Showing posts with label Torry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Torry. Show all posts

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Reserve contained between Tullos Crescent, Tullos Place, Tullos Circuit, Mansfield Place, Torry, Aberdeen, Scotland

If you visit this place on Google Map you will find it labelled as 'Torry Community Garden'. We encountered a local (name not asked, nor given), a reserved but friendly gent who told just act it was not a community garden but that council will allocate spaces for people wishing to use space as allotments.
Our informant told us there was some stealing and vandalism in the area but this is presumably ameliorated by the fact that the fences on the gardens are high and there are many first floors overlooking it.
Looking back on the images, I note one thing: it was a beautiful day! (22 September 2019).














Saturday, October 12, 2019

Space within Glenbervie Road, Oscar Road, Oscar Place, North Grampian Circuit, Mansefield Place, Torry, Aberdeen, Scotland

The largest of the Torry spaces. The northern end contains an archway leading to steps that take you to Glenbervie Road. This is the Glenbervie Road side of the block:


The steps, from the top (obviously) looking into Glenbervie Road:










Find it at https://goo.gl/maps/JYLi3RCisBfCDSWU8

Friday, October 11, 2019

Reserve contained between Oscar Place, Oscar Road, North Grampian Circuit, Grampian Place, Torry, Aberdeen, Scotland

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. 

Reserve bounded by Cedar St/Laver Grove, Mayfield, Tasmania

I have not been able to find out anything at all about the estate surrounding this IR but I am going to suggest it is a subdivision of land ...