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The thread about the Edinburgh Police Box; architectural Time Traveller but no TARDIS!

The year 2024 was celebrated as the 900th anniversary of the “foundation” of the city of Edinburgh and 2025 is also an important local commemoration; the centenary of the appointment of the wonderfully named Ebenezer James (“E.J.“) Macrae as City Architect. His twenty years of service was a time of great change in our built environment and his office was directly responsible for much of that, not without good cause has he been dubbed “the man who shaped modern Edinburgh“. His tenure is characterised by both the volume of public buildings and housing that was erected and also their distinctive style; at once both modern in form and function but also very sympathetic to tradition. A splendid example of that contrast is the Edinburgh Police Box; a mix of anachronistic classical styling and what was then the cutting edge of modern policing.

Former police box at corner of Waverley Bridge and Market Street. CC-by-NC-SA 2.0, Ian T. Edwards via Flickr.

The first police boxes with telephones were established in Chicago back in 1881, just 5 years after the unveiling of the telephone itself by a son of Edinburgh. In 1923, Chief Constable Frederick Crawley of Newcastle City Police instituted what would become known as the Police Box System to Sunderland and in doing so revolutionised British policing. He was looking to increase the efficiency of his his force and focused on trying to reduce time spent by officers walking to and from their beats; he estimated up to a quarter of each man’s time on shift was wasted in this manner. His solution was decentralisation. By placing many small, telephone-equipped police boxes at strategic points throughout the city, officers had shorter distances to walk and could devote more time to duty. Crawley recognised this would place the police more centrally within the communities they were expected to serve, creating a ready point of contact for the public – thus increasing the efficiency of reporting emergencies and also making it far easier for the police to contact and coordinate their own officers. Boxes could also be used as temporary lock ups for prisoners while transport was summoned, avoiding the long and often dangerous walks with them back to a police station. A final and significant attraction was that the increased efficiency also allowed the closure of most district police stations and therefore afforded a significant cost saving.

Wooden police box of the type instituted by Crawley for Newcastle City Police. Note the public-facing telephone and first aid boxes mounted to the left of the door. From The Police Journal, vol.1, No.1, January 1928

Police boxes soon spread across the country but Edinburgh, as is often the case, was rather slow to catch on. It was not until May 1928 that a deputation was sent by Chief Constable Roderick Ross from the Edinburgh City Police to inspect the system in Newcastle. This was at the insistence of the Scottish Office who refused to sanction an increase in headcount for Ross and instead wanted efficiencies. He submitted a strongly favourable report to the Town Council, which approved a box system for the city in 1929. Ross served as Chief Constable for the exceptional term of 34 years and it was towards the end of his long watch that his force would be wholly and rapidly modernised.

Roderick Ross, when Chief Constable of Ramsgate Borough Police c. 1898

The Edinburgh Evening News threw its editorial weight behind the scheme but also amplified significant local concerns that the appearance of boxes would have a detrimental effect on the city. As the system spread, there had been a plethora of different design styles before a utilitarian, standardised version was developed for the Metropolitan Police by the architect George Mackenzie Trench. Trench’s design is instantly familiar to generations of Dr. Who fans as the TARDIS. But “Cheapness has been obtained in England” wrote the News’ editor “by mass production, but Edinburgh has an architectural standard of its own, which the Cockburn Association endeavours to maintain.” The gauntlet was thus thrown down to the City Architect’s office that something altogether different and better was needed.

George Mackenzie Trench standard police box at the National Tramway Museum, Crich. Note the light on the roof, which would flash to indicate an officer was required to attend the box. CC-by-SA 3.0 Dan Sellers via Wikimedia

E.J. Macrae, along with his assistants Andrew Rollo and James A. Tweedie are credited with the design of the Edinburgh Box, with the signature of their colleague Robert Somerville Ellis on some of the drawings. The initial inspiration may have been taken from the barrel-topped box used in Sheffield which was used as an illustrative example by the Evening News. Two alternative designs were prepared and plans and models were put to the Lord Provost’s Committee in December 1929. The preferred option was then “submitted for the consideration of the Fine Art Commission“. After that a full-size wooden mock-up was erected on the corner of George Street and Frederick Street in October 1930 to test the practicalities of installing boxes and also to familiarise both the police and the public with the design.

Sheffield City Police box, as used as an illustrative example by the Evening News. September 13th 1938

The approved box was, dare I say it, an iconic piece of British street furniture design, unique to the city and instantly at home in its environment. It is described in architectural terms thusly:

Rectangular cast-iron police box with classical details, 6ft by 4ft on plan, 2-bay pilastered long elevations, one of which contains door bearing City Arms. Painted blue. Single bay short elevations surmounted by open pediments containing ribboned wreath paterae. Saltire patterned glazing to all elevations. Low-pitched roof.
Official description of the Edinburgh Police Box from Historic Scotland listing

Each box was constructed of prefabricated cast iron panels produced by the Carron Company in Stirlingshire and tipped the scales at over two tons. The understated classical styling was decorated only with a small cast iron castle motif from the city’s coat of arms on the door and on each gable a wreath; symbolising power or triumph. Inside they were equipped with a desk, flip-down seat, telephone, sink and a small wall-mounted electric heater. There was shelving, pigeon holes and notice boards on the walls to accommodate items such as logbooks and forms and hooks were provided for hanging coats, helmets and capes. Hooks were provided for “beat keys”, premises officers on duty were expected to visit and check, or need access to, during their duties. An unofficial but entirely necessary function of the sink was an ersatz urinal; 8 hours in a district with few or no public toilets was a long time for a beat officer to spend without spending any pennies! (This was apparently best achieved by balancing on the stool and taking careful aim. Each box was provisioned with a supply of bleach to keep things as sanitary as possible.) All of this came at a price however; £58 per box (before foundations and services were laid), far more than the wooden hut type which had cost £13 each in Newcastle or £43 for a reinforced concrete standard box as used by the Metropolitan Police.

