Welcome to Robert's Page

"Despite the relative modernity of most of the housing in the area, the settlement of Craigmillar itself is very old. It contains Craigmillar Castle, which was begun in the late 14th or early 15th century, & occupied until the early 18th century. (In 1479, John Stewart, King James 1st's younger brother, was murdered in Craigmillar Castle!) In 1660 the Craigmillar estate was bought by Sir John Gilmour."

"The housing scheme at Niddrie Mains was created through the Housing (Scotland) Act of 1924, with lands bought from the Wauchope Estate. The area was designed & laid out by the then City Architect, Ebenezer James MacRae from 1927. The Craigmilllar estate, immediately below the castle, was planned in 1936. Until around 2008, the area consisted mainly of inter-war & post-war public housing schemes, ranging from private bungalows to Edinburgh Council-owned high rise tower blocks. The City of Edinburgh Council is now well into a regeneration programme which has seen the demolition of the earlier estates & the area has benefited from many initiatives aimed at tackling the social deprivation that has characterised the area for many years."

"The late 19th & early 20th centuries saw seven breweries being built in what was open country at Craigmillar/Duddingston, concentrated in a small area beside the railway line & taking advantage of the local aquifers (a body of saturated rock through which water can easily move) providing excellent water for brewing. The first of these was the Craigmillar Brewery of William Murray & Co. Ltd built in 1886 & followed within a few years by Andrew Drybrough's brewery, also called the Craigmillar Brewery (1892), the Duddingston Brewery built by Pattisons Ltd (1896), bought by Robert Deuchar Ltd in 1899 following Pattisons' liquidation, the North British Brewery (1897) which was taken over by Murray's in 1927 becoming known as Murray's No. 2 Brewery. Maclauchlan's Castle Brewery, Raeburn's New Craigmillar Brewery & Paterson's Pentland Brewery, all opening in 1901. These breweries stopped brewing at various times, mainly in the 1960s, but Drybrough's survived for several years & ceased brewing in January 1987."

"The Union of the Crowns (Scottish Gaelic: Aonadh nan Crùintean; Scots: Union o the Crouns) was the accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of the Kingdom of England as James I and the practical unification of some functions (such as overseas diplomacy) of the two separate realms under a single individual on 24 March 1603. It followed the death of James's cousin, Elizabeth I of England, the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty."

"The union was personal or dynastic, with the Crown of England and the Crown of Scotland remaining both distinct and separate despite James's best efforts to create a new imperial throne. England and Scotland continued as two separate states sharing a monarch, who directed their domestic and foreign policies, along with Ireland, until the Acts of Union of 1707 during the reign of the last Stuart monarch, Anne. However, there was a republican interregnum in the 1650s, during which the Tender of Union of Oliver Cromwell created the Commonwealth of England and Scotland which ended with the Stuart Restoration."

Next