Morningside Heritage in Pictures: Here are 30 amazing photos of the Edinburgh neighbourhood in the 50s and 60s

With its mix of independent shops, bars and restaurants – alongside some of the Capital’s most sought-after addresses – Morningside has long been a popular place to live, with often eye-watering property prices.

It wasn’t always part of Scotland’s Capital - in the 18th century it was a a village in its own right - built on land sold off to help pay for the huge cost of dealing with the bubonic plague in the later 1500s.

The Morningside of 1759, shown on a historic plan, had only three houses.

By 1882 it has expanded slightly - described as “a row of thatched cottages, a line of trees and a blacksmith's forge”.

Benefiting from its location near to a number of major farms, as well as being the final stop on the main road into Edinburgh, the village grew quickly and was enveloped into the city as a residential suburb in the early 19th century.

Morningside became a favourite with many of Edinburgh’s wealthier residents who bought plots of land from the surrounding estates to build large villas and mansion houses, developing the pattern of streets that remains today.

Its reputation as an enviable place to live was bolstered in the 1870s when one of the first tram services in Edinburgh (initially horse-drawn, then later electric) linked Morningside with the east end of Princes Street.

Read more: Edinburgh Old Town Heritage in Pictures: Here are 28 fascinating photos of the city's historic centre in the 1950s and 1960s - from parades to pubs

Another transport coup arrived in 1885 with the Edinburgh Suburban and South Side Junction Railway carrying passengers from Morningside Road Station to Waverley.

Further expansion occured in the 1890s when the former Braid Estate was developed for housing, and with new residents came new services and facilities.

In the following decades local schools, churches, a library, a cinema, and even a ballroom were all established in the neighbourhood.

Today Morningside is local government ward with a population of around 33,000 people living in a mixture of villas, tenement flats and more modern housing, all centred around the main shopping street of Morningside Road.

Here are 30 pictures to take you back to the Morningside of the 1950s and 1960s.

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