Sketch design of the Edinburgh City Police Box, redrawn by self from a copy of the original in the Edinburgh City Archives. The original is signed RSE (Robert Somerville Ellis), 6th September 1928. From Dean of Guild Court of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Police Boxes, Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council of the City of Edinburgh, 26th August 1932.

On the outside of the box were small doors that gave members of the public access to a Speakerphone that would connect them to police headquarters and another containing a first aid kit. The Speakerphone was a hands-free system activated upon opening of its door. It was felt at the time that the general public were not familiar enough with the use of telephones to provide a handset, and it was also harder to accidentally damage or vandalise.

A police officer demonstrating the use of the Speakerphone unit. Opening the box door automatically connected the phone to the headquarters switchboard. Photo via Lothian & Borders Police WordPress.

Despite the best efforts of Macrae’s office to produce a design that was sympathetic to Edinburgh’s built environment, not everyone was pleased. “W.M.H.” wrote to the Evening News that the box at the foot of Drummond Street by the old City Wall was a “case of outrageous vandalism and should be prohibited.” They questioned who in the authorities was responsible for such “outrages” and challenged the city’s heritage watchdog – the Cockburn Association – to “get busy!“. In Portobello, the Communist party had a particularly niche objection; it charged that the boxes were “designed for use in a rebellion” and that “the master class knew that they were driving the workers to desperation, and they were preparing in advance to deal with rebellion“.

The police box at Drummond Street, immediately in front of the Flodden Wall. The photo dates from 1951 and the box still sports its white stripes applied during WW2 to make it more visible during blackout conditions. Records of RCAHMS, SC1164082. © Crown Copyright: HES

Boxes were installed throughout 1932 and a considerable public relations exercise was undertaken to get the public to understand how to use them. The Evening News maintained a regular stream of editorials on the subject, Chief Constable Ross gave numerous lectures, model boxes were taken around schools to show children how to use them and Boy Scouts were encouraged to learn the location of as many boxes as possible as part of their Pathfinding badge. In the final run-up to commissioning, public demonstrations of the boxes in use were staged and the press cameras invited.

Photograph showing a staged accident to demonstrate the use of the public call facility on the new police boxes, along with an operator of the switchboard at police headquarters on the High Street that received the calls. Scotsman, May 26th 1933.

The box system and “a new era in the history of Edinburgh City Police” was inaugurated in its entirety on Sunday May 28th 1933 at 6AM. This was a year later than intended, a delay that the Lord Provost blamed on the General Post Office which had been slow to install the necessary telephony infrastructure (500 miles of underground and 23 miles of overhead wire).

Bailie Rutherford Fortune places the first call on from a police box with Chief Constable Ross (dark coat and light hat, with moustache) and Mr F. J. Milne (light coat and dark hat, with umbrella) Secretary of the Post Office in Edinburgh.

The boxes were only one part of a greater overall system; policing of the city was entirely restructured at this time. The boxes were allocated to four divisions, each with its own headquarters – A at Braid Place, B at Gayfield Square, C at Torphicen Place and D at Leith – and were numbered sequentially and by division. A map of the all their locations as installed in 1933 can be seen here. Each division had a dedicated pool of motor vehicles for response and prisoner transport and was supported by a non-territorial traffic and mounted division (E) based in the Cowgate. At the same moment that the boxes were first unlocked for duty, the doors of nine district police stations (at the Pleasance, West Port, Abbeyhill, Piershill, Stockbridge, Waverley Market, Morningside, Gorgie and Newhaven) and eighteen smaller sub-stations closed for the last time. Most of these sites were disposed of, leaving only the four divisional stations, a sub-divisional station for Portobello plus city police HQ on the High Street.

The Leith Police. Relaxing on break time with tea and “pieces” at Leith Police station in 1930. Photograph by Photo Press Agency, CC-by-NC-SA via Thelma

The reduction in manpower required by the box system saw fifteen open vacancies for constables written off, three inspectors and five sergeants made redundant and a further five sergeants demoted to constables. Overall the changes reduced the running cost of the force by £5,800 annually.

Six or seven constables might be based out of a single box and would serve their entire 8-hour shift from it, returning after every half hour or hour long “turn ” of their beat to check in with base by phone, write up their logbook and take breaks. Check in calls were performed according to a strict timetable and if any officer missed one his absence would be noted and a colleague sent to investigate. Men on duty could expect a visit by a section sergeant once every shift. The boxes were accessed by a universal key, which each officer kept on his chain with his whistle. A blue light on the roof of the box would flash to let him know that there was a call waiting for him. Sometimes these lights had to be mounted on an extension pole to be better seen from a distance and in the case of the box outside the Tron Kirk on the High Street, it was a high-mounted “sky lantern” on the building on the corner with North Bridge.

