Oxgangs-A Pastime From Time Past #16 Mrs Penny Forbes and baby Paul

Paul Forbes: Getting a bath in our pre-fab at Oxgangs Gardens from mum Penny Forbes. My dad used to light the coal fire in the morning before he went off to work. My grandchildren, literally, do not understand the concept of a living fire in the house. Great days, when performing community service meant helping your neighbour out!

Vanessa Campbell: Great pic Paul, I was born in a prefab, 1 Oxgangs Place. My mother was great friends with Penny; I have fond memories of the Forbes.

Paul Forbes: Thanks Vanessa. If I’m honest, I’m not sure if we were the Place or Gardens as we were right in the corner. Is Campbell your maiden name? Vanessa rings a bell, but the Campbell bit doesn’t.

Vanessa Campbell: I'm sure you were the Place, maybe Veitch will bring a bell?

Paul Forbes: It had to be Veitch! I remember you well. Oor wee end of the street was paradise!!

Vanessa Campbell: It was indeed Paul, glad you remembered. Such happy times.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labour in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

Of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden

VignetteTaken From Edinburgh Photos Website Courtesy Peter Stubbs-Motivated By Series On Edinburgh Prefabs

Peter Hoffmann

Highlands, Scotland


Thank you to Douglas Blades for allowing me to reproduce the photo below, and also to Peter Hoffmann who wrote:


1960s

Grandfather's Car

"During the 1960s, the Hoffmanns had a general Sunday pattern for many years which revolved around being collected at 'The Stair' by our grandfather any time after 11am to be taken down to Portobello for the day.

We didn't have a telephone and of course mobiles weren't even dreamed of back then. Anne, Iain and I used to stand at our parents' front bedroom window to look out for our grandfather's car (Ford Zephyr Mk6) coming down the hill at Greenbank.

It's uncanny to think we could see that far from the far end of Oxgangs Avenue, but this was when the prefabs were still there and before the new blocks of flats were built which replaced them. We couldn't be entirely certain that it was his car, but there were relatively few cars on the road back then on a Sunday.

A cry would go up: 'That's Gaga!' - and we'd all rush to get ready. Sometimes of course it wasn't and we'd go back to our waiting stations."

Oxgangs Avenue

Photo taken from the balcony of 6/6 Oxgangs Avenue

Prefabs in the foreground, Oxgangs development in the background.



© Douglas Blades (one of 41 members of Peter Hoffmann's 'Stair 6, Oxgangs' blog site.
Thank you, also, to Peter Hoffmann for sending a copy of this photo to me.

A Village Springs Up Overnight and the Never-ending Circle of Life

Cosmetically, a little worn and neglected, 6 Oxgangs Avenue still looks okay today almost sixty years on since it would have been built. Building work must have commenced around the year I was born, 1956. I don’t know what the expected lifespan of these buildings was as they weren’t built of the fine old sandstone of the Victorian or Edwardian flats at Morningside, Bruntsfield and Marchmont. No doubt there will be records of the Edinburgh Corporation at the time. As suggested earlier I assume it will have been part of the legacy of the Labour government which came into power after the Second World War and Beveridge’s  proposals to end the general poverty that had impacted on much of Britain. That said I suspect it will have been Tory Administrations at the council who implemented them?

6 Oxgangs Avenue was a block of eight flats - there was four such blocks located at the far end of Oxgangs Avenue where it formed a T junction with Oxgangs Road North. 

Five of the flats had two bedrooms whilst three had three bedrooms, with balconies - unfortunately these were north facing - please excuse another pun, but not very bright!

Oxgangs Street (Gazetteer for Scotland)

Oxgangs Park

Of course there were far more people living in the area because these flats were surrounded by other properties. On the other side of Oxgangs Road North, along Oxgangs Farm Drive were slightly older blocks of Council flats containing six flats i.e. a ground floor with a first and a second floor, whereas our flats had a third floor. Much nearer, off Oxgangs Street at Oxgangs Park, were a series of rows of blocks of flats identical to those at Oxgangs Farm Avenue.

'Prefabs' at Oxgangs Avenue - photo taken by Douglas Blades 6/6 Oxgangs Avenue from his balcony - rather wonderful that Douglas captured this moment in time - perhaps the only record of this significant change to Oxgangs

Prefabricated House in Edinburgh (Photo by Ron Ross, Ontario, Canada)

Across from us were what was called the Prefabs - small tin cottages that had been thrown up after the war. They were very quaint, but regarded as a temporary way of housing families. There were 229 located in Oxgangs, now all gone. The ones at Oxgangs Avenue were all torn down in the 1960s and replaced by modern flats. My best friend, Paul Forbes, lived in one of the cottages. When the flats were being built the building site was a great adventure playground - at one time we even had a key to one of the new flats!

Directly behind our block was a small enclosed field, only used for bonfires. Behind this field lay an area of park land where we played hundreds if not thousands of games of football. Children can no longer play football there as the young trees which were planted in the 1970s have thrived and grown. I'm unsure how they ever survived local children' attentions. It actually looks very pleasant, but is an atypical example of a lack of communication with the residents - removing a leisure asset and replacing it with something else - Big Brother knows best.

The field, now small wood, forms a boundary between the road and the five rows of two blocks of identical flats on the other side, which are approached from Oxgangs Street. Thus, there were fourteen identical blocks of flats with eight families in each, making for a grand total of one hundred and twelve families - probably around four hundred people - the size of a village, who all arrived around the same time - the late 1950s, to begin a new chapter, forming new friendships, growing up, living together - many of whom will have spent their whole life there and are still there today; others who will have died there and the many others who left and moved away as they approached and reached adulthood to begin a new life for themselves - the never-ending circle of life..