Tollcross, Edinburgh

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Tollcross is a crossroads in Edinburgh, Scotland which gives its name to the area surrounding the junction.

The crossroads is formed by Earl Grey Street (effectively an extension of Lothian Road) to the north, Lauriston Place to the east, Brougham Street to the south-east (leading to Melville Drive which cuts across The Meadows), Home Street to the south (which leads to Bruntsfield), and West Tollcross to the west. In the middle of the junction is a distinctive ironwork clock tower which has been there since 1910.

The southern edge of the area merges with Bruntsfield while to the north and west Tollcross meets Fountainbridge. The Parish Church for Tollcross is Barclay Church at the southern edge. The Methodist Central Hall, a listed building (category B), is used for meetings and concerts as well as church services.

The area is diverse, containing Tollcross Primary School, which includes the city's Scottish Gaelic-Medium Unit, and also the nearest thing Edinburgh has to a Chinatown, including a Chinese language church, two Chinese supermarkets, travel agent, old people's advice centre etc. The Cameo cinema and the King's Theatre are located nearby, on Home Street, as well as a number of eateries and pubs, which attracted controversy in 2005 when a Glasgow businessman, Stefan King, threatened to buy them, and convert them into theme bars.

Housing is mostly four-storey Victorian tenement flats, with a few blocks listed as being of significant local architectural or historical interest. Some were put up in the 1860s and 1870s by James Steel, an entrepreneurial Edinburgh builder who was responsible for "working-class tenement developments" ^[1] in various parts of the city; others were the work of small local building associations. In Home Street there are a few earlier tenements, originally designed to provide "room-and-kitchen" accommodation for poorer families.

There is a modern health centre and a fire station opened in 1988, and Princes Exchange, a large new office development (circa 2000) in a central position on Earl Grey Street. There are plans (as of 2006) to create more public pedestrian space in West Tollcross in an attempt to counteract the disadvantages of the busy roads. The Meadows and Bruntsfield Links are nearby parks to the east and south.

Many students live in the area, with Napier University having three separate halls of residence in the vicinity. There are also several strip clubs in the vicinity, leading some to dub the area the "Pubic Triangle", for example in Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels [1].

The Tollcross, like neighbouring Fountainbridge, was important to the city's industry in the 19th century, and the Union Canal, which started from the area, opened up new transport possibilities. The current Lochrin Buildings continue the Lochrin name previously used for the Lochrin Distillery which was replaced in 1859 by the Lochrin Iron Works. There were also a saw mill, paraffin works, and slaughterhouse in West Tollcross, with a brewery on the site of the current theatre. In 1899 the tram depot and power station for the southern part of Edinburgh's large cable tramway system (later electric) opened here. After the last tram ran in the 1950s it became a bus garage which was demolished in 1967.

The toll part of Tollcross refers to its past as a place where payments were collected from travellers entering the city on a centuries-old route.

[edit] References

^ Rodger, Richard. The Transformation of Edinburgh: Land, Property and Trust in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-60282-3