The High Street “sky lantern” is still in place on the corner with North Bridge, appropriately mounted next to a symbol of modern police surveillance, the CCTV camera.

Commencing in 1938, air raid sirens began to be installed on top of the roofs of many of Edinburgh’s boxes as part of the city’s ARP (Air Raid Precautions) measures. By April 1939, thirty two sirens had been installed, all controlled from master switches at HQ on the High Street and tests of the system were under way, helping to familiarise the public with the sound. In May 1940, a writer to the Evening News’ letters page using the pseudonym Tenement Warden and Old Contemptible suggested that police boxes be used to store “machine guns, hand grenades, ammunition and rifles” to deal with enemy paratroopers and “Hitler’s Fifth Column and Fascists all over Britain“. I cannot see that this idea was ever taken seriously!

Photograph of the type of air raid siren installed on the roof of Edinburgh police boxes. Evening News, 30th November 1938

In 1939, the annual Estimates of Expenditure of the Town Council reported that there were now 143 police boxes in the city backed up by 40 telephone pillars. Running costs were £3,350, not including £250 for maintenance, £800 for electricity and £3,350 to the Post Office for telephony. The authorised strength of the force was reported as 871, comprising 688 constables, 91 sergeants, 30 inspectors and one each “woman sergeant” and “woman constable“.

In practice the boxes proved to be stiflingly hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter; the issued heater was much to small and badly located, so boxes often sourced their own additional heaters to make them more habitable. On account of the metal structure they “sweated considerably” in damp weather as a result of condensation. The roof interior would eventually be insulated in 1956 to try and tackle this particular issue. All boxes were to have been provided with both electricity and a water supply but in the end economies meant only 86 of the 140 boxes were plumbed in. It was some time before enamel mugs, at 6d per unit, were issued from which the water could be drunk and it took until 1947 for the Town Council to approve an expenditure of £781 to equip each box with an electric kettle for making tea.

“For Bobby’s Cup of Tea”, Evening News, 5th June 1947

Uncomfortable they may have been, but the boxes proved to be immensely strong. This was demonstrated in November 1945 when PC John Anderson – on what was his last day of service of a thirty years police career – escaped with a fractured leg when a fire engine crashed into his box at the foot of the Canongate. In 1954, PC Donald Budge walked away from his box at Balgreen with only cuts and bruises after a two ton lamp standard, being installed nearby fell onto the roof of the box he was sitting in. The damage to the box was restricted to a cracked roof, a broken window and cracked sink. Also that year, two constables in the box at Murrayfield Avenue survived it being struck by lightning, although the interior lights, radiator and telephones were put out of service and the air raid siren on the roof activated itself.

It took the public some time to get used to the new system. In 1936, three years after its institution, Chief Contable W. B. R. Morren lamented that there was a general ignorance, particularly on the part of grown ups, as to the location and facilities offered by boxes. Boxes were always subject to interference and vandalism throughout their working lives. The authorities were keen to make an example of anyone caught in such an act and the first prosecution came in November 1933 when 19 year old Colin Gosschalk was caught breaking into the first aid compartment of the box on Prestonfield Avenue. His defence that a friend had dared him to do it was not accepted and he was fined 10s (the maximum being £2).

The system was not without its critics as evidenced in the columns of and letters to the Evening News – a particular but unfounded complaint was that constables were either never in the boxes when needed, or spent too much time sheltering within them rather than “on the beat” – a classic of the Schrödinger’s box genre! In an interview with the ‘News in 1946, Chief Constable Morren said that boxes “fulfilled and continues to fulfil a very useful purpose, but… did not develop that contact between the police and the public which was so desirable, and it had been proved that the system had not been the success in that direction that was anticipated”. Brigadier-General Dudgeon, HM Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland said that the box system had “proved to be of value to both the police and the public” but “the beat constable is the eyes and ears of the police, and be careful that the police box system is not overdone.”

Post-war, policing would begin to change again, with smaller district police stations re-established for the new suburbs. As was the case after its 1920 expansion, it was found once again that the city had “more or less outgrown the numbered strength of the police force“. This was particularly felt in the extensive housing schemes been built since the boxes were introduced and where petty crime and antisocial behaviour were an increasing problem. After the initial roll-out of boxes, too few had been added. For instance, in 1946 just one was approved for the West Pilton housing scheme at the junction of Ferry Road Drive and West Pilton Avenue. The peripheral estates were harder to police on foot as they had a much lower housing density than the inner city, so officers had a far greater distance to cover.

New council housing at the Inch, 1955, Dinmont Drive. Photograph by A. G. Ingram, © Edinburgh City Libraries

These issues saw a move in the 1950s away from the “box and beat” approach to policing the suburbs to more mechanisation (cars) and technology (walkie talkies). They continued in use for the centre of the city however, but the last box installed in Edinburgh may have been that erected in Davidson’s Mains in 1958.

