The colony houses of Edinburgh were built between 1863 and 1910 by the Edinburgh Cooperative Building Company Limited. The founders of this company were influenced by the Reverend Dr. James Begg and the Reverend Dr. Thomas Chalmers, ministers of the Free Church of Scotland, who campaigned to improve the housing conditions of the poor.

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  • The colony houses of Edinburgh were built between 1863 and 1910 by the Edinburgh Cooperative Building Company Limited. The founders of this company were influenced by the Reverend Dr. James Begg and the Reverend Dr. Thomas Chalmers, ministers of the Free Church of Scotland, who campaigned to improve the housing conditions of the poor. A newspaper from 1870 reports: The entire capital (of the Company) is subscribed by 836 members, 400 houses supplying healthful accommodation for at least 2,000 individuals, have been built and sold for £70,000; and an average profit of over 15 per cent has been paid every year. The most well-known group of colony houses in Edinburgh are the eleven streets making up the Stockbridge Colonies, but streets of colony houses are found in many parts of Edinburgh, including Abbeyhill. Characteristically, each flat originally had four rooms, a separate external toilet and a garden. Colony houses were built as double flats, upper and lower, with the upper flat's front door on the opposite side to the lower flat's front door, allowing each flat to have a front garden. A group of builders found themselves locked out of their building sites due to a dispute about working hours, their three month ban in 1861 lead to some creative thinking - the formation of The Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company Ltd (ECBC). This group comprised many different trades - stone masons, plasterers, plumbers and others sympathetic to their aims. Central to its mission was a co-operative spirit that was reflected both in its adoption of the beehive motif and in the ultimate design of the houses constructed - built in rows, flat upon each other, like a colony of bees. While the building lock out provided the opportunity for tradesmen to form a company, it was the poor state of housing in the old town which was the underlying stimulus for the foundation of the ECBC whose stated intention was to build houses for sale to working people. By 1911 over 2000 houses had been constructed on 11 sites. Many were owned by artisan classes in an era when mortgages did not exist. The earliest residents of the colonies were a skilled class of workers/artisan builders and this remained the largest occupational group for much of the 20th Century. The Abbeyhill colonies in particular had a number of railway workers due to the proximity of the area to the line. Persistence of inhabitants was also a key feature of colony life which made for stable neighbourhoods. The design of the buildings did result in a certain amount of over looking and gossiping but this feature has also contributed to its sense of identity and community that is quite unique in Edinburgh. Nowadays as older residents move on, a newer and often younger generation are moving in who are less likely to live here for the rest of their lives. A good example of present times in the Abbeyhill Colonies are a group of artists known as A Colony of Artists who have come together as a community of which the colony predecessors would be proud of.
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  • The colony houses of Edinburgh were built between 1863 and 1910 by the Edinburgh Cooperative Building Company Limited. The founders of this company were influenced by the Reverend Dr. James Begg and the Reverend Dr. Thomas Chalmers, ministers of the Free Church of Scotland, who campaigned to improve the housing conditions of the poor.
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  • Colony houses
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