Murrayburn Primary School! It was built there in 1938, 30 years before the neighbourhood that shares its name.

Murray Burn culvert under the Union Canal, 2016. Cc-by-NC-SA 4.0 Stuart Laidlaw, via Edinburgh Collected

Hailesland

Immediately adjacent to Murrayburn and Dumbryden sits Hailesland, with the union canal running through its centre. It was a name coined by the council planners back in 1967 on an area of Wester Hailes Farm that had been known as the Dryburn Park.

Hailesland neighbourhood outlined on Google Earth aerial photo.

The northern part of Hailesland is a mix of low and mid-rise properties, the part south of the Canal was built as high rise, using the Bison Wall Frame System. These were condemned as structurally unsafe in 1983 and demolition was recommended then. Six such blocks were built at Hailesland and they were never fully occupied. They became the centre of a 20 year local (and occasionally national) housing scandal that was not resolved until 1989. After years of wrangling, the eventual outcome saw three of the blocks refurbished (and clad in distinctive, corrugated, coloured exteriors) and have their structural defects remedied and the remaining three blocks sold to the Wester Hailes Housing Association for a token £1 and demolished.

Evening News, “The Hailesland Saga”, 15 November 1989

In 1989, the value of these three blocks, standing empty at the time, was assessed. It was found to be negative £500,000; such were the costs faced in disposing or repairing them, the council would have to pay the housing association to take them of fits hands. All six blocks would likely have been demolished if it wasn’t for the fact they were so new (less than 17 years since final completion) that they hadn’t yet been paid off and the council still owed £1.5 million of debt taken on to finance their construction. Writing that off would have resulted in the sum having been added to city-wide council housing rents.

Demolition started on June 11th 1990; three blocks consisting of 339 flats, were brought down to be replaced by 98 low-rise housing association properties. The plunger was pressed by Scottish Secretary Malcolm Rifkind and Tommy Smith, a saxophonist and jazz composer who grew up in the area

Scotsman, 12 June 1990. Malcolm Rifkind and Tommy Smith with the demolition plunger for the Hailesland blocks

Westburn

The westernmost area of Wester Hailes is appropriately enough known as Westburn . The name for this area was historically Baberton Mains, after a farm, with the old Baberton Quarry at its centre. But the name Baberton had been taken by a private housing estate built on neighbouring Fernieflat Farm, so a new name was conjured up by the council for their project. Westburn refers of course to land to the west of the Murray Burn. Again it was a mix of low, mid and seven blocks comprising of 400 high-rise flats. These multis weren’t Bison System, but had actually been built to an even worse quality than those at Hailesland. Not long after completion, the external roughcasting started to fall off, and huge sections had to be pre-emptively removed as a safety concern, leaving the relatively new flats “piebald“; looking like they had been abandoned for decades.

Evening News photo of missing render on Westburn multi-storey flats, 8th September 1987

£300,000 was spent on render repairs at Westburn in 1987, but the end was nigh for them. Its seven blocks came down in March 1993, when they were just over 20 years old, to be replaced by the Westburn Village of the Wester Hailes Housing Association.

Westburn multi-storey flats prior to demolition, Evening News, 24 December 1992

The Drive, Park and Barn Park

The last neighbourhood of Wester Hailes is the bit you might get away with calling just that – although it was built in three distinct parts; Wester Hailes Drive (tower blocks), Wester Hailes Park and Barn Park.

Hailesland neighbourhood outlined on Google Earth aerial photo.

These multis were demolished in 1994 to make way for low-rise housing. At the same time the opportunity was taken to create new, pastoral-sounding streetnames to recall the vanished farm; Harvesters Way, Winterburn Place, Ashcroft Lane etc. Another of the rehabilitated areas was renamed Dumbeg Park, bringing back into use another of the ancient Gaelic placenames (one meaning a little fort or settlement – dun beag) The various demolition and replacement schemes were remarkably successful, and won various awards at the time including “most improved street” in the country for the part of Wester Hailes Drive renamed Walkers Rigg. . This was in no part due to the community involvement in planning.

Wester Hailes Drive “multis”, 1983. Photograph by J. H. Millar. © Edinburgh City Libraries

The more you read about Wester Hailes, the more you realise just how badly people were let down by the authorities. The shopping centre that had originally been planned as a high street in the centre of the scheme did not open until the last houses were being complete din 1973, more than five years after people started moving into the scheme. In the meantime it had been meant long walks or awkward bus rides to go shopping.

“Wester Hailes Centre”, Kevin Walsh, 1992. Local resident Jack McNeil stands infront of the shopping centre that was later rebranded “Westside Plaza”

This “get people in first, worry about everything else later” approach also applied to education. It took nearly a decade for the promised secondary school for the area, Wester Hailes Education Centre (WHEC), to materialise, it did not open until 1977 by which time students were well settled into other schools and parents had to fight the authorities to keep them there.

