The Moray Estate, Edinburgh The Secret History of Our Streets

The streets we live in reveal the secret past

beneath the skin of the present.

Here is our kitchen, which was the operating theatre of the hospital.

There were families that didn't have toilets in.

There was many a visit to the drains in the middle of the night.

Our memories are rendered in the bricks and mortar that surround us.

Just behind you there was where we all danced.

Our streets chart momentous social change and

the ebb and flow between enormous wealth and terrible poverty.

Pretty grim, isn't it? Dirt, filth, stench everywhere.

They reveal the changes that have shaped all our lives

and make the story of our streets the story of us all.

It's a nice view, isn't it?

On the western edge of Edinburgh's 18th century New Town

is a street that has been home to Scotland's elite for 200 years.

We had a cook and a maid, and that was it.

Oh, and a nanny, yes.

This is the story of Scotland's grandest street.

Well, certainly I remember as a child, you know, there were

a few Rolls Royces about, but they were old Rolls Royces, you know.

Do you ever imagine what it must have been like

when they would have balls in this room?

Not really. No. Nope.

The Moray Feu, Edinburgh.

A single development with the longest Georgian terrace in Europe.

A crescent and an oval flowing into the grand circular Moray Place,

and known collectively as the Moray Feu.

Built as the home for Scotland's upper-class,

for 200 years it's been the poshest street in Scotland.

My name is John Moray.

I'm the 21st Earl of Moray, and my ancestor - the 10th Earl -

built the Moray Estate in Edinburgh.

This is the 1st Earl of Moray, who was the son of James V.

He does look a bit like you. Do people say that?

Not too many people do.

Which bit?

When you walk down those streets in Edinburgh,

it's your whole family on the street signs.

That's right.

Moray's the county where we're mostly based.

Stuart, Ainslie.

That's Philip Ainslie there, the father-in-law of the 10th Earl.

The 9th Earl or...?

-The 10th. 10th Earl.

-10th Earl?

Yes. That's him there. The 10th Earl.

Doune.

Monty Python And The Holy Grail was filmed at Doune Castle.

-And Doune Castle is, of course, another family home.

-That's right.

It is a good castle, isn't it?

Me and my pals used to go down and watch them filming every day.

When we're shooting, it would be nice if you used the rubber hammer, OK?

-We didn't say Randolph.

-We said Randolph, didn't we?

-No, we didn't.

He is meant to have commanded the Scots at the Battle of Bannockburn.

Another relative of yours.

He was... Well, he was, yes.

We've still got that kilt somewhere in the attic.

Yes. I think that's it, is it?

-Are you a Stuart?

-That's the family's surname.

-That's your name?

-Yes.

Oh, Glenfinlas Street.

And that was the old royal hunting forest that went with Doune Castle.

Yes, I think we are proud of it.

So...

SHE LAUGHS

And here's Freddy.

1810. The Edinburgh Council has plans for an extension

to the medieval Old Town.

On the other side of the valley, a new town is under construction.

Luxury houses are shooting up along its ultra-modern grid-plan streets.

And the developers rapidly hit the boundary of a country estate

owned by the 10th Earl of Moray.

The Earl's house - Drumsheugh - stood here.

Randolph Crescent more or less follows the pattern of his drive.

It was surrounded by parkland, all this was parkland.

The nearest buildings were beyond Hanover Street,

more than half a mile away from here.

It was very much open country.

By the early 1790s, Queen Street had reached its west end,

and it kind of hit the buffers against the Earl's boundary.

The Earl saw an opportunity.

He drew up plans for an exclusive new development on his estate.

'The Moray Estate is too irregular to build squares on,

'but the layout of the crescents

'and circus fits ingeniously onto the contours of the land.'

The Earl of Moray was the feudal lord.

Under medieval property law he had the right to lay down strict

regulations governing both the construction of the houses

and the ways in which residents would live in them.

All commercial use was forbidden.

These feuing conditions were intended to apply for all time,

even after the Earl had sold the land.

They were amongst Britain's earliest planning regulations.

They were said to be one of the strictest design codes

there's ever been.

They had to stick to the design code for the facades,

get it absolutely right, exactly like their neighbour,

exactly like every other house in the street.

