The buildings and cobbled streets look much the same, as do the bustling pedestrians and hazy skies of Edinburgh. Yet 66 years ago, Rose Street was much different than visitors and residents know it today.
Edinburgh World Heritage charts an ever-changing thoroughfare. It states: “In the 19th century Rose Street gained a reputation as a seedy backwater, not a place for the respectable to be seen after dark.”
The perception began to change in the 1960s, four short years after independent Scottish filmmaker Margaret Tait filmed her homage to Edinburgh’s busy, working class Rose Street.
The grainy black and white footage lovingly captures buskers, children at play on the streets, shops and shopkeepers, tradesmen, shoppers, cheeky teen smokers, and men having a drink in a pub.
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Cars and pedestrians alike bustle along Rose Street in Tait’s video. It wasn’t until the 1970s that Rose Street became the city’s first fully pedestrianised road.
Tait previously described her work as 'film poems', and the video feels lovingly captured and stitched together. It feels like a time capsule attempting to capture the essence of a changing place.
According to Edinburgh World Heritage, Rose Street would soon shift from a seedy working class area with a bad reputation to an upscale, fashionable district. In the 1950s and 60s, Rose Street was frequently haunted by new wave Scottish poets such as Hugh MacDiarmid and Robert Garioch. The poets gathered in places such as Milne’s Bar, the Abbotsford and the Café Royal.
By the late 1960s, the Edinburgh Tatler had declared Rose Street as fashionable. Tait’s version of the neighbourhood was already lost to memory.
“If the smells and personalities that gave Rose Street its great character have almost vanished, a new and more salubrious character has emerged,” a copy of the Tatler said.
“Rose Street…has suddenly become fashionable”
By the 1960s tenement flats began to give way to antique shops and boutiques. In 1973, it became the first pedestrianised street in the city.
Tait’s film still offers a glimpse into what life was like in the Rose Street neighbourhood when it remained residential and working class.
Old fashioned lorries are seen delivering crates of glass bottles. Glass milk bottles are out for collection on stoops. Plastic bottles and materials are notably absent throughout the 15 minute snapshot film.
Many sights remain familiar: bin men out on a daily collection; elegant women window shopping; men in a pub served pints after a day at work; newspapers and signs on the street.
However, the multitude of top hats, ladies hats, long peacoats and other attire immediately date the people and the place. The lack of women in the pub and the cheeky, furtive glimpse of young women taking a drag of a cigarette also hint at a different time.
Some of the still images and up-close frames are hauntingly beautiful. In one such frame, an elderly, austere man with large, round glasses and a lined face pushes a wheelbarrow down the street by hand.
In another, an elderly man stands in front of an old fashioned car playing an accordion while a young girl dances and jumps beneath his feet.
In yet another, a jewellery maker plies her craft with expertly placed hammer blows and finessed movements.
Towards the end of the video, Tait heavily emphasises the community bonds. A shop keep chats with local children before ruffling one's hair and sending them on their way. Children tussle on the street, play hopscotch on the sidewalk in front of tenements and shops, groups of kids hold hands running, and ride bikes down alleyways.
Even for its time, the video feels achingly nostalgic. To see more of Rose Street in 1956, click here.
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