Shadows of a Forgotten World

Mackenzie & Moncur Ltd, founded around 1850, manufactured and constructed hothouses in Scotland and part of England . They also specialized in the manufacture of pavement lights.  

In 1848, Hayward Brothers was established. Their main products were ironwork: ranges, stoves, coal plates, circular and spiral staircases, and ventilators. Shortly after 1857, they started to produce iron pavement lights glazed with rough cast glass. And in 1871 one of the brother’s patents, “Improvements in Pavement Lighting,” brought about a significant improvement to the product. “Before then, lighting basements had been problematic. Open gratings let in light, but were open to the weather as well, and hard to stand and walk on; slab glass in iron frames was better, but admitted only a small amount of useful light; triangular glasses had been tried, but were not well designed, and threw most of the incident light back out again. Edward's idea was to split the triangular light in half: now the rays of light entering the top were throw horizontally into the space below, lighting areas deep inside.” Ad from 1925  Images taken from Glassian

When I was Glasgow , I noticed on several buildings in the city center the same tram rosettes that are in Lviv. Thus I immediately knew that Glasgow once had a tram system. Glasgow ’s electric tram route began in 1898. In 1962 the city abandoned its tramway system  —  the last city in the UK to do so. At its peak in 1947, the city had more than 1,200 trams. Starting in 1953, they were phased out. As such, the tram rosettes haven’t supported tram wires for 50 years, but many still adorn Glasgow ’s buildings, reminders of the city’s once much-loved tram system.

St Andrews, a historic town a few hours away from Edinburgh, has its share of boot scrapers  –   including some rather unique ones. some of the cavities are missing their metal bars finding other uses for these cavities - a sign that boot scrapers are obsolete

Starting in 1676, water from several springs near Edinburgh was piped into a reservoir at Castle Hill, from where it was conveyed to a total of 14 cisterns on High Street and the nearby area. In about 1820 these public wells went out of use with the introduction of additional water from another spring and as water was conveyed by pipes to houses.

British police boxes (telephone kiosks or callboxes used by the police or by the public to contact the police) first appeared in Glasgow in the 1891. Edinburgh's rectangular boxes were designed c. 1937 by an architect inspired by the city's neoclassical architecture. At their peak, 86 police boxes were in the city. With the introduction of personal radios, police boxes were phased out in the 1970s, thus few of them remain in Britain today. A few in Edinburgh have remained untouched, but others have been converted into coffee stands or flower shops.

I expected to find more ghost signs in Scotland, but nevertheless I found some interesting ones in Edinburgh. I'm not sure about the dates of these  –  unlike in Ukraine, the language of the signage doesn't help to date the sign. But by what is being advertized and font it seems like some are pretty old (for example, the one advertizing chimney sweepers).

Edinburgh is awash with boot scrapers, especially in the New Town (built between 1765 and 1850), where just about every building's front door or front stairway is flanked by boot scrapers. The boot scrapers come in various designs. Some are attached to the railings of the balconies, but most are free standing. Some are missing, or broken, but it seems that most have survived, though likely never used.