ABSTRACT
Stockbridge was also the site chosen to pilot a new type of housing, known as the Colonies, that went on to be built across Edinburgh in the latter part of the 19th century. These were a response to a severe housing shortage caused by a slump in housebuilding during a prolonged recession at a time of rapid industrialisation and population growth. The Reverends Dr James Begg and Dr Thomas Chalmers, Ministers of the Free Church of Scotland, campaigned to improve housing conditions for the poor and promoted the development of the Colonies between 1868 and 1911 through the Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company (set up by tradesmen locked out of a site in a dispute about working hours). In an era before mortgages the model offered the artisan classes the opportunity to own a property through subscription. So that each house could have a front garden, the Colonies were built as double flats that faced in different directions, the lower flat facing towards one street with a different address to the upper flat, which had its outside stairs and front garden on the next street. Today Stockbridge is, in many ways, still a village – the sort of place that urbanists purr over but generally struggle to replicate. It is a tight-knit prosperous community within an easy walk of an enviable range of shops and facilities along Raeburn Place, its main street. One of the reasons for Edinburgh’s embarrassment of strong neighbourhoods is the Scottish tenement. This
