Interview with Elizabeth McArdle January 2014-01-25
Resident since 1977 first at Baberton Mains Avenue then from 1980 in Baberton Mains Wood .
Moving into Baberton Mains Avenue 1977
The Avenue was in the second phase of building. We had a gas fire with a back boiler and the two bedroom houses had lovely big bathrooms. We didn’t get a tree and I’m quite glad! We were on the side of the grass circle in the middle …They had brought in topsoil from the other houses and dumped it in the middle. So it was just a big mound of earth and when Adrian was born I’d put him in the garden, the trucks were going up and down and there were clouds of dust and earth. It was to be children’s park- swings and things but it never happened.
Everybody wanted a house with a garden somewhere nice to stay and I think Baberton has been wonderful for families.
We came to look at the houses with friends of ours from Moat Street. We drove to Juniper Green and walked down to have a look -£9995 with a garage! The garage was separate and it was commercially rated and we had to pay water rates on it. It was the end of November when we moved in and it wasn’t until the summer when everyone was out in their gardens that we got to know people. Plus my friends moved up too: Sandra from Slateford, Eileen, lots of people from Parkhead. It became a magnet: a nice play to live.
They ran out of imperial (measurement ) stuff for our house: it was on the imperial measures plan……….ours was the last house in the second phase though they’d already begun on the third phase.
Moving to the Wood
Then we moved to the Wood after three years. It was the fourth phase. We wanted a bigger house- more room. But they’re not really big houses we were in. When we moved into the Wood there were no pavements and no roads it was suppose to be a cul de sac and there’s still the sign for a cul de sac up. The road was just clinker……
It’s not a big house….we’ve extended at the back- kitchen and our dining room so we have a sofa there where our children had their sleepovers etc. But no more rooms.
But I couldn’t leave… I’ve lovely memories of Erinne here. We lost Erinne in 2000. I had one child in each house. Before the bit at the bottom was built over the children could play in the street. There’s the hilly bit at the back and the children could go out there and play, put a rug down and have a picnic. …. Baberton seemed a nice place to have children there were lots of children it was a very young estate.
There were always loads of children- gangs of them going up to school. Once or twice we had neighbourhood barbecues and things. Everybody just turned up and brought something with them. We’ve always had a bonfire on the hill behind us. It’s not so friendly now…..perhaps because there are not so many young children.
We got to know one another because of the children.
We bought both houses new from Jackie Ritchie. He was charming. Jackie Ritchie got a house in the Wood with a bit extra land and turned the other way.
Links with Juniper Green
It was a desirable place to live …just below Juniper Green. My mum’s doctor lived in Juniper Green……….. JG is beautiful but I hated going through it when I was learning to drive!
There is a feeling that people up at Juniper Green feel they’re better than us in Baberton. Not the children but some of the adults………Which is a shame ……If anything’s reported in the paper it always says “upmarket Baberton Mains”
Roxanne went to playgroup in the Village Hall so we were going up and down to nursery all the time…I think it’s awful the way people drive now….the congestion at the school is terrible. When my children went to school you only took them to school for a week or so then they could find their way. I could cross them over and then they’d no road to cross. No buses then . Then the C3 came once an hour. I voted against the buses because the roads weren’t built to take them. But by the time the buses arrived and when my children started using them I was quite relieved.
The Village Hall…it was great with the cheese and wines and discos. I don’t think people have the community feeling now. And Bloomiehall Park: the childminders take children up there all the time.
We’re very fortunate : it’s a nice place. Five minutes out your house and you’re in the hills.
Making a living
I got to know so many people because I was at home with children nineteen years: nine years a childminder. There were a few childminders on the estate. They were well-used. There are lots of taxi drivers…one causes a problem because if someone parks on the road there’s always a driveway opposite and those people will have difficulty getting out.
Campaigning for a ramp
You knew when you moved to Baberton you would have to walk!
Wester Hailes had a supermarket called Presto and you pushed the pram, loaded up with all your groceries. I came up to the village for the butcher’s but of course with the pram it was difficult …………( shows E News article from 1977 of herself struggling up the steps with a pram ) . I phoned up the newspapers and organised it all ( the campaign to get a ramp up to the school and village). We got a ramp after that but the new ramp is not as good as the old one. It’s almost impossible in the slippy weather
Facilities
The children play on the green bit, football and that on the hill up behind me. They sledge down the other side when it snows ………but they’re not allowed into the woods- they belong to the golf course
I can see teenagers finding it boring but there’s clubs, swimming at Wester Hailes, WHEC for gymnastics, Guides and Brownies at the Church, Highland Dancing at Sighthill.
There was a post-box, grass in the middle and we now have the little shop at Middlefield. My older neighbour gets on his mobility scooter and gets off down to the shop for his paper. And David gets his rolls there.
