Edinburgh in the 1950s was a very different place. After the ravages of war, the International Festival and Military Tattoo was introduced as an antidote to post-war austerity, the new Civic Survey and Plan put forward grandiose recommendations for change, and a new young Queen visited the city.

This was a time when slum housing was a blight on many people’s lives, but there was a real sense of community that was ultimately lost in the move to sparkling, modern homes in the new housing estates. People continued to use the trams to travel to work in the many factories or make trips to Portobello for a day of fun, but they were slowly usurped by the car.
It was a glory period for the local football teams, and nights spent dancing or at the pictures were a weekly event. There was still the horse-drawn milk float and children played in streets that were lit by gas. Beautifully illustrated with many previously unpublished photographs, Edinburgh in the 1950s provides an exceptional insight into a time now acknowledged as the end of an era in Edinburgh – for good and for bad.

St Cuthberts milk float, 1955

Hart Street, New Town, c. 1954

Princes Street, c. 1954

Princes Street in 1953

Edinburgh Castle from Princes Street, 1953

A Sandison & Sons Wool Depot, 1953

West End, 1953

Princes Street in 1953

Three wheeled car on Princes Street, 1953

Princes Street, 1954

The Mound in 1950

Learmonth Avenue View to Fettes College, 1953

Holycorner, c. 1952

Princes Street in 1952 at RW Forsyth corner, S St Andrew Street

Princes Street with coronation decorations in 1953

West End, 1957

Speakers corner on the Mound/Princes Street, 1957

Princes Street, Aug 1958

Outside Waverley Market on Princes Street, 1958

East End of Princes Street near Woolworths and Waverley Market, 1958

View towards Arthurs Seat from Blackford Hill Rise, late 1950s

Princes Street at the junction of St Andrew Street, late 1950s