CHALMERS STREET was once an impressive residential street, with terraced Victorian townhouses leading to the green expanses of Edinburgh’s Meadows. In 150 years, it has not been immune to the city’s development. At least half of its east side is either demolished or overshadowed by departments of the city’s Royal Infirmary.
The other side, currently part building site, part car park, was for more than 100 years the home of St Thomas of Aquin’s High in its various guises, from Convent School for Girls to fully fledged coeducational comprehensive.
The street even contributed to the Merseybeat boom of the sixties, with the legendary “fifth Beatle”, artist Stuart Sutcliffe, having his childhood home there.
However, today’s changes are the most radical the old street has seen. In August, a new St Thomas’s will open its doors, while opposite the Infirmary is steadily decamping to a greenfield site. All of this reflects Edinburgh’s boomtown status, but leaves me feeling a little bereft. The Simpson Maternity Pavilion, where I was born, has closed. St Thomas’s, where I started my teaching career, is demolished. I feel like a Soviet politician, airbrushed out of official histories.
However, for all the sentimentality, I am more than happy to recognise the benefits of the changes. During my time at St Tam’s, the school was famous for its invisibility and its bizarre internal geography. From the outside it appeared to be a terrace of houses. Like Dr Who’s police box, behind the front doors 700 pupils and staff were going about their business, even if, on occasion, this meant going upstairs so you could eventually reach the basement.
I used to fiercely defend the building’s quirkiness, but I had been in my current, nine-year-old, establishment less than a week when I was forced to recognise that today’s pupils need today’s buildings if they are to prosper.
The Infirmary and St Thomas’s offered superb service to their communities, but as a result of old age and continued redesign more or less fell over. (There are days when I sympathise.) Their traditions and spirit will live on in new settings, as will be the case in all the new schools planned across Scotland. New traditions and histories will be formed, and the folk they serve will be all the better for having up to date and relevant resources.
When reviewing education and health spending, our politicians should continue to be aware that Scotland needs not buildings left to become sentimental icons, but well maintained modern facilities. Our history demands nothing less.