It is all very nice to see policemen going their rounds, but in these days of radio telegraphy the greatly increased use of telephones and the system of 999 calls it is quite reasonable to expect that there should be some saving in the actual pedestrian work
Bailie Matt A. Murray, Chairman of the Progressive Group of Edinburgh Town Council

The air raid warning system was renewed and expanded in 1952 with 56 sirens refurbished, ten additional ones installed and the remote control system replaced. The signalling was replaced again in the 1960s and the sirens were replaced in the early 1970s. Just before 1pm on Thursday 5th June 1969, the air raid sirens sounded across Edinburgh as an engineer working at the city Police headquarters on the High Street accidentally activated the system. A similar incident occurred on August 1st 1986 when all sirens in the Lothian & Borders Police areas were accidentally activated at 7:30 in the morning due to a fault in the telephone system.

Just as Edinburgh had been slow to catch on to adopting police boxes, it was also slow to let them go. While the Metropolitan police started removing boxes in 1969 and demolished its last in 1981, those in Edinburgh were still nominally in active service into the 1990s. After 1984 however the Chief Constable wanted all officers to have a daily briefing at a station before they came on duty and so after then they were more rarely used and many that were found themselves relegated to providing shelter and storage for traffic wardens. In 1993 the air raid sirens were deactivated by the Scottish Office and in 1995 the Lothian & Borders Police Board deemed thirty five of the eighty six remaining boxes were surplus to requirements and put them up for auction, seeking to save the £500 per annum per box maintenance costs of the increasingly dilapidated estate.

Newspaper advert, Scotsman, June 13th 1995, advertising the sale of 35 surplus police boxes

These were the first boxes maid available on the open market and generated much interest; a variety of proposals from public toilets to newspaper kiosks to air quality monitoring stations to removing the boxes entirely to install them as curios in pubs or people’s gardens were proposed. In 1990, the predecessor of Historic Environment Scotland listed thirteen boxes as Category B to protect them (there are now a total of seventeen) and the city’s Planning Convenor would issue guidelines requiring any changes to the boxes or their interiors needing planning permission.

Former lawyer Gordon Thomson purchased eight boxes and, as American-style coffee drinking swept across the nation, established a small chain of bijou “cappuccino kiosks” called the California Coffee Company. Thomson may not have realised it, but his innovation was very close to recreating a street scene once common in 18th century Edinburgh. A 2000 attempt by Feyzullah Marasli to emulate this success by converting a box on Princes Street into a coffee kiosk came to nothing when it was discovered that despite him refurbishing the box, changing the locks on it, paying £400 to have an electricity supply installed and applying for the necessary Street Trader’s Licence, he neither owned nor leased the box in question and it was still in operational use by the Police!

‘A street coffee house Edinburgh’. Paul Sandby, 1750s, Royal Collection Trust RCIN 914503

Lothian & Borders Police attempted to rehabilitate some boxes in the late 1990s by installing touch screen public information points with a video-link to a police station within them. The first such box was unveiled to the press on Princes Street in 1998 at a cost of £10,000. It had 61,000 “hits” during its first year of operation and was judged to have been a success, with two further such boxes converted, however funding never followed through and the innovation was allowed to lapse.

Eleven more boxes were auctioned in 2001, advertised as “an exciting and unique opportunity to obtain a distinctive piece of cast iron street furniture with potential for a wide range of uses“. In 2002, the BBC successfully trademarked the London-style Police Box in connection with Dr. Who and the TARDIS, despite the Metropolitan Police contesting the application with the Registrar of Trade Marks. This did not apply to Edinburgh’s unique boxes, which are categorically not TARDISes, despite what some may say! From 2012 to 2013, the police box at Braid Hills Approach was restored to exhibition standard as a small museum by Angus Self, a great grandson of Chief Constable Roderick Ross. In 2014, fourteen of the remaining boxes were sold off, leaving just one in Police ownership.

‘SwimEasy’ Police Box Museum, Braid Hills Road. CC-by-NC SA 2.0, M J Richardson

The boxes may now be entirely operationally defunct, but they remain throughout the city and many are in daily use. In fact I’m just back from visiting one this afternoon, It may not be a TARDIS but an architectural time traveller it was!

Late night Brazilian crepes anyone? A police box has you covered… CC-by-NC 2.0, Joe Gordon via Flickr

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The thread about when Edinburgh went Electric and how it became the first part of the National Grid

Electricity first arrived in Edinburgh in 1881 when, on an experimental basis, a number of temporary public lights were installed around the city by the Corporation. Locations included on North Bridge, around Holyrood Square and Waverley Station.

Lawnmarket, 1954. H. D. Wyllie. © Edinburgh City Libraries

These lights were powered by a portable steam engine and dynamo which had been sourced from London by Councillor Thomas Landale. Crowds came from far and wide to marvel at the clear, bright light, but were frequently disappointed as things would go wrong and the system had to be turned off after a few hours, sometimes for days at at time. The lighting contract was allowed to expire at the end of December and the city went back to the duller glow of its gas street lamps.

Our story really begins a decade later in 1891 when the Corporation was given the powers to provide the city with mains electricity under the 1890 Electric Lighting Act . When I say “provide the city“, I mean provide anyone who was willing and able to pay. A site for a power station was needed. It had to be central, for the most efficient distribution of electricity (there was no high voltage transmission at that time), and easily supplied with coal and yet not somewhere that would offend with its pollution as the New Street gasworks had. Such a site was found on Dewar Place at the West End, convenient for the Caledonian Railway who had an existing coal yard and small gasworks nearby. This site swallowed up a vestigial street called Tobago Place, one of those Edinburgh street names with a direct link to Caribbean plantation slavery.