The high flats were scary to pass ( demolished early 80s). But the roundabout was great because there were no holdups on the road when the roundabout was there. The lights now disadvantage anybody trying to turn out onto the Wester Hailes road. I’ve seen people go through the lights at red or going round the other side!
There’s two fish vans come round. Was there a bread van? And I think there was a fish and chip van and an ice cream van ………… The first winter I’d put Roxanne in her bed and I was putting the buckets out and I heard this music and it was snowing and I looked up the road and saw these lights. Here! There was Santa Claus coming down the road! I went and got Roxanne up. I’d never seen anything like it. It was magic! Of course they (the Round Table with their Santa Claus sledge) still come round……
I went to Sighthill doctors then Whinpark.
We’ve been sent to vote in three different places!
Then the voting!!! When we first moved onto the estate in the Avenue we voted at JG School. Then when we moved to the Wood number 22 in the Wood was the last house that voted in Juniper Green then came the boundary. So living [as we did further along] we voted in Currie. Next they said we all needed to vote in JG. Then along came the idea to split the estate on the Drive and at the bottom of the estate one side and up was to go to JG and the others like us in the Wood were to vote in Sighthill. I wrote a letter to ask about this. Then in 2005 we got this letter to put us back to JG again.( shows letter from Council !)
Because I didn’t work I did a lot in the community…the Parent Teacher’s Association, I was on the first School Board, a Beaver Aunty. It was always the same people who did it. I don’t know if there’s still that community feeling still. It was a lovely school; there are so many children have moved back onto the estate to send their children to the school That says it all, doesn’t it?
I’ve always lived on this side of the town. David, too. We came and had a look and thought “This is for us!” School? I hadn’t thought about that! At the time Roxanne was only 9 months. Roxanne was the second year to go to Currie High school. At the meeting someone said “Let them walk!” So I tried it with a backpack and by the time I got to Currie I was soaked and frozen all along a busy main road. People were pleased to be going to Currie. My children walked up through “the Muddies” and crossed the road there to get the bus.
The coming of the bypass
Shows Information leaflet about the bypass coming.
When we moved onto the estate there were cows in the field where the bypass is now. I though that was the most wonderful thing.
We were in the Wood when the bypass came. We were asked to vote whether we wanted the bypass to go over on a flyover or dip down lower than the estate. The vote was in favour of the lower version. We have very little noise from it. For a long time it was just that first leg from Baberton to Fairmilehead. It was like that for a long time before the rest of the bypass was built.
The bypass is a beautiful road to travel on. I worked in Straiton and it’s a beautiful road in the summertime and when you come off it there are all the trees and bushes.
The paths from Juniper Green
Not a nice place to walk at night -smelly in the winter because of the leaves and dirty and muddy down the steps. “The Muddies” is very lonely and not good at night. Lovely to walk in the summer with somebody with you …
Donkey Lane is what we call the road at the bottom…. Erinne used to walk along the Donkey Lane to Heriot Watt. You go down the side of my house, cross the grassy bit and down the slope to the Donkey Lane. She liked to walk!
I wouldn’t have liked the children to have used Curriemuirend Park….it’s lovely but it’s a bit isolated. You can’t walk comfortably down there…..along the road. It’s the same from Wester Hailes. The 33 bus can stop for thirteen minutes at the terminus which is a nuisance.
The mortgage rate went to 16%!
It was £9995 for the first house in 1997 (shd be 1977). I remember yellow doors!
I took in two students from Stevenson when I was first in the Avenue because the bedroom was quite big. It helped put food on the table. When we moved to the Wood (1980) one of them came with us…Jean was with me for two years. Her mum rolled up in a sports car and she and Jean unfolded themselves out of it! She was posh…from a farming family. Then Karen joined us. When we moved into the Wood …..the two children shared one room and the two students each had a room. We still keep in touch. The mortgage went up to 16 % and people were really stretched. I wasn’t working at the time. It was horrendous but we got a tax allowance against the mortgage. That helped. We wouldn’t buy papers…didn’t have many clothes…we weren’t as poor as my mum and dad but it was really tight.
More campaigning: Getting a path across the green space
When the bus came round the estate you had to walk across the green area in the Wood to get the bus: my husband walked across it every day to work and brought mud in every day and the kids did too: it’s very wet and soggy So I wrote a letter and the reply came back we couldn’t have a path without lighting as it was too expensive. We used to get a newsletter and it was always about Sighthill or Broomhouse and I got mad about it so I wrote a letter that I did not have access to the bus without a path. And I got a reply that they were closing the vennels in Baberton so they would not open up another one! Then all of a sudden about four or five years ago the path appeared …no lighting…but a path! No vennels were ever closed.
Elizabeth McArdle /Liz BeeversJanuary 2014