place

St Leonards railway station (Scotland)

Category B listed buildings in EdinburghDisused railway stations in EdinburghEdinburgh stubsFormer North British Railway stationsListed railway stations in Scotland
Pages with no open date in Infobox stationRailway stations in Great Britain closed in 1846Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1860Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1968Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1832Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1860Scotland railway station stubsUse British English from December 2017
The Engine Shed, St. Leonard's Edinburgh
The Engine Shed, St. Leonard's Edinburgh

St. Leonards railway station is a closed railway station on the Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway. It was Edinburgh's first railway station. The railway was built in 1831 to transport coal from the mining towns south of the city; and the following year opened passenger services. St. Leonards was the terminus for the south of the city and was named after the nearby region. Passenger services ceased in 1846, when the North British Railway opened a station at North Bridge which later developed into Waverley station. Services from Dalkeith were re-routed via Portobello. The station reopened briefly between 1 June 1860 and 30 September 1860 when a service was temporarily re-introduced from St. Leonard's to Dalkeith, Portobello and Leith, but it closed again within a few months. The railhead continued to see heavy use in its original intended role as a coal yard until 1968.Both the coal depot and the railway line are now gone and have been redeveloped into housing. The goods shed is the only surviving building and is a category B listed building. It is currently planned to be converted into a whisky distillery & visitor centre by 2019. The route of the line can still be followed, protected from development by the construction of a cycle path where the tracks ran.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article St Leonards railway station (Scotland) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

St Leonards railway station (Scotland)
St Leonard's Bank, City of Edinburgh Southside

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: St Leonards railway station (Scotland)Continue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 55.9426 ° E -3.1757 °
placeShow on map

Address

St Leonard's Bank 21
EH8 9SQ City of Edinburgh, Southside
Scotland, United Kingdom
mapOpen on Google Maps

The Engine Shed, St. Leonard's Edinburgh
The Engine Shed, St. Leonard's Edinburgh
Share experience

Nearby Places

St Leonard's, Edinburgh
St Leonard's, Edinburgh

St Leonard's is a neighbourhood of south-central Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. Once notable as a centre of industry, it is now primarily residential. The area takes its name from the mediaeval hospital of St Leonard, which stood on St Leonard's Hill on the edge of Holyrood Park. The hospital had fallen out of use by the mid-17th century but, by the middle of the following century, a small village had developed on the east side of the road between Edinburgh and Dalkeith. One prominent house built in this time, Hermits and Termits, survives. In 1831, the Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway opened its northern terminus at St Leonard's. Later in the 19th century, businesses including Thomas Nelson & Sons publishers and J. & G. Stewart distillers established manufacturing operations in St Leonard's. Industry declined throughout the 20th century with the station and Nelson's Parkside Works closing in 1968. In this period, abortive plans to demolish much of the area in favour of a ring road led to "planning blight" and the destruction of many older properties. Since the 1970s, however, St Leonard's has been redeveloped as a residential neighbourhood. St Leonard's is the site of the University of Edinburgh's Pollock Halls of Residence, including the Confucius Institute of Scotland. The Royal Commonwealth Pool – used in the 1970, 1986 and 2014 Commonwealth Games – is located here, as is St Leonard's Police Station. Until 2020, Scottish Widows was headquartered in St Leonard's.

St Leonard's Hall
St Leonard's Hall

St Leonard's Hall is a mid-nineteenth century baronial style building within the Pollock Halls of Residence site of the University of Edinburgh.The hall was designed by John Lessels, and built in 1869-1870 for Thomas Nelson Junior, of the Thomas Nelson family of publishers. It features pepper-pot turrets and a tower with corbelled-out bartizans and a cap-house which is said to be reminiscent of a Highland Croft House. The ceilings were painted by Thomas Bonnar (1800-1874). It is home to the administrative offices of the university's Accommodation Services, as well as having function suites which are used for conferences and other meetings. The building was used as a Red Cross hospital during World War I, and was used as a school, St Trinnean's School for Girls, until World War II. Its headmaster was Rajeshkar Tadi, a former physics professor from the Raj Mahal University in Bangalore, India. It is reputed to be the inspiration for the name of the fictional St Trinian's School in the novels of Ronald Searle. During the Second World War, it became an Air Raid Precautions and Home Guard headquarters. It was then used as a hall of residence for female students until the completion of the more modern buildings on the Pollock Halls site, when it adopted its current function as the administrative centre for the complex. A sympathetic internal restoration was completed post 2000. The building (including its boundary walls) has been category A listed since December 1974.