Drag the slider to compare 1876 OS Town Plan centred on Dewar Place and Tobago Place and 1926 Goad Fire Insurance map of same. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

An elegant and unobtrusive red sandstone structure was completed to the designs of City Architect Robert Morham, in a style in keeping with the time (this was a period when red sandstone was increasingly being seen in the city). The technical side was overseen by long-serving Burgh Engineer John Aitken Cooper. There was a generating hall in the centre section, workshops to the north and offices to the south at the top of the street. There were initially eight high-speed reciprocating steam engines with a total mechanical power of 400 horsepower ( 300kw), that’s about the same as a top-of-the-range German executive car. Each of these was coupled directly to a DC dynamo that supplied voltage at both 230V and 460V DC for the central districts only. Later, alternators would be provided to supply outlying districts with AC voltage better suited to longer distance transmission at 2,000V and a frequency of 50Hz. The site was large enough for expansion up to 20 steam engines that would be capable of producing 6,000 horsepower. The whole undertaking, including laying 21.5 miles of under-street wiring, cost £100,000 (or about £15.3 million in 2019).

https://www.flickr.com/photos/fotos_by_findlay/49992323861

The current was to be switched on at the Central Electric Lighting Station on 11th April 1895. The Corporation sent out invites to all of the worthies of the city to request their attendance at this grand occasion.

The Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council…
request the honour of your presence at
The Central Station, Dewar Place,
at 5 o’clock afternoon,
when you have the opportunity of inspecting the works prior to the turning on of the Electric Current on that evening (About 8 o’clock.)
Wording of the invites to the switching on of Dewar Place power station

The turning on was to be done from a switch within the nearby Rutland Hotel where the celebratory banquet for the invited worthies was being held. The invite was as good as its word and the current began to flow at about 8PM when it was switched on to a toast of “Success to the electric light undertaking” by the Lady Provost, Mrs McDonald. And there was light! A line of electric arc lamps had been installed along the north side of Princes Street especially for the occasion. The spectacle of instant light attracted thronging crowds to marvel at this wonder of the age. With the brilliant light from the glowing carbons mounted 23 feet high every 50 yards, Princes Street could claim to be the best lit street in Europe. But this being Edinburgh, the Corporation had half of the lights turned off at midnight for reasons of economy!

The generating hall of Dewar Place

Further lamps were duly added to complete a line all the way from Haymarket to Waterloo Place. The city’s lighting plan was to illuminate the principal tram routes and so the network was quickly extended to Dean Bridge; Viewforth; Fountainbridge; down Leith Street; along the Bridges (which had seen the first gas lighting in Edinburgh not 80 years before, and it’s first electric lights in 1881); to Clerk Street and the Meadows; the Royal Mile and Waverley Bridge to Forrest Road via Cockburn Street. A contemporary verse recorded “When o’er our hills came lines with power, it was indeed our brightest hour;With fourteen lamps our street is bright, a pleasure now to walk by night“

Edinburgh had actually been pipped to public electric street lighting post by Leith. The Leith Dock Commissioners had the Victoria, the West and the East Old Docks lit by electric light in December 1894. A small generating station adjacent to the Commercial Graving Dock housed two steam engines and dynamos to power a system of arc and incandescent lights. The work was done at a cost of £4,000 by the Brush Electric Lighting Company. The Burgh of Leith would join in on the act too too, opening its own small power station on Junction Place in 1897 and turning on the first section of its electric street lights on Leith Walk on Friday December 23rd 1898.

Back in Edinburgh, demand far outstripped the supply from Dewar Place – on the day it started to operate, 177 street arc lamps and 40 private connections were already made with fully 1/2 of the generating capacity already subscribed for. The station was just too small and so it was extended as soon as 1897 to provide more capacity. But even with expansion, such was the demand for this new-fangled, must have, life changing stuff, that once again it was already not enough. But the site at Dewar Place had a fundamental problem; it was penned in on all sides which prevent it being realistically expanded any further – a new power station was needed.

A site next to Carson Street off Leith Walk was soon selected, conveniently adjacent to a railway that formed its northern boundary, allowing for direct deliveries of coal. You will know this street as McDonald Road; the old street by its former name was extended and renamed in 1897 to accommodate the new power station. The name is that of then Lord Provost, Sir Andrew McDonald, whose wife had turned on the electricity just a few years before.

Sir Andrew McDonald by William Ewart Lockhart. CC-BY-SA 4.0 Stephencdickson

Construction started in 1899, once again to the designs of City Architect Morham and Burgh Engineer Cooper. It was an altogether grander affair than Dewar Place; a modern and efficient steel frame infilled with bricks hidden behind a sandstone “Renaissance Basilica” facade which is complimented by a rather mismatched, octagonal, red-brick chimney. The Corporation had already been caught out twice in as many years with a rapid demand for expansion and so this building was to be big enough to meet future demand plus sufficient land was reserved to double or even triple it in size. If you look at the remains of the generation hall today (and in the photo below) you can see the stubs of the projecting steel arches for where the next half of the building could have gone. When completed it had a mechanical capacity of 5,000 horsepower but it was estimated it could total 20-30 thousand if the site were to be fully utilised.

