Queensferry in Postcards

The Hawes Inn is well known to all visitors to Queensferry. The visitors seen in this image, taken about 1905, seem about to return to Edinburgh in their horse drawn carriages. These carriages would be replaced in a few years by motor buses.

The Galloway Saloon Steam Packet Company of Leith built a wooden pier in 1886 for passengers to embark or disembark at Queensferry harbour. The pier (Galloway’s Pier) was in use as a steamer destination until 1914 when the Firth of Forth was declared a controlled area and passenger trips ended. The ship is probably P.S. Lord Morton. The point where the bridge “comes ashore” at North Queensferry does not look right. Was the picture taken before the bridge was completed and artistic licence employed?

Steam ships began operating on the Queensferry passage in 1821 and a ferry service continued until 1964 when the Forth Road Bridge was opened. The ship shown here is the Forfarshire, which operated in this state from 1904 until 1922.

Queensferry is home to one of very few memorials to the men and boys who died in the battle of Jutland in 1916. This picture, taken by a local resident William “sconnie” Bain shows the symbolic “broken mast” memorial to be found in the cemetery at the top of Kirkliston Road.

The Royal Naval Hospital at Butlaw had a chequered history. It was originally built to provide medical care for the men and boys of HMS Caledonia, the training ship in the Forth, and it took in and treated many of the wounded from the battle of Jutland. It was closed in 1938……

….. only to re-open as a holiday camp. It was also used to provide accommodation for refugees from Czechoslovakia after the Munich agreement. Twenty one of the children brought to Britain by the Kindertransport were housed here.

This is a view of the High Street from the foot of the Loan. The photograph was taken in 1925 or 1926 (the film advertised on the poster on the wall, “The  Mask of Lopez” was released in 1925). Although the building on the right is changed, the view is instantly recognisable.

Catherine Terrace was built in 1883 at the top of the present day McIver’s Brae. It comprised two blocks of brick built houses and was known locally as “the brickies”. They were very basic, with outside toilets and a communal washhouse (the building on the right foreground). They were demolished in the 1960s.