Timber Bush is an area of

Leith Leith (; gd, Lìte) is a port area in the north of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, founded at the mouth of the Water of Leith. In 2021, it was ranked by ''Time Out'' as one of the top five neighbourhoods to live in the world. The earliest ...

, the port town of

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

, north of Bernard Street. "Bush" derives from the French "Bourse" and the name means timber market; this formerly being an open area where timber was offloaded from ships before sale.

History

James VI granted a charter to Bernard Lindsay, after whom the nearby Bernard Street is named, allowing him to build a piazza looking on to the harbour, with stone arches and pillars "to be the ordinary Burse and walking place for merchants, natural & stranger." Later the whole ground was used as a timber market. The export of

whisky Whisky or whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Various grains (which may be malted) are used for different varieties, including barley, corn, rye, and wheat. Whisky is typically aged in wooden ca ...

from, and the import of

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

into Leith, gave it a large trade in coopering. In his '' Bride of Lammermoor'',

Sir Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels '' Ivanhoe'', '' Rob Roy' ...

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.student research project by S Dickson + A Robertson 1984 All of the warehouses are now converted to other uses. A converted warehouse in Timber Bush, Leith

A converted warehouse in Timber Bush, Leith

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.

External links

Electricscotland.com - Industry in Leith

References

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