Principal Ralph Wilson at WHEC as it nears completion in 1977

In 1978 the area had a single GP “surgery” serving c. 20,000 people – in reality it was a few rooms in a converted tower block flat in Hailesland; the Health Secretary allowed it to be closed. Damp, condensation and mould as a result of design and construction flaws and poor workmanship was endemic from new. When residents protested at a meeting of the Housing Committee in the City Chambers in 1977 the Chairman, Councillor Cornelius Waugh (“Corny“), had officers eject them.

Damp in a Wester Hailes flat, 1985. © Edinburgh City Libraries

George Younger, Scottish Secretary, turned down demands for a public enquiry. Eventually in 1981 the Edinburgh District Council commissioned a report into construction problems in the scheme from Paisley College of Technology, known as the “MacData Report“, after the research unit which produced it. This was a technical report and went through the estate forensically examining construction and engineering standards. It found a litany of errors and clear evidence of shoddy workmanship and a lack of supervision. But locals felt it didn’t go far enough – it was authored by building surveyors and civil engineers and overlooked the people themselves. In response, the local tenants groups set up their own “People’s Survey” through the Wester Hailes Sentinel newspaper. The Sentinel’s surveys were sent to each of the 5,941 houses that comprised the entire scheme. 80% of the respondents complained of draughts; 54% complained of damp. Houses had cracks in floors, walls and ceilings, doors and windows jammed or were improperly sealed.

Mother and baby in a kitchen, Wester Hailes, 1980. A house that was not even 10 years old at this time. © Edinburgh City Libraries

As a result, the wind and rain got in. Two thirds of respondents complained of the noise of the wind in their houses. Skimping on insulation to cut costs meant 3/4 struggled to keep houses heated in winter. Water vapour condensed on cold walls the walls and ran down it. The survey also found:

472 complaints of noise from up or downstairs neighbours due to inadequate soundproofing
412 complaints of noise from the common stairs and 342 of banging internal doors
466 cracks in floors or ceilings
307 leaks and plumbing defects

But what little was done didn’t touch the sides. You’ll find the same complaints in the newspapers in 1985 and 1986 and 1988 as you did in 1978. The application of fungicidal paint by Council workmen, the typical response to complaints, did nothing.

Evening News headlines about Wester Hailes from 1982-1987

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#1960s #1970s #Clovenstone #CouncilHousing #Dumbryden #hailesland #Housing #Multistorey #politics #prefabrication #PublicHealth #publicHousing #Scandal #Suburbs #TownPlanning #wesbutn #WesterHailes

"Wester Hailes Centre", Kevin Walsh, 1992. Local resident Jack McNeil stands infront of the shopping centre that was later rebranded "Westside Plaza"

Blaeu's map of Lothian and Linlithgow, 1654, showing West and East Hales. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Dumbryden neighbourhood outlined on Google Earth aerial photo.

Longstone Bus Depot, cc-by-SA 2.0 Kim Traynor via Geograph

Largest multi-storey car parks at Aussie and Kiwi airports

Listed below are the largest multi-storey car parks at Australian and New Zealand airports. Please note: The number of bays may include rental car spaces, as well as those for public parking.

Brisbane Airport car park that celebrates the Brisbane River – Source: archdaily.com Source: designboom.com

If anyone has data on the number of bays being incorporated into the two new airport car parks in Perth, please pass them along. As always, any additions, corrections, or suggestions are most welcome. Peace!

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Brisbane International Airport (Domestic P2) = 5,200 bays (2012)

2. Brisbane International Airport (P1) ~ 3,800 bays

3. Sydney/Kingsford Smith International Airport (P6) = 3,870 bays (2012/2017)

4. Sydney/Kingsford Smith International Airport (P7) = 3,150 bays (2012)

5. Sydney/Kingsford Smith International Airport (P2) = 2,900 bays

6. Melbourne Tullamarine International Airport = 2,600 bays (2014)

7. Auckland International Airport (Transport Hub) = 2,500 bays (2024)

8. Adelaide International Airport = 2,000 bays (2012)

9. Brisbane International Airport (Domestic P2 Extension) = 1,700 bays (2025)

10. Sydney/Kingsford Smith International Airport (P3) = 1,402 bays (2013/2016)

11. Canberra Airport = 1,200 bays (2012)

12. Wellington Airport = 1,000 bays (2018)

13. Christchurch Airport = 520 bays (2007)

14-15. Perth International Airport (P1) = ? bays (2026) and Perth International Airport (P2) = ? (2027)

One of the new car parks at Perth International Airport – Source: passengerterminaltoday.com

SOURCES:

#airTravel #airports #art #Australia #aviation #carParks #cars #cities #geography #history #landUse #multiStorey #NewZealand #Oceania #parking #planning #tourism #transportation #travel #travelTips

The thread about Clovenstone (so much more than just a bus destination!) and the Wester Hailes housing scheme

This thread was originally written and published in December 2023.

