Torry is walking distance from Aberdeen’s city centre (via a fairly inhospitable series of industrial-strength port roads) and since 1891 has come under the aegis of Aberdeen city council. In the 1920s, it was the site of what Torry historian Ronald W. McDonald calls ‘the first major council housing scheme in Aberdeen’, laid out in ‘concentric rings centred on Tullos Circle’ (p. 20). The Aberdeen city library has some volumes of press cuttings called TORRY: From Cuttings in the Local Studies Department. These include an article from the Aberdeen Daily Journal 8 (or 18; both handwritten dates are given) April 1919 which details the display of varieties of plan in the Aberdeen Art Gallery, prepared by architects William Kelly and Harbourne McLellan and surveyor John Gordon. The Daily Journal included illustrations of two of these plans (it is unclear from the article how many plans were put on display and whether the two it included, 5a and 5b, were typical). The rationale for the display was to ‘invite suggestions for improvement’ from the general public. 5a, readers were told, was the favourite of the Housing Committee. The article continues:
The lay-out of each plan, so far as the proposed roadways are concerned, explains itself. As may be seen at a glance, 5a, towards the centre, favours the circular lay-out, 5b the octagonal. In the centre of 5a there is an open playground 2½ acres in extent at the top of Torry Hill, where 5b has a smaller area of recreation ground with a pavilion, while provision is made for a bowling green, and tennis court with pavillion. There is ground provided for allotments in both plans.
The decisions were made quickly and what was decided on, as can be seen on the ground at Torry today, is closer to 5a than b conceptually but in actuality a different design. It contains four larger interior spaces rather than the seven (four enclosed, three open) of 5a. Another article from the Journal, also included in the clippings book and dated 11 November 1920, discusses the Torry project as the ‘Aberdeen Housing Scheme’ in an article of that title. It says it has been ‘exactly seven months to-day’ (that is, since May) since the first stone was laid on Torry Hill by the contractors for the initial instalment of 500 dwelling-houses of the Aberdeen municipal housing scheme.’ The centre of the scheme, rather than a playground, was as McDonald tells us ‘Torry Intermediate School which opened on 29th August 1927’ (p. 20).
I was pleased to visit the four extant interior spaces of Torry on 22 September 2019 in the company of good-natured companions Graham and Tanya. This is actually the last of the four we visited, but I am presenting them ‘left to right’ as it were.
Whether the space was once allotments is a question I cannot presently answer, and while it would seem likely, the three aerial images I have to hand aren’t exactly instructive. One of them, which appears in the inside pages of a publication called Torry Times II is undated but looks to me like the 1930s, has the space as empty and apparently unused.
Another, which appears in a book called Aberdeen 1800-2000 A New History, is mislabeled (as a cluey reader has pointed out). A third, from a photocopied newspaper item from 1971, appears to show the space with some small structures in it and some vegetation though it is very unclear.
What is there today? Essentially, a basketball practice area, fenced, within the space with some passive recreation space at the southern end and some dense thicket at the west side.
Ronald W. McDonald A Short History of Torry The Labrys Press, 1995
W. Hamish Fraser and Clive H. Lee eds Aberdeen 1800-2000 A New History Tuckewell Press, East Lothian 2000
https://goo.gl/maps/r6H3MbFoQwEV1ZnA6 takes you to an address opposite one of the entrances to this space.
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