Skulferatu #125 - The Banana Flats (Cables Wynd House), Cables Wynd, Leith, Edinburgh

Ah, I do love a bit of Brutalism, that is as in the architectural movement rather than some sort of savage violence.  I know it is not everyone’s cup of tea, but for me I find there is a sort of Sci-Fi utopian appeal to it.  Even now, some of the buildings in that style look like something from the future.  So, being in the mood for a look at some heavy concrete, I took a walk through Leith to probably the most famous Brutalist building in Scotland, Cables Wynd House, locally known as the Banana Flats. 

 

View down to Cables Wynd House

 

Concrete and cloudy skies

 

View along Cables Wynd House

 

Big Brother is watching you

 

The Banana Flats is one of those buildings that I remember having a certain mythology around it in the 1980s.  It was a place where some of my teenage acquaintances ended up being housed after being made homeless, having escaped violent and/or dysfunctional families.  Bumping into them in the pub on a Friday or Saturday night, they would regale me with tales of drug dealing, suicide, prostitution, and strange and bizarre happenings around the building.  And though I listened with fascination to their tales, I grew to be terrified of the place, thinking of it as some Sodom and Gomorrah, and hurrying past it if I was out in that area.   Then one drunken night I ended up at a party there, and it wasn’t that bad.  Fair enough, some kid did try to threaten me into giving him money as I was leaving, but he was about twelve and gave up when I just ignored him.

 

Cables Wynd House

 

Concrete in blue

 

BEWAR

 

Though the building has had, and still has, a bit of a reputation, it was built with the ideal of improving the quality of life for many of those living in substandard housing around Leith.  Between the 1950s and 1970s, there was a huge slum clearance project in Leith that resulted in the construction of several large public housing schemes. Cables Wynd House was part of this project and was completed in 1965.  The building is of a Brutalist design and was designed by Alison & Hutchison & Partners.  The design was influenced by the ideas of the architect, Le Corbusier and his utopian concept of the ‘Ville Radieuse’ or the Vertical City.  This being a city of high density housing in skyscrapers, located in a parkland area with shops, leisure, and cultural amenities as part of the development.

 

South tower of Cables Wynd House

 

Cables Wynd House

 

Concrete tower

 

The Banana Flats curve

 

The Banana Flats curve

 

The Banana Flats curve

 

The Banana Flats from Henderson Street

 

Constructed of concrete, Cables Wynd House has a distinctive curve, that has resulted in its nickname of the ‘Banana Flats’.  At the time of its construction, it was the largest block of flats in Edinburgh being ten storeys high with 212 flats, the majority of these having two bedrooms. Cables Wynd House was regarded as being innovative in its design with features such as heated floors, lifts, refuse chutes, and a concierge.  It was also built with external access decks to recreate the sense of community that had existed in the neighbourhood it replaced, and has a North-South orientation to give as much natural light into the flats as possible.

 

Originally seen as a desirable place to live, things changed in the 1980s when the building, and surrounding area, gained a reputation for drugs and violence.  Things have improved, but Cables Wynd House, though seen as iconic by many, is still plagued by problems, and is regarded as the most deprived part of Edinburgh.   

 

The building gained fame as being the home of the character Simon ‘Sick Boy’ Williamson in Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, and was featured in the film. It has also been used in the BBC television dramas Wedding Belles and Guilt.  

 

The Banana Flats

 

Model of Cables Wynd House showing the curve

 

In 2017 Cables Wynd House became a Category A Listed Building, for demonstrating ‘a culmination of contemporary architectural theories, bearing a close resemblance to Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation model housing and other notable near-contemporary English schemes’, as well as being ‘both a positive and negative architectural icon, representing a period of great social reconstruction in Scotland’s cities.’

 

After taking a walk around Cables Wynd House, on a typical Scottish day of rain, sunshine and then rain again, I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on a cobwebby ledge by the Dry Mains Riser.

 

Skulferatu #125

 

Dry Riser Inlet

 

Skulferatu #125 on a cobwebby ledge

 

Skulferatu #125 on a cobwebby ledge

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #125

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are -

 

Latitude 55.973143

Longitude -3.17431

 

what3words: wells.reap.over

 

I used the following sources for information on the Banana Flats –

 

Brutalist Britain (Second Edition)

By David Navarro & Martyna Sobecka

2022

 

Historic Environment Scotland - Cables Wynd House, Cables Wynd, Leith, Edinburgh

 

 

Edinburgh Evening News - People of Edinburgh's most deprived area speak about life near the Banana Flats 

Skulferatu #93 - Tolbooth Wynd, Leith, Edinburgh

You may not guess it from walking down this street, what with the Brutalist flats of Linksview House dominating it, but Tolbooth Wynd is one of the oldest streets in Leith and was once described as being one of the most picturesque in the area.  In the early thirteenth century the first houses built in Leith were built upon the land that now stands between Tolbooth Wynd and The Shore.