McDonald Road today, retained as a transformer house. CC-BY-SA 2.0 Richard Webb

Part of the project included an intriguing 1,220 yard tunnel under Leith Walk, from the top of McDonald Road to Little King Street (where John Lewis is now), to carry the 21 principal power cables into the city to a distribution node. This passageway is 6.5 feet high and 3.5 feet wide to allow workers access to maintain the cables without having to repeatedly dig the street up. When the station was connected to the network at the end of October 1899 it was noted that there were 245,000 electric lamps in the city (at this time the supply was only for domestic and municipal lighting) and that the peak load was 10,400 Amperes. New connections were being made at the rate of 1,500 lamps per week. A report of the Corporation’s Electric Lighting Department in 1905 recorded “The municipal reputation… has been greatly increased by its management of the electric light, the success of which has been quite phenomenal” It also went on “The waste of… plant is very considerable, arising not so much from ordinary tear and wear, but through carts and other vehicles coming into collision with the lamps…Breakages are… frequent… representing a considerable annual expenditure.”

Workers lay the electric cables in the passageway at the top of McDonald Road towards the city centre. Edinburgh World Heritage

Notice in the above picture that there are no overhead electricwires for the passing tramcar; it was hauled instead by underground cables driven from a power house at nearby Shrubhill (and also from Tollcross, Henderson Row and Portobello). Edinburgh had decided to persist with a system which was already antiquated; the wires and poles for Electric trams would have been vulgar in its Georgian heart.

Let us now consider Leith again. In 1898 the Burgh had opened their small generating station on Junction Place, next to the Victoria Baths, to provide a supply for municipal and domestic lighting. It had five steam engines producing 660hp and was expanded continuously after that. I assume it may also have helped to heat the pool and public washing baths. The site required all coal to be brought in by horse cart and also included housing for the workers.

Junction Place Power Station, 1906, from a Goad Insurance Map. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

On the subject of public transport, Leith rejected joining Edinburgh’s cable-hauled tramway, but that decision left her stuck with horse traction. And so in October 1904, the Leith Corporation took over the Edinburgh Street Tramways Company service within its boundaries and rapidly ripped the whole thing up, relaid it with stronger rails and electrified it. Nothing but the best for Leith! Electric trams of course need electricity, and so the Junction Place station was expanded once more to cope, up to 4,600hp with space for a further 4,000hp. The first electric tram ran as soon as August 1905 (think about that, Leith built an entire electric tram system in under a year…) but the extensions to the power supply did not complete until November 1906.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/15034108353

Back in Edinburgh, yet again the Corporation was quickly faced by the predicted demand problem. Demand for electricity at this time was insatiable and production could hardly keep up, even with the constant extensions to the stations in Edinburgh and Leith. In the ten years from 1903-1913, the amount sold doubled; actual demand was far in excess of this. The new station at McDonald Road had the space to expand, but the world had now settled on turbo-alternators (steam turbines producing AC current) as the most reliable and efficient way to produce electricity – rather than reciprocating piston engines producing DC current. The difficulty was that steam turbines have to exhaust into a vacuum and to create that vacuum you need a condenser; a very big and effective condenser. And to operate such a condenser, you need either a very large cooling tower or a huge supply of cooling water. McDonald Road had neither – there were cooling towers at Dewar Place for its small turbine units, but the vapour clouds they produced were totally unsuited to a city centre location, and the Water of Leith, although not too far off, was totally insufficient for cooling purposes.

Graph of Edinburgh Corporation’s sales of electricity, 1903-1918

As an interim solution, it was proposed to draw cooling water Lochend Loch to the east and return it back, warmed, from whence it came. However Leith Corporation had a veto over this as it still used its former drinking water supply for industrial supply, and these customers were paying good money for water for cooling purposes too, and would not accept it being pre-warmed by neighbouring Edinburgh. This proposal came to nothing and instead, in 1908, an ingenious scheme was hatched whereby small, low pressure turbines were added running off of the exhaust steam of the reciprocating engines. To solve the condensing issue a shaft, 26 feet in diameter and 30 feet deep, was sunk down from the power house to intercept the main sewer running between Edinburgh and Leith. Four 18 inch pipes were run down this shaft through which the liquid contents of the sewer were pumped up into the power station and run through the condensers, before being returned to the sewer, nicely warmed. But for the long term it was back to the drawing board…

The drawing board required another new site and to solve the cooling question once and for all it was resolved to make use of the abundant waters of the Firth of Forth, which we all know to be reliably cold, even in the summer. There were two candidate sites, both logically on the outskirts to keep pollution away from the centre of the metropolis. One was at Granton, adjacent to the Edinburgh & Leith Gas Commissioners new gasworks, and the other was off the Kings Road at Portobello on the site of the Westbank Brick & Tile Works. Granton may have been attractive as land and infrastructure could have been shared with the existing gasworks, but it was half a mile distant from and at 100 feet elevation above the sea which would have required significant effort in pumping just to get to at the coolant. So Portobello was selected, right on the sea shore and just off the existing railway which gave it direct access to the plentiful and expanding supplies from the Lothian coalfield.In 1914, consulting engineer Alexander Kennedy was instructed to draw up plans and arrange quotes for a station with two of the latest turbo-alternators with a power output of 5MW and with ample room to expand as required.