He actually stipulated which quarries the stone could come from.

In the Edinburgh Old Town's medieval tenements rich and poor had

been living on top of each other, literally in the same buildings.

'The population huddled together within protective walls.

'Tenements rose.

'Rich and poor lived cheek by jowl.'

But now the 10th Earl was using his feuing conditions to ensure

that his development would be exclusive.

By laying down eternal rules about the look of the buildings

and the lifestyle of the residents, the Earl was building

a planned community for Scotland's elite.

A new town for the upper-class.

'The New Town was built to the requirements of only one

'section of the community.

'When the rich left the Old Town, society separated in a new way,

'and the division between slum and suburb began.'

When they moved to Moray Estate, they knew they were moving into an

upmarket residential area and that it was going to stay like that.

It wasn't going to become mixed use.

They weren't a cross-section of society. It was pretty exclusive.

'A new social split resulted.

'For the first time a complete environment was planned

'right from the beginning.'

They were snapped up by private individuals who were very

keen to get onto the Moray Estate right from the beginning.

People bought into the vision.

The 1822 feuing plan shows the numbered plots ready for sale.

Most are still unsold.

The best, with views across the River Leith,

have already been snapped up.

And one upmarket family have put their builders to work.

The head of the Scottish legal system -

Solicitor General John Hope -

and his dad, Lord Charles Hope, are at number 12.

My name is David Hope.

I'm a member of a family that has been connected with

Moray Place really since it was built

because one of my ancestors lived in a house that was built for him,

although my house now is just a few hundred yards to the east.

What you can see here - if you look out of the window -

is the back of Moray Place.

At the right-hand end is number 12,

which was the house lived in by two of my ancestors.

I'm descended from Charles Hope's third son.

But hold on, didn't he have the same job as you had?

Charles did, yes, that's right.

He was Lord President and I was Lord President.

200 years apart.

About that. Yes. Yes.

This is Charles Hope who lived in 12 Moray Place.

And that was me as Lord President in Scotland,

and I then moved to the House of Lords.

-That's my favourite one.

-Oh, right.

-That's much nicer.

-Well...

There's a very grand-looking outfit in this one.

Well, that's the Order of the Thistle.

-You're a member of the Thistle...

-Yes. Oh, indeed.

Yes, I wouldn't be allowed to wear it if I wasn't.

CHORAL MUSIC

Who gave you this honour?

Her Majesty.

Are you English?

No.

I have an accent which is actually typical of my part of Edinburgh.

I certainly don't regard myself as English, I'm very patriotic.

There are times when it's lovely to be Scottish and not British,

and there are other times when one's very proud to be British.

Lord Hope spent his early years at number 41 Moray Place.

When he was still a boy, his expanding family moved

to number 28 where, as a young man,

he was introduced to the perfect girl next door but one.

We had met in number 30.

I was invited to somebody's engagement party by the man

and you were invited to the engagement party by the...

-By the girl.

-..by the girl.

And I have to say that their relationship did not continue,

-but ours did.

-That's right. Yes.

-THEY LAUGH

I remember when David was courting me,

I remember going to a very riotous... Adult, I say, adult Burns' supper,

at which we played Murder In The Dark,

and I think we broke a chair and broke various other things.

At number 28?

-Yes.

-At number 28A. Yes.

28 was an enormous house,

which was probably built to the specification of Lord Moray himself.

The Earl needed a town house to use

when he was down from his estates in the north.

And he reserved Moray Place's prime location to build it.

The house was double-fronted with six columns.

At 11,000 square feet it was by far the biggest house on the Feu.

There. See.

-Wow. Why is this ceiling like this?

-Hmm?

Where does the ceiling come from?

Because this used to be the Earl of Moray's living floor,

this must have been his living-room.

How many people live here?

Here? Me and him.

How long have you lived here, Kathe?

God, I couldn't tell you. Couldn't tell you.

It must have been about 20, 30 years, something like that.

It's when my husband retired and he... Cos he was a Scot.

I didn't have a home because I've lived everywhere.

And he said he wanted to go home, so we came back here.

That's how I finished up here.

