The former City Poorhouse on Comiston Road in Edinburgh is now a sheltered housing block, but it has a dark and mysterious secret that many people may not be aware of
Baffled-looking people congregated outside an unassuming Scottish lodge, and a one-time neighbour has explained exactly why.
The former City Poorhouse on Edinburgh’s Comiston Road looks a lot like many other sheltered housing blocks in the city. The building, which opened in 1870, was intended to provide a “comfortable home for the aged and poor” – but that’s not all it is remembered for.
Building number 144 used to attract “puzzled” looking individuals carrying paperwork during the 1970s and 80s. They would walk back and forth, seemingly struggling to comprehend something about the building. Local historian Mike Ashworth – who lived across from the lodge during that time – had long been baffled about what they were looking for.
Now he believes he has uncovered the truth, as well as a shocking policy that masked the harsh reality of poverty in Edinburgh. He claimed that children from the poorhouse were falsely registered as being born at the upscale address of 144 Comiston Road, creating a false impression of their living conditions.
When their relatives went searching for the supposed place of birth, they would be confronted with a handsome stone lodge completely at odds with the tales of hardship they’d been told.
Mike explained: “The small building on the corner of Comiston Drive, was one of two lodges adjacent to each other and served the parallel drives to the City Poorhouse and City Hospital respectively.
“On many occasions you would see people, outside the old lodge at 144, looking puzzled and consulting paperwork and some days we’d nip across the road to ask if we could help, in case they were lost or required directions.
“Frequently they would have copies of old birth or death certificates that showed the address on them but they could not quite believe that this small lodge squared with the other facts as they knew them.
“I was eventually told by an older neighbour that they believed the reason was the poorhouse used the address of the Lodge on Comiston Road to complete documents and forms such as registration of births and deaths to hide the stigma of the poorhouse, such was its reputation.”
For Mike, his own memories of the area are also tinged with tragedy as well as a sense of mystery, reports Edinburgh Live. He recalled how his mother witnessed a worker falling to his death while another building on the street was under construction.
The retired London Underground worker, who now lives in West Yorkshire, said: “Despite local protests the lodge was bulldozed to allow the construction of the current four-story brick block of flats with only the stone wall and gate posts remaining.
“However, during construction, the new building was the site of a fatal accident, witnessed from our front window by my mother, Bernice Ashworth. One frosty morning, as the building was almost complete, a site worker had gone to the roof level in a cherry picker, to access the roof.
“Sadly he left the safety of the cherry picker and, on the icy, slippery roof, he fell and plunged the four stories to his death. The subject of a fatal accident inquiry at the Sheriff Court, my mother had to attend and give evidence. All I recall was her screaming as I entered the front room, to see a blurred falling figure, but she had seen the whole tragic accident thinking somehow the poor man would hold on.”
