Timber Bush
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Timber Bush is an area of Leith, the port town of Edinburgh, Scotland, north of Bernard Street. The name derives from the French "Timbre Bourse", meaning a timber market; this formerly being an open area where timber was offloaded from ships before sale.
History
By order of the Edinburgh Burgh Council, no Timber Bushes were allowed on any part of Princes Street in the New Town, or the pleasure grounds there.[citation needed]
Part of the sea wall built by Robert Mylne in 1685, to protect the stores of wood within Timber Bush from being washed away by the sea[citation needed], still forms the lower part of the walls of the shacks adjacent to Tower Street. The remains of embrasures are still visible[citation needed], which were used for cannon, and through which the timber cargoes floated from the ships were hauled, for storage within the Timber Bush.[citation needed]
The export of whisky from, and the import of wine into Leith, gave it a large trade in coopering. In his Bride of Lammermoor, Sir Walter Scott speaks of "Peter Puncheon that was cooper to the queen's stores at the Timmer Burse (that is, Timber Bush) at Leith." The majority of bonded warehouses and stores on Timber Bush were burned down on a single night in 1982. The four remaining warehouses on the south side were not all bonds. Reading from left to right they held in turn; leather goods; peanuts and raisins; claret (only latterly being used for whisky); and lastly slates. These stand on the vaulted basement of an earlier huge warehouse (demolished 1830) which may have been the Queen's Stores referred to by Scott[1]. All of the warehouses are now converted to other uses.
The central pair of warehouses appear as a single designed frontage, but other than the frontage are of completely different forms (quickly seen from the other side or in an aerial view). The odd 300mm gap between the westmost unit and the next building is explained by the need to maintain daylight to the inner building (bonds could not have open flames for lighting so before electricity had to be fully daylit). The windows line up between the two buildings and residents from one can reach into the other if the windows are open!.
Present day
Timber Bush is now an enclave behind the busy traffic of Bernard Street, and home to modern flats, marketing firms and small media companies, such as bigmouthmedia and Taste Design, Pro Poor (organisers of the Homeless World Cup), sustainable tourism consultants Dunira Strategy and the flight search engine company Skyscanner. Also the business networking organisation The Power Lunch Club.
The residents of the new-build flats are often negative in nature to the employees working in the old warehouses, and have been known to scratch and otherwise damage cars parked in this area.
External links
References
- ^ student research project by S Dickson + A Robertson 1984