Where's your husband now?

In Heaven. He died almost two years ago.

And of course that's why I have this place

and I haven't had the will to get rid of it.

My mother's side, she was Dutch, my father was German.

I don't belong to this room.

What do you mean?

SHE CHUCKLES

Only some of the stuff is mine.

What do you mean, you don't belong?

It's high class.

The other residents had built their houses to conform with

the conditions laid down by the Earl.

Each house had five floors and was around 6,500 square feet,

seven times the size of an average house today.

The 152 houses took more than 30 years to complete, but when they

were finished one side of the Feu became the longest Georgian building

in Europe and one of the greatest engineering feats of the 1850s.

It is about a third of a mile long, in fact,

it's more than a third of a mile long.

One building built by umpteen different people

over a long period of time.

So this is the western end of the New Town, built in about 1840.

And so all obviously the same architecture, the same style.

And so the reason I brought you to the front is that this level

is where the owners would stop, so below is entirely for staff.

The staff would have worked in the lower level,

they would have lived on the top floor.

This is beyond that. Well, you can see the same level up there.

-Ah.

-It's that level. So it was under the eaves basically.

So you've got five floors, you've got people working,

public rooms, the drawing-room and family, then more bedrooms for,

you know, other kids or guests, and then staff quarters.

They are spectacular but it's very hard to live in a five-storey house

if you don't have...if you don't have people helping you, actually.

-They're too big.

-You actually need staff.

You do really. I mean, you know, we don't obviously,

cos we only live in three floors of it, but to live in five floors

you spend an awful lot of time going up and downstairs, really.

'These enormous houses needed an army of servants to run them.'

The Feu's new households had between five

and 12 domestic staff, most of them young women living under

the same roof as their masters and mistresses.

And while women's options in life were limited to agricultural work,

servants were cheap,

and Lord Moray's design for living worked well.

But as the First World War approached, millions of young

women were switching to factory work, drawn by higher wages

and unimagined new freedoms.

A social revolution, which meant the upper-class were having to

make do with fewer domestic staff.

Where are we, Patrick?

Number nine. Uh-huh.

I was born in number seven.

And then where did you move to?

Well, to number nine.

And then I was in London for a couple of years,

then I came back to Edinburgh and lived in Moray Place.

How far away is Moray Place from here?

About 200 yards. What are you doing now, Henrietta?

Moving this out of the picture.

It was Daddy's, and so I just kept it.

In fact, when Patrick and I were married he cut our cake with it.

What year were you born here?

'22.

And what year did you move into Moray Place?

-1944. Well, that's right?

-No, no, '50...

-'54. '54.

-'54.

And when did you leave?

'98.

So you spent most of your life on the Moray Feu.

In the Moray Feu, quite right. Yes, indeed.

-And was it just your family in that house?

-Yes, indeed.

And you had a cook - Ella, was it?

No, there were three servants, yes.

-Well, you could tell them about it.

-At one time, at one time...

You could tell them about that.

..there were three servants there,

then it was just Jessie who was the only remaining one

when the war broke...when war was ended.

-Was she the one who threw all the films away?

-Yes.

Do you ever wish you could go back to the old days?

Oh, well... Sometimes, yes, sometimes.

My father died when I was six.

And then we had a cook and a maid, and that was it.

Oh, and a nanny, yes.

I remember best of all the nanny who was with my mother

for over 40 years - sorry, that was the cook, yes,

the cook who stayed all that time.

She would produce breakfast, lunch and dinner.

And tea I think we probably put together for ourselves.

Well, she must have had a day off a week,

did she, or two days off a week?

-A day off a week, yes.

-It's not very much, is it?

HE CHUCKLES

My mother was quite a senior officer in the ATS.

It was the women's army in the war,

and was allowed to retain the services of a servant.

What did your mother do for a living before the war?

Well, she didn't, she was just a married woman. That was that.

I don't think she ever had a job.

Before the war, women didn't work all that much.

I mean, certainly middle-class people.

She was particularly interested in horse riding.

A friend of mine had number 29 when his uncle lived in it,

which is not very long ago, sort of in the '50s.