 

View of Tolbooth Wynd by Linksview House

 

Linksview House on Tolbooth Wynd

 

View from The Shore looking towards Tolbooth Wynd

 

View of Tolbooth Wynd from The Shore

 

View down Tolbooth Wynd towards The Shore

 

Tolbooth Wynd takes its name from the fact that about half way down the street there used to stand the Old Tolbooth, a building that served as a meeting chamber, courthouse, a jail and occasionally, accommodation for soldiers stationed at Leith.  The Tolbooth was built in 1565 and was in use for nearly two hundred and fifty years, before falling into disrepair.  It was then proposed that it should be demolished and a new court house and prison built in its place. There was a campaign, led by Walter Scott, to preserve the façade of the building, but this was ‘cavalierly dismissed’ by the Lord Provost and the building was demolished in 1825.  The new building only functioned as a courthouse for a few years before being converted into shops and offices.

 

The Old Tolbooth - from ‘Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time’

 

The Tolbooth housed many prisoners in its time, though not that many of note, as most of the more infamous criminals ended up in the Tolbooth at Edinburgh.  Probably the most distinguished prisoner who had the misfortune to reside there was William Maitland of Lethington.  He was the Secretary of State to Mary Queen of Scots and was imprisoned in the Leith Tolbooth in 1573 by the Regent Morton.  Fearing he would face the humiliation and cruelty of a public execution, he took a dose of poison and died in his cell.  It was said that his corpse was left lying in his cell for so long that it was partially eaten by the numerous rats that infested the building.  So, you can probably imagine that it was not the healthiest place to serve out any time as a prisoner.  On a lighter note, another of those imprisoned within the Tolbooth was a rather hapless thief.  In 1763 a sailor arrived in Leith on a ship from London and went for a few ales in one of the local taverns.  While there he boasted to his new found companions that he had made some money while away and had a chest on board the ship with over £200 in it.  This boast was overheard by a local ne'er-do-well who saw a way of making some quick money.  He disguised himself as a porter and went to the ship where he told the crew that he had been sent by the sailor to collect the chest.  The unsuspecting crew handed the chest over to him.  However, the thief, being unused to ships, slipped on the plank leading down to the dock and fell into the sea, along with the chest.  A host of people quickly gathered around to rescue the poor man, including the owner of the chest, who was shocked to see that it was his own chest that was fished out of the water along with the would be thief. The thief, still dripping wet and half drowned, was quickly marched along to the Tolbooth, and locked up in a cell.

 

At the eastern end of Tolbooth Wynd there stood for many years a signal tower looking out over the Forth.  It was said to be of a sturdy design, much like an old fort.   It had portholes at the top like those often designed for firing muskets out of, but that were actually for the local merchants to look out from and watch as their ships sailed off from, or returned to, the harbour.

 

Signal Tower at Tolbooth Wynd - from ‘Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time’

 

Like any old street, Tolbooth Wynd has a ghost story attached to it.  Not to be outdone by other tales of headless horsemen and the suchlike, it was said that on stormy nights at midnight, a coach could be heard thundering down the street.  Anyone brave enough to peek out through their window as it passed would see a funereal looking coach tearing down along the cobbled street, driven by a tall, gaunt man, dressed all in black and without a head, and drawn by six black horses who were all also headless.  Through the coach window, it was said you could glimpse a mysterious woman sitting inside, her face covered by a black veil. 

 

Around midnight, during a foggy and cold night a few years ago, I was making my way back home from a local pub and walked up along Tolbooth Wynd.  There I heard a terrible rumbling and screeching.  On looking up and fully expecting to see the dreaded ghostly coach approaching, I instead saw a demonic like figure on an off road motorbike tearing down the road.  He wasn’t headless but rather had his head hidden in the depths of a grey hoodie.  With blue lights flashing and sirens wailing like a screaming banshee, a ghostly police car was in hot pursuit behind him.  They were soon lost in the swirling darkness of the night, like an apparition of old, and I continued my slightly inebriated stumble home.

 

A large part of Tolbooth Wynd was demolished and rebuilt in the 1880s.  During the slum clearances in Leith during the 1950s and 1960s much of it was again demolished and replaced with a housing scheme and the Linksview House tower block.  In 2017 Linksview House became a listed building with Category A Status, being seen as an important example of Brutalist architecture.

 

Tolbooth Wynd – from ‘Old and New Edinburgh’

 

Tolbooth Wynd, Leith, circa 1900 – from a postcard by Valentine & Sons

 

Linksview House, Tolbooth Wynd

 

Today, in the not so cold light of day, I took a walk around Leith and through Tolbooth Wynd.  In a gap in a crumbly, stone wall by the small park there, I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on my walk.

 

Skulferatu #93

 

Skulferatu #93 in a gap in the wall at Tolbooth Wynd

 

Map showing location of Skulferatu #93

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.974437

Longitude -3.171031

 

what3words: riches.moons.clear

 

I used the following sources for information on Tolbooth Wynd –

 

Historical Notes Concerning Leith and its Antiquities, Volume 1

By James Campbell Irons M.A.

1897

 

Cassell’s Old and New Edinburgh, Vol 3

By James Grant

1883

 

Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time, Vol 2

By Daniel Wilson

1891

 

 

Historic Environment Scotland

Iconic Leith flats recognised at highest listing category