A little house with a big personality

A quirky Victorian railway cottage stood next to the sea in North Edinburgh could be just the ticket for some, writes Kirsty Mcluckie

The modest brick-built rows of homes in Lower Granton Road are a surprising house type to find in Edinburgh, but owner Hazel Blakemore says that her end-terraced cottage, number 118, was exactly what she was looking for when she bought it 14 years ago.

She recalls: “I moved up from the south and had lived in a house quite similar to this in East London. Obviously, in England there are loads of houses like this and I really liked them.”

Blakemore points out that characterful small houses are in short supply north of the Border, as the tradition was to build tenements rather than terraces. “I didn’t want to live in a flat, I had a definite idea that I preferred my own house.”

The Lower Granton Road cottages are among the first brick-constructed houses in Scotland, she believes, constructed in 1855 by the Duke of Buccleuch for workers building a railway from Granton Harbour to Waverley station.

In a location so close to the sea, you might assume that they were originally fishermen’s cottages, but their styling is much more that of a railway cottage.

According to an elderly neighbour of Blakemore’s, until surprisingly recently there was a wall situated on the other side