He was Master of the Linlithgow - I think it was - Hunt, so he'd

have his horse here, he'd get on his horse, ride it down to the station,

put it on the train, or get on the train with it, and go out and hunt.

And then his butler would have met him with a car,

and he'd come back by car and the butler would hack the horse back.

So they genuinely did live like that.

'The New Town housed a newly expanding middle-class,

'now become genteel,

'investing money and making good profits on the development of canals

'and mills, and in the equipping and vittling of the Napoleonic wars.'

Once the Union came along

that was an enormous advantage for Scottish businessmen.

They'd got the advantage of being part of the UK

and particularly when colonies were developing abroad.

So it was that sort of Common Market thing that was very, very important.

This is 22 Moray Place, built in 1824.

The first owner was a man called Walker Drummond,

who was a lawyer. His widow sold it to the Primrose family

who were here for about another 50 years.

Out here is Fettes College, which Bouverie Primrose was

responsible for building. And he lived here, so obviously

he was able to supervise the site without leaving his house.

CHORAL SINGING

Sir William Fettes endowed the school.

I think it was about £180,000 it cost to build.

Gross it up today, probably 30 million, something like that.

I suppose you'd describe him as a greengrocer by trade,

he was a Mr Tesco or a Mr Sainsbury of his time.

Fettes gave the job of getting construction under way to

Moray Place's Bouverie Primroses.

This is the trowel used for laying the original foundation stone.

The person who actually used it was the Honourable Mrs Primrose,

wife of the Honourable Bouverie Primrose,

one of the original trustees.

I know that your school is known sometimes as the Eton of Scotland.

We take that as a compliment.

I mean, the school at least has produced one Prime Minister.

We sometimes refer to Eton as the Fettes of the South.

Fettes College was founded in 1870.

The start of a period of rapid expansion of the British Empire.

By 1900 it covered an area of more than 11 million square miles.

There was a vast enterprise to be run

and educated Scots embraced the opportunities.

In the 19th century, two million Scots left their homeland

to make a life abroad,

and one-third of all British colonial governors were Scottish.

My father's a Scot. He was a tea planter.

So I was born in India.

I spent, what, the first seven years of my life there.

We had an ayah, which is a nurse.

They had somebody who cooked,

and they had somebody who cleaned and so on.

And I spoke fluent Hindustani.

I have a photograph of my tennis partner somewhere here.

There he is - Ramsbotham.

-Ramsbotham.

-I'm sure it was Ram-something-or-other,

but he didn't mind being called Ramsbotham.

He was lovely. He was a really nice man.

THEY LAUGH

My father's in the middle there with my mother.

And that was on Christmas Day.

They decided to send us to school, you know, here rather than there.

They're enjoying themselves.

Do you think I could meet one or two of them?

-Yes, certainly. Hilary.

-Hello, Hilary.

-Hello.

-I have met you, yet I haven't.

-I've met you, of course, in the film.

-Oh, yes.

And you come from Manila, how's that?

Well, my father works out there,

so he's sent us to boarding school, my sister and I.

You've got a slight American accent, is your father an American?

No, he's Scottish. But I went to an American school in Manila.

And your mother?

My mother, she's English, born in Shanghai.

This was given to us,

we all had one each, to remind us of how they looked.

Every three years we saw them, and they came back for six months,

and then they had to go again.

'As the Princess stepped ashore

'the Governor of the Windward Islands was there to meet her.

'And many of the people of Grenada

'had come to add their own greetings - formal and informal.'

This photograph is taken outside the town of Grenville in Grenada.

And that's my father, Michael, aged about four.

That's his grandfather - Tom DeGale. That's 1908, apparently.

Oh, Granny's in it, I hadn't realised that.

And there's Olga, she was blown up in the war.

The interesting thing is the mixture of colours.

Wilhelmina looks very much more of an African origin, I think.

Whether we went as an indentured slave or

whether we went as an overseer, it's not at all clear but, anyway,

we seem to have made good, as the Scots would say.

And by the time we got to 1920 they had quite a lot of plantations.

Victor.

Victor left 18 'outside' children by eight different coloured women,

and he married and had six legitimate children as well.

'Outside' children?

