Dave’s introduction to Granton industries

Where did people work in Granton in years gone by?

There was a wide range of industries and workplaces in the area over the years, some small and some quite large. Before the 1830s the main source of work was in farming, because the area was mainly farmland. The east part of our area has an interesting history - the name Trinity came about because a farm there was bought by Trinity House so that they could make money by selling the farm produce. Trinity House was in the Kirkgate in Leith and the building is still there. They looked after the families of men who had died at sea, and the money they raised went to help them.

At the centre of the area from the 1830s was Granton Harbour. A large fishing fleet was based there, right up to the 1970s, and as well as the actual fishing boats and their crews there were various other kinds of work to supply the boats. This included bringing in coal, and later fuel oil, to power the boats, making ice to keep the fish fresh on its way back to port to be sold, and making and repairing fishing nets. Boats were also built and repaired at Granton.

The harbour was also used by cargo boats which took coal out from Granton to other places where it was needed, and brought in a wide variety of goods such as esparto grass for making paper and timber for building.

Other vessels in the harbour included a dredger. It was used to keep the water deep enough for the ships to be able to get in and out to the piers. Without it, the harbour would have gradually silted up. It dug out the silt, loaded it on board, and took it out to sea to dump it.

Granton Harbour was also the base for the Northern Lighthouse Board. They built and looked after all the lighthouses in Scotland. Boats based at Granton took supplies, such as oil to run the lights and food for the lighthouse keepers to the lighthouses.

The Northern Lighthouse Board had a depot on West Shore Road with a lantern on top just like an actual lighthouse. They used it to train lighthouse keepers and to test out lights before they were used in real lighthouses.

Just along from the harbour was a quarry where stone was dug out. The piers at Granton harbour are built from that stone, and so are the buildings at Granton Square. Bricks were also made locally, and were used to build the terraced houses along from the Square on Lower Granton Road, and in Wardie Square.

The harbour had railway lines on it, connected to the main line railways into Granton, so that wagons could be taken alongside the boats for loading and unloading. These lines were built long before there were motor lorries. The railways had to be kept in good condition, and there were people to work the points to divert trains from one track to the other, and to count the wagons that arrived and left so that the harbour company could charge for the use of the lines.

From about 1900 onwards, there were engineering works in the area.

One of them was a car factory, the Madelvic factory. It was the first car factory to be built for the purpose in the UK. The cars were electric, but looked like a horse carriage with an extra wheel underneath. They were not very successful and other types of car were built there later.

The car factory became part of the Wire Works. They don't make wire - they make a product called wirecloth, which is like a woven cloth but made of metal wire. It is used by other industries such as paper makers and biscuit manufacturers. If you turn a digestive biscuit upside down you can see the pattern of the wirecloth underneath - the biscuit mixture is put onto a wirecloth conveyor belt and goes through a long oven to be baked.

Further away from Granton Harbour, on Pilton Drive, was Bruce Peebles. They made large electrical equipment such as transformers for electricity power stations. The works burnt down in a huge fire in 1999 and flats are now being built where it used to be.

Nearby, on Ferry Road, near Crewe Toll, was Ferranti's factory. The factory was built in the Second World War and made electronic parts for aircraft, including gunsights for the Spitfire. The building that replaced the original factory, for the company that took over from Ferranti, has a metal sculpture of five aircraft outside, at the Crewe Toll roundabout.

On West Granton Road, occupying a large area, was Granton Gas Works. You can still see one of the gas holders that held the gas once it had been made, and also the railway station that workers who lived outside the area used to get to and from their work.

There were many other industries and places where people worked in the area. The link below will take you to a page with links to information about some of them.