Previous Entry Add to Memories Share Next Entry
EDINBURGH ON FIRE!!!!!
Illuminati
andrewducker
So, I was getting ready to leave the flat this evening to go see my mother for dinner, and Julie mentioned that a few people were talking about the local church being on fire. So, as I'd already said I'd pick her up a few things at the corner shop before going out I said I'd see what the fuss was all about too.

The answer to which was this:




So I took the photos/video home and showed them to Julie (along with bread/chocolate), and then headed to my brother's for dinner.

And was then joined, forty* minutes later, by Nick, who lives rather closer to the blaze than I do, and had been told that going home was not an option. So came over and ate Meredith's delicious Japanese Quorn Stew Thing. And then hung out and chatted until eight o'clock, before we walked back together, to discover that things were largely under control, and the chances of him burning to death in his bed was acceptably low.

Incidentally, all of the news sites are saying that the building that burned down was a church. Which would seem reasonable when it looked like this:


But less likely when you see it from the other end and it looks like this:


I'm now not sure whether it was or not...

(Incidentally, isn't it awesome that I can take video on a phone, including zooming in on the interesting bits one-handed? I know I'm late to the party on that front, but still!)

*I just had to check whether it was "forty" or "fourty". Both of them now look wrong to me.



Original post on Dreamwidth - there are comment count unavailable comments there.

We're pretty sure it's a church.

Forty - the first number where all the letters are in alphabetical order (which is how I remember there's no "u" in it).

Also: Close-up video (in a public post on FB but may require you to be logged in).

In the photos, it looks like a very bad fire. In the video it looks monstrous!

Looks like it was a church, but was converted later. if you look atthe back view, you can see the outline of the orginal large (possibly stained glass) window that would have been above the altar. The bricked up windows on the side look like normal church windows, whereas the extension to the side has square windows. On the other hand, it could have been a stable. Or possible both. What was in there before it burnt down?

Edited at 2013-02-12 04:41 am (UTC)

It's been bricked up for along time. Seems to have originally been a church - but not used for ages.

It's a deconsecrated church that's been out of use for quite a while I think.

Edinburgh has a lot of churches built by rich folks during the Victorian era. Some were Nonconformist churches, breakaway sects and the like and some were just extravagant displays of wealth. Edinburgh's Holy Corner was so named as it's a crossroads with a church on each corner, a bit like phone shops today or shoe shops a few years back as immortalised by Douglas Adams.

By the shape of it and its off-the-main-road location I'd guess this one used to be a Nonconformist church of some kind -- no steeple, built of brick instead of stone, no Gothic appurtenances. I'm kind of surprised the building wasn't demolished and the site reused for flats during the housing boom of ten years back.

Edited at 2013-02-12 10:08 am (UTC)

Aha! Church of The Holy Spirit!

Oddly, the site also seems to have been used as a meat packing plant.

Packaging of both souls and flesh in one handy location.