This month in my new Scottish family history blog, I am focusing on my grandmother’s childhood home in the Dumbiedykes‘  tenement flat in the east of Edinburgh. It is a house which I have never seen as it was torn down during the 1960s post-war ‘slum clearances’, although it had once been a much loved family home. Not only was the location fairly central for Edinburgh’s Old Town, but the balcony from the top floor flat looked over Holyrood Park and Arthur’s Seat. This balcony was also the scene of many family photographs – no doubt because of the space and light that wasn’t available inside the crowded tenement – and it’s thanks to this (and the unknown photographer, who was possibly one of my grandmother’s brothers) that there are so many natural images of the family relaxing at home throughout the 20s, 30s and 40s.

*My Grandparents on the Dumbiedykes Balcony, c1930

As a child I was always drawn to the set of photographs taken from the balcony of my great-grandparents’ tenement flat in Edinburgh’s Dumbieykes area. Through these images I saw my grandmother morph from a gangly 1920s teenager into a young married woman in the 1930s and then as a mother in the 1940s. Fashion moved on over the decades, but the solid-looking wrought-iron balcony was a constant. I have been told that the views from the flat over Holyrood Park were spectacular, although unfortunately no-one in the family thought to photograph them. My mother credits the fresh air blowing in from Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags for the Neilsons’ longevity – in addition to my great-grandmother’s plain and wholesome Scottish cooking. And even if they did not take advantage of the outdoor space in quite the same way we would today, the family must have appreciated being able to step out onto the balcony on a sunny morning, or to simply have a place to hang up damp laundry or wet overcoats.

Read more of this post at my new family history blog: A Scottish Family Album

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The Incidental Genealogist, February 2022