I’ve previously jested that Clovenstone is a placename that only exists on bus timetables. This is of course silly. But is there anything more to say about Clovenstone than its where more than one bus route starts and finishes? Of course there is. Let’s go find out

Number 3 bus to Clovenstone. CC-by-ND 2.0, Kieran / V267 ESX via Twitter

First up – if Clovenstone actually exists, where is it and what is it? Well, it’s the southeast most neighbourhood of the vast Wester Hailes housing scheme that was built on the outskirts of west Edinburgh between 1968-75 and it was the last part of the overall scheme to be built.

Wester Hailes Housing Scheme, general overview of the neighbourhoods and construction phases.

The Clovenstone neighbourhood is a mix of low and mid-rise housing, centred around Clovenstone
Primary School. When built, each of the neighbourhood districts of Wester Hailes had a primary school at their centre, although some were intentionally temporary, planned to cope with the initial population boom as new families moved to the area and had children, growth which would taper off as the population aged and require fewer schools. Somewhat confusingly, the temporary wooden prefab school that had been built in 1957 in The Calders scheme (part of Sighthill) had been called Wester Hailes, so there was no Wester Hailes Primary School in Wester Hailes itself!

Clovenstone (creative commons, via Wester Hailes Digital Sentinel)

The scheme name – Clovenstone – is a fanciful one and is actually a bit of a misnomer. The Clovenstone, as its name suggests, was a split stone that formed a landmark. However it was over 1km away from the housing scheme, and was lost by quarrying at Redhall in the 1860s. The stone stood in what is now Dovecot Park off the Lanark Road. This was greatly quarried out for the prized Redhall stone (proprietor one James Gowans of Rockville fame), before being worked out by the 1890s. The hole that was left behind was backfilled with the city’s refuse in the 1930s-50s and later landscaped as a park.

OS 6 inch map, 1855, showing distance from Clovenstone housing scheme – which is centred on the old farm of Wester Hailes – to the Clovenstone standing stone itself. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Quite how the name of a distant, long-gone and probably forgotten standing stone came to be applied to a 1970s council housing scheme is anyone’s guess. It is never mentioned in any of the usual sources for Edinburgh local history; newspapers, antiquarian books, the Books of the Old Edinburgh Club, etc. One wonders if it was the diligent work of Charles Boog Watson, semi-official custodian of the city’s place name heritage from 1908-47, that had anything to do with the name still being remembered in some City Chambers filing cabinet when it came to naming the housing in the 1970s. Edinburgh Corporation Transport, as it was, launched the Number 30 bus to Clovenstone in January 1972, and for the last 51 years that bus (and the number 3) have shown this intriguing name on their westbound destination blinds.

The Clovenstone neighbourhood actually sits almost slap bang on top of the old Wester Hailes Farm, 287 acres of which were acquired by the Edinburgh Corporation way back in 1963 for the purposes of building a new housing scheme. This was controversial at the time as it was already designated as green belt land. But Edinburgh was desperate for new housing at the time (sound familiar?). The city was trying to cope with an energetic new wave of slum clearance in the wake of the collapse of the Penny Tenement, coupled with the life-expiry of thousands of the temporary post-war prefabs which had been rapidly built in a short period of time and so all needed replaced in short order. But it would take years of political wrangling within the council and with the Scottish Development Department to get the project going. The Wester Hailes scheme was controversial enough that Midlothian County Council opposed it – they did not want development on green belt land, they felt it was too close to the proposed outer ring road (what would become the City Bypass) and they worried it would swamp nearby villages like Juniper Green, which at that time were not within the jurisdiction of the City of Edinburgh. The residents of Juniper Green agitated against it, as did the Wester Hailes Smallholders – there were many smallholdings in the area as part of a post-WW1 scheme set up in the 1930s under the terms of the Agricultural Smallholdings (Scotland) Act, 1923.

Wester Hailes farm, possibly 1960 – source unknown.

The scheme got going in 1968 finally at Dumbryden but its scope had grown by this time. It was initially intended to be of 3,500 houses but was expanded after the Corporation lost a long and bitter local and national political fight – which culminated in a public enquiry – to build 4,000 houses at Alnwickhill. As a result, it had to get more out of the Wester Hailes scheme and increase the density to try and provide dwellings for 17,000 persons. As such it was one of the biggest schemes in all of Scotland.