But almost immediately Europe went to war and the Ministry of Munitions had all work big industrial works stopped in order that the country could focus its industrial might on the business of death and destruction. Unsurprisingly, the scheme was paused and production of electricity dropped in the war years due to forced economies, not increasing again until 1918. When the war ended, the Corporation wasted no time in dusting off their plans for Portobello; even in 1918 they were petitioning the Board of Trade to allow them to revive them. The Board referred things to Ministry of Reconstruction, who passed it to the Coal Conservation Sub-Committee. The men in grey suits in that opaque sounding sub-committee considered the matter and gave it their blessing; but only if it was undertaken on a grander scale so that it could also supply neighbouring counties. Alexander Kennedy took his 4 year old plans plans and scaled them up sixfold, proposing three 10MW turbo-alternator sets and expansion possibilities up to the giddy heights of 100MW. For comparison, the “small” coal power station demolished at Cockenzie in 2015 was 1,200MW.

The Board of Trade formally approved the scheme in June 1919 and contracts were issued in October. It would supply not just the burghs of Edinburgh and Leith but also a larger supply territory called the Edinburgh and Lothians Electricity District. This included Musselburgh, East Lothian and Midlothian – which it shared with the Lothians Electric Power Co. The new station would sit to the south of the King’s Road road and was directly accessed by an existing rail branch that had been laid for the Westbank brick through a short tunnel under the road. The boilers were supplied with fuel from a rail-served stockyard to the southwest via a conveyor system which ran in a tunnel under the road. The builders fed steam to three 12.5MW turbo-alternator sets that generated 3-phase AC electricity at 6,600V and 50Hz.

Portobello Power Station in 1930, aerial photo. Note on the left there is a railway running directly into the generating hall, which crosses over a dark black band. This is the coal conveyor from the rail-served stockyard to the southwest. © Edinburgh City Libraries

The railway and conveyor tunnels were nothing, however, when compared to those of the cooling system. Three 9ft diameter shafts were sunk down from the station to a depth of 60ft, below sea level, for a total depth of 85ft. From the base of these, 4.75ft diameter tunnels were driven some 1,500 yards out to sea, emerging from the seabed well below the lowest tide levels. This tunnelling was done in the same manner as London’s tube railways, lined with cast-iron segments and smoothed off with a skin of concrete. Two tunnels at any one time were used for the cooling water intake, the third to discharge the warmed water. The average temperature at the inlet was 12C and at the outlet was 19.5C. There was public optimism that this warm water might be used to heat a public swimming pool… The managers of the power station had to develop a pattern of cycling the discharge water through different temperatures for set periods of time and swapping each pipe between inlet and outlet to deal with the problem of mussels growing on the filter screens and blocking them.

Portobello Power Station was commissioned on Monday 11th July 1923 at 11:30AM, when it was opened by King George V and Queen Mary as part of a state visit to Scotland. It was fitting that the King was opening the power station on the King’s Road, as the latter street was named for the predecessor of his regnal number – George IV – who had ridden in his carriage down it a century before on a historic visit to Scotland to inspect the gentlemen Cavalry Volunteers parading on the beach. George V was given a thorough tour of the insides which interested him greatly – as a result of his time in the Navy he had developed a nostalgic fondness for boiler and turbine rooms.

The King and Queen are greeted by the Lord Provost, who handed them a golden key to unlock the door, and assembled worthies of the city before opening the power station.

By the time Portobello had opened, the City of Edinburgh had absorbed the Burgh of Leith and was in the process of integrating the tram networks. It was switching its old cable-hauled system over to electric traction, just like Leith’s, which required an additional turbo-alternator to be installed at McDonald Road in the interim. In 1924 a further turbo-generator was installed at Portobello, bringing the total output up to 50MW. McDonald Road and Dewar Place could now be downgraded to the status of principal substations for the city, together with a third in the Cowgate. The 5MW tramway turbo-alternator from McDonald Road was transferred at this time to Portobello. Dewar Place also became the principal public office of the Edinburgh Corporation Electricity Supply Department and that’s where you went, until recent memory, to pay your bills in person. The ECES cypher can still be seen all over the city on lamp posts, tenement wiring cabinets and access covers.

ECES cypher on a lamp post

And what became of Leith’s Junction Place power station? It was never big enough; after expansion in 1906, it was expanded again in 1910 but by 1919 it was at its limits and it had been agreed to take an additional bulk supply from Dewar Place. As part of Edinburgh’s settlement to the aggrieved folks of Leith for taking it over, it was to be converted to a public wash house; “at a cost of £20,000 it would be the largest washhouse in Edinburgh, with 100 tubs and a separate ironing room.” Edinburgh’s obligations clearly didn’t trouble her however and it took until 1926 to start work, with the result that it was not opened until January 1928. On opening, the Lord Provost said “the Council [has] now just about given Leith all that it needed and so they might give the Corporation a little breathing space to do something for other parts of the city?” The Convenor of the Plans and Works Committee went so far as to claim that Leith now had the “biggest and most up-to-date washhouse in the world!”. As a rather limited consolatory gesture, Edinburgh made it free to use for the first 3 days. This would remain the largest and busiest wash house in the city, it survived to become an automated laundrette about 1975 and was closed in the early 1980s.

In 1926, the Electricity (Supply) Act was passed to set up a “national grid” using a country-wide standard supply frequency and voltage. As one of the biggest and newest stations, and with room to expand, Portobello was selected to be the principal station for the East of Scotland. Conveniently too, Edinburgh had long ago selected 230V and 50Hz as its supply standard, which matched the new standard, and so no fundamental changes were required. Portobello was quickly expanded with two new 31.5MW sets, for a total of 118MW, well in excess of the planned 100MW.

