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Guest Blog Post: Around Causewayside in Old Maps and Photographs

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Oct 012010

Today we have another excellent guest blog post from Chris Fleet, Senior Map Curator at the National Library of Scotland.

When the AddressingHistory team popped in to take some pictures of the PODs and Maps this week Chris showed us the exhibit of Causewayside in Old Maps and Photographs that he has created for the new Maps Reading room and he agreed to tell us more about what he’s been finding out about the area of Edinburgh that the AddressingHistory project calls home. We hope Chris’ post will inspire you to send us your own stories about people, professions and locations you hope to use AddressingHistory to help you explore and research.

Around Causewayside in Old Maps and Photographs

Post Office Directories and maps are often just the starting point for exploring the history of particular streets and buildings. With the recent move of the NLS Maps Reading Room, we not only face our AddressingHistory partners EDINA across the same street, but we have also put together a small exhibition – Around Causewayside on old maps and photographs.

Chris Fleet stands next to part of the Causewayside in Old Maps and Images exhibit at the National Library of Scotland Maps Reading Room

Causewayside – recorded as a causey or paved routeway from the 1580s – was historically the main highway from the Burgh Muir south to Liberton. However, it was not developed for feuing (the legal process under Scottish law of selling land) and housebuilding until after the acquisition of the Newington Estate by Dr Benjamin Bell of Hunthill in 1804. Most of the streets were laid out by the time of Kirkwood’s map of 1817, and Leslie’s map of 1826 shows extensive residential development and the names of individual proprietors.

During the 19^th century, there was a partial transition from residential to manufacturing development along Causewayside, with new printing and publishing works, as well as the famous Middlemass Biscuit factory.

Middlemass & Son entry in the 1905 Edinburgh Post Office Directory

Robert Middlemass was born in Peebles in 1819, and we know from the Post Office directories that he started biscuit production through premises in West Preston Street in 1835. From 1869 he acquired a second site on Causewayside, which expanded in phases, to front onto Salisbury Place and Upper Gray Street by 1897. This expansion of the factory can be seen on the Ordnance Survey maps of 1877, and 1893. These photographs of the exterior and interior of the Middlemass Biscuit Manufactory were taken in around 1910:

Exterior of the Middlemass Biscuit Factory (image courtosy of the National Library of Scotland)

Interior of the Middlemass Biscuit Factory (image courtesy of the National Library of Scotland)

The Middlemass Factory is of particular interest to NLS, as it originally housed the NLS Map Room from 1974, and the Factory was subsequently demolished in 1984 to allow the current Causewayside Building to be built.

A recent addition to the NLS Digital Archive is the fascinating set of 138 photographs of the South Side of Edinburgh, including Causewayside, taken by Alfred Henry Rushbrook for the City of Edinburgh Improvement Trust, 1929.

Exterior image of 72-78 Causewayside (image courtesy of the National Library of Scotland)

Our small display of photographs and maps of Causewayside can be seen until the end of October inside the new National Library of Scotland Maps Reading Room, 159 Causewayside. Opening hours: Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri: 9.30 am – 5.00 pm; Weds 10.00 am – 5.00 pm; Sat: 9.30 – 1.00 pm.

Guest Blog Post: Putting Street Directories on the Map

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Sep 212010

This week we are delighted to bring you a guest blog post from Chris Fleet, Senior Map Curator at the National Library of Scotland. Chris shares his perspective on the history of mapping, and particularly urban mapping, and how the historical post office directors fit into this history. Chris also looks at how the AddressingHistory tool will enable a new perspective on these valuable historical resources.

Putting Street Directories on the Map

Towns like Edinburgh are well mapped these days – in electronic and paper forms – but it was not always like this.

Flickr Map Showing an Image of the National Library of Scotland Maps Building

These days, in addition to ubiquitous electronic maps and satellite images from Google, Bing, or Yahoo, a fresh handful of new paper maps are published every year by mainstream publishers such as the Automobile Association, Collins, Geographers A-Z, or Philips, as well as smaller specialist cartographers. This is without even considering the much larger number of publications including maps within them.

So its easy to forget that this modern abundance of urban mapping doesn’t extend back in time much before the 19^th century for Edinburgh. The relatively limited earlier mapping of the burgh from the 16th century onwards for small and specialist audiences, dominated by military concerns, was replaced in the later 18^th century by a diverse and steadily expanding civilian urban market. Maps appeared in a range of new publications – almanacs, directories, newspapers, travel accounts, books on history and geography, and publications of learned societies – for new literate audiences. In addition, the steady replacement of copper-plate engraving by lithography during the 19^th century allowed maps to be produced and updated much more cheaply.

Lithographic stone by edinburghcityofprint (the Edinburgh City of Print initiative)

Maps for Post Office Directories grew both in frequency and in the towns they covered as the century progressed, but they were always driven by these commercial and technological constraints. Only Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow were regularly mapped before 1850 in Directories. After Ordnance Survey mapped Scotland’s towns at large scales from 1855-1880, many smaller towns – Ayr, Banff, Dumfries, Greenock and Perth – were mapped for Directories, whilst for the larger towns there were fresh new maps every year. Map publishers such as W & AK Johnston and Bartholomew – both based in Edinburgh too – rose to the fore to dominate production. Although plain and utilitarian, Post Office Directory maps are a key information source. Their value in illustrating the dramatic urban expansion and change at this time is heightened when we put them into a longer historical cartographic context. Ordnance Survey may have mapped these towns in more detail, but far less frequently, so that the Directory maps allow a much more precise record of the changing townscape.

Screen capture of the Bartholomew Post Office Plan of Edinburgh and Leith, 1893-4

Part of the Bartholomew Post Office Plan of Edinburgh and Leith, 1893-4 (click the image to view the map on the NLS website)

For me, whilst Post Office Directory maps on paper have always been fascinating and useful for urban history, digitising, geo-referencing and integrating them with the textual content of the Directory brings out a whole new dimension to their value. Geo-referencing the maps allows them to be readily overlaid and compared to later and present day maps – the Visualising Urban Geographies project allows the advantages of this to be appreciated for maps of Edinburgh from 1765 to 1940. Geo-referencing the written content of the Directory, and creating dynamic spatial distributions of people or professions at the touch of a button, opens up a whole new graphical way of visualising the Directory content. By linking the results to a map of the same time period, the distributions can also be understood and appreciated much more readily. The AddressingHistory tool illustrates this new and powerful way of interrogating the Directories cartographically and geographically, and allows an important, but often neglected genre of urban mapping to be given a new relevance today.