Aerial photo from the Scotsman, December 29th 1969, showing progress at Wester Hailes. Drag the slider to overlay the neighbourhood boundaries on top.

It was said by its opponents, before it was even built, that nobody would want to live in Wester Hailes; the peripheral housing schemes built by the council in the 1920s, 30s and postwar had proved unpopular on account of their distance from the city centre and employment and on account of the lack of facilities provided in them. But the scheme’s problems did not end with its difficult gestation and it faced a swathe of planning and construction issues from the offset. Costs vastly increased due to inflation – by 31% in a few years. At the same time, the Scottish Development Department (the same department that specified the housing standards) refused to increase its yardsticks for calculating funding – the local authority found itself squeezed financially by having to meet a specification that the specifier would not pay for, and so cost-cutting was needed everywhere. Oversight, workmanship and construction quality suffered as a result.

Boys playing at Clovenstone in 1985, with the primary school behind them. Where are they now, I wonder? They would be pushing 50 years old by now. Photo by Kevin Walsh, © Edinburgh City Libraries

Other classic mistakes of peripheral council housing schemes were repeated. Neighbourhoods were carved up and cut off by dual carriageways in an area with low car ownership, with many of the few crossing points being unwelcoming underpasses. The shopping facilities were concentrated almost entirely in a central mall – this wasn’t completed until 1973, after most of the housing was built and a whole 5 years after houses started completing. A railway line ran through the middle of the scheme, which would provide quick transport to employment centres in Edinburgh, West Lothian and Glasgow, but no station was opened until 19 years after the first houses went up. Although primary schooling had been well provided for, high schooling had not. Wester Hailes Education Centre did not open until 1978, by which time neighbouring Forrester High was overcapacity, with almost twice as many students as it was designed to cope with and was bursting at the seams. To compound matters WHEC (as it is universally called) was built too small. As early as 1974, before the scheme was even complete, it was highlighted as “an area of potential deprivation” on account of the lack of public and commercial facilities and services and public transport

Wester Hailes Education Centre (Creative Commons, via digital Wester Hailes Sentinel)

To increase the housing density of the scheme, many multi-storey flats were planned at Westburn, Wester Hailes Drive and Hailesland. These were criticised as unlettable – something which proved to be partially true. The Ronan Point Disaster disaster of 1968 highlighted the structural flaws of the Large Panel System multi-storey flats and well and truly put the public off them. Many of the multi-storey flats planned for Wester Hailes were to be built on the Bison System and the Corporation had just completed new Skarne System flats nearby at Sighthill. Build quality in these flats was so poor that they were plagued with damp, walls ran with condensation and mould was endemic. An unskilled workforce, under pressure to deliver, was found to have simply cut off the fixing points of the poorly-fabricated wall modules when they couldn’t get them to fit; many were being held up simply by gravity and their own weight! Obsolete before they were even built, they were literally falling apart and fundamentally condemned within 10 years, when repairs were estimated at over £10 million. Nearly all were demolished within 20 years of construction.

Bison System multistorey flats at Hailesland, demolished in the 1990s

As a result of the failures of the multis, Clovenstone was respecified while under construction and was built entirely of mid and low rise stock, from 2 to 5 storeys. Reducing the density pushed up construction costs further and also the rents, but the housing was at least more attractive to tenants and so it slowly filled up.

Scotsman, 25th October 1972, reporting on the reduction in the height of the blocks at Clovenstone

But I don’t want to make this thread all too negative though – the faults and problems of the scheme in construction and design are not a reflection on its residents, who have found themselves fighting against the failure of the authorities since the get go. They have amply demonstrated a resilient ability for local organisation and self-improvement in the face of official indifference. Much of the estate has been rebuilt or renovated in the last 20 years, through no small part of local activism. It is testament to that, that when the multis started coming down at Westburn in 1993, they were replaced by low rise, lower density housing provided by the Wester Hailes Community Housing Association, a local organisation set up as an alternative to the Council as a housing provider, and which now controls nearly 900 homes in the area.

Demolition at Westburn in 1993, from the Wester Hailes Sentinel no. 228. Creative Commons.

It might seem like the unlikely setting for a movie, but Wester Hailes is the backdrop to the excellent 1985 coming-of-age adventure film “Restless Natives“, where Ronnie and Will break free from their monotonous lives on a housing scheme by becoming modern-day highwaymen. Many of the scenes are shot around the wider estate, including in Clovenstone. I recommend you watch it, if you haven’t already

A still from “Restless Natives”. Ronnie and Will on their motorbike distribute their proceeds to the needy, having robbed from the rich.They are riding through Clovenstone, towards the Primary School, with the flats on Clovenstone Park in the distance

You can read more about the other bits of the Wester Hailes housing schemes, where they got their names and just how bad much of the building quality was over at this thread.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.