In 1929 the first transmission tower of the new National Grid was erected by the Central Electricity Board on the Mortonhall Estate. On April 30th 1930, the first phase of the Grid was inaugurated with the switching on of the Central Scotland Electricity Scheme by Minister of Transport, Herbert Morrison. He threw a switch at the new high tension transformer station at Portobello and energised the 132kv lines, connecting Edinburgh, Glasgow, Motherwell, Dundee and Stirling.

Herbert Morrison at the opening ceremony of the Central Scotland Electricity Scheme at Portobello, 30th April 1930.

More generation required more boilers, which required more chimneys and required more coolant, so a 4th tunnel was sunk out into the Forth to bring in more seawater. The place ended up being a weird architectural mixture of a classically-inspired façade and a progressively more modern and austere industrial rear, as additional units were repeatedly added – with eventually seven stumpy, steam-punk style chimneys poking out of the back.

In 1936, “Edinburgh’s Seaside” finally got its promised open-air pool, which had first been mooted before the power station had even been completed.

The open air pool on what looks like a cold day in 1930. This was a test of the wave machine prior to opening. In the background is the power station, now up to 8 chimneys. © Edinburgh City Libraries

Whether or not the pool was kept at the 20C promised from the hot water exhaust from the power station is a matter of much nostalgic debate. You can see many more postcard pictures of the pool at this website.

Portobello in happier, sunnier times

But the increasing demand for electricity was relentless and the Corporation had big plans afoot to significantly expand the station to 149MW, with a huge extension upwards and outwards to create the necessary space. Step up the wonderfully named Ebenezer James Macrae, City Architect. Macrae is one of those legendary figures in Edinburgh municipal architecture; he designed much of the modern city, and designed it well. He had a particular knack of being able to balance the vernacular tradition, the classicism of the “Athens of the North” and the modern. Frequently somewhat conservative, he broke his mould a bit and went for a strikingly modernist and austere red-brick and concrete block, but still with details hinting at Georgian Edinburgh.

Macrae’s sketch impression of the reconstruction of Portobello. The right hand, mirror-side of the rear extension was a proposal for future capacity and never completed. © Edinburgh City Libraries

The dominant addition was going to be an immense 350ft tall chimney to try and clear the worst of the stoor away from the washing lines of Portobello. This weighed in at 10,000 tons and had seven hundred and ten thousand (!) bricks in it. These could be conveniently be brought into the site directly by rail from local brickworks like Prestongrange, Roslin, Newbattle and Wallyford. People often say Scotland doesn’t have an architectural tradition in brick; perhaps it’s less pervasive than in England, but it is there. Portobello, after all, is a town founded on brick making and its power station was built on a brickworks, out of bricks!

The original station was dwarfed by the new additions, hiding its mechanical innards from the public’s eyes behind a towering façade of red brick and glass.

The new structure was completed just in time for another war, a booklet published by the Corporation proudly called it the “Hub of Greater Edinburgh“. Note that the artist has made a couple of errors in the image of the power station.

After the war the electricity supply was nationalised and so in 1947 Edinburgh Corporation’s finest asset was transferred to the nascent South East Scotland Electricity Board. Expansion was then back on the cards and by 1950 Portobello’s output was up to 212.5MW (over twice the original expectations). More reshuffling occurred in 1955, when the SESEB and its west coast equivalent the SWSEB were merged to form the SSEB. By 1957 it was producing 272.5MW and had the highest thermal efficiency of any power station in the UK. It wasn’t all smooth going though; an explosion caused by seawater in the switchgear caused an Edinburgh-wide 2 hour blackout in 1953 and in 1961 there was a fire, which fortunately was quickly contained.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/61694981@N05/28594183680

The station continued keeping the lights twinkling in Edinburgh and the Lothians for a further 16 years, although it was soon playing second fiddle to the big new cousin along the coast at Cockenzie, which opened in 1967. The end came in 1977, when the huge new coal fired station opened at Longannet – one already fading from public consciousness – and a nuclear plant on the way along the coast at Torness.

The forlorn remains of Portobello Power Station’s grand red brick facade in 1980, with the open air swimming pond beyond. CC-by-NC-SA 4.0 from Edinburgh Collected

Inevitably, Edinburgh was quick to demolish the place before somebody could think of anything else to do with it.

Demolition at Portobello.

You can view a rather sad video of the demolition progress on YouTube here and you can still visit the old gates and fences if you happen to be passing, and there’s a building on the other side of the High Street that used to house some of the first National Grid switchgear on the other side of the road.

And six years ago, the monumental civic coat of arms that was once proudly displayed over the entrance door turned up, broken into at least 3 pieces, in a council yard at Murrayburn, in Wester Hailes. An old council promise to incorporate it into a new sports centre for Portobello has long been quietly forgotten… I happened to be visiting a council facility at this yard in March 2023 and was very pleased to stumble upon it! Despite being split up, it remains in surprisingly good and bright condition.,

Edinburgh’s Latin motto “Nisi Dominus Frustra“, which runs on the banner beneath the coat of arms, is an abbreviation of Psalm 127, “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” I’m not a believer myself, but I think there’s something in that…

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