900 Stories in Print Final Event and Exhibition: Part of Castle Mills: Then & Now | 900 Stories in Print

“We were not a family that could afford or owned many books but my mother, who liked reading novels, took me to Fountainbridge Library when I was very small. There would have been no new books during the war or indeed during the first years after the war when there was very little of anything, but there was a small wooden box on the floor of the adult library upstairs with a few picture books that I could squat beside and look at.” - Catriona 

“I think a lot of the people come into this country have moved there possibly because there were smaller houses and that was their first step onto the property market, an’ you now have a vast array of restaurants instead of just the fish and chips shop you’ve got, Indian restaurants, Italians, bringing their culture, and improving our culture by having these things and I think a lot of the kids that will go to school in the local area at Dalry Primary and onto Tynecastle, will have different cultural backgrounds, from what, you know, me and all my pals who were all born and brought up in Edinburgh sort of thing, so I think it is a great community.” - Bill 

“Yes, obviously the breweries, that was the smell, that was always around, it always felt like home I suppose. The smells were there, the other thing I remember is, living in Stewart Terrace certainly, we were so close to the, you know, we heard the football, and you knew if there had been a goal, you would hear the sort of roar, that kind of thing and also, because it was so near Murrayfield, I remember opening the window and hearing U2 playing at Murrayfield, you know, because it was so close, so there was those sort of sounds, but the smells, yes, it was the distilleries I remember, well not the distilleries, the breweries.” - Anonymous