-CHUCKLING:

-Well, it's what... well,

it's what you would call illegitimate in English parlance.

But the Grenadians call them 'outside' children.

Now do you think it would have been a scandal for a white

plantation owner and a black woman to have a child?

No, not...not...not at all. It's perfectly normal.

Or I've never got the impression it was a problem.

And people in Grenada are all sorts of different colours.

There were no white women in Grenada in

the early part of the 19th century, so there were lots of black women.

So they were quite available.

So you've been descended from that couple?

I would think so. Yes, certainly.

I've always felt the only place I've ever felt at home is in Grenada.

I know when I get off the aeroplane.

-This is house number, what, 30 odd.

-The rest were Army houses.

So most of our time in the Army, and so we moved around an awful lot.

-You've lived in 30 different houses?

-Yes.

We went to our very first house in Folkestone and we came

back from honeymoon on the Sunday, and on the Friday I was told that I

was leaving to go back to Aden immediately, because of the crisis.

'Caught in the coils of South Arabian history.

'By 1965 these had become as big a basket of snakes as ever

'confronted any departing empire.

'In February, 1966, the end of it all, totally and forever,

'Britain was on the way out.'

Looking back on my very first trip, it was

when I was a 2nd Lieutenant -

very, very newly commissioned from Sandhurst -

and I was invited to take out 120 Jocks out to Malaya.

I was just 20. In fact, I was 19.

So I found myself in the jungle with a platoon.

And I'd never been in the jungle before, and with, luckily,

Sergeant Tweedy at my elbow saying,

"Look up Page 29 of the pamphlet, Sir, you'll see it's all right."

And eventually we had the Merdeka,

which was the Malaysian independence.

The people that one has worked with

and been with have become one's family in a way.

Cos the Jocks do what they're asked to do and always do it superbly.

It had been a privilege to command them and to be with them.

The soldiers joined to serve the Queen,

and they joined to serve Great Britain.

But you're English, aren't you?

No, I was born in Glasgow.

My accent may not sound Glaswegian, but I was born in Glasgow, and I

went to school in Glasgow, and left Glasgow to join the Army.

I remember being in the Royal Company of Archers, the Queen's

bodyguard in Scotland, and we have the honour of looking after

Her Majesty and guarding her when she pays her visits to Scotland.

In a way, I'm still serving the Queen,

and will go on doing so as long as I can.

The sun was going down on Britain's empire.

And at home the old class certainties were breaking down.

The loss of overseas colonies and rising death duties had hit

the upper-class hard, and now the government had raised the top

rate of tax to 98%.

Britain was becoming more equal and it

was difficult to find working people willing to enter domestic service.

'Only 40 years ago my grandfather was coming here

'with about 100 servants. Today we struggle along with about four.

'Death duties have been the greatest curse of these days

'because they've crippled the estate forever.

'It's all gone.

'They want to equalise everybody on a lower grade.'

As the distance between the social classes shrank and the

upper-class fell into relative decline, the Feu began to suffer.

The 10th Earl's original design for living had been

built around huge households, but residents couldn't afford

to keep servants any more, or run whole five-storey houses.

The grand palaces were no longer fit for purpose and the Feuers

were being forced to find new ways of making use of their vast spaces.

I'll show you this, Joe.

This is a store-room but look at the ceiling!

Oh, it's the Earl's ballroom again.

I know.

SHE LAUGHS

That has to be the poshest ceiling for a cupboard I've ever seen.

I know.

Why does it cut off like this?

Well, it's when they split up this floor into a flat.

There you are.

Do you ever stand here and imagine what it must have been like

when it was first built, when they would have balls in this room?

Not really. No. Nope.

The 10th Earl took possession of his new house in 1825.

But within five years he put it on the market as a potential hotel.

It had needed an army of around 20 servants

and it was just too big for a town house, even for an Earl.

It was eventually sold, then split into five flats.

By that stage, really these houses were too big,

even for a pretty affluent family.

They needed huge numbers of servants to run the place.

When the Earl of Moray sold his house after only a few years,

he was advertising it as suitable for a hotel.

Well, this one became a hospital.

By the beginning of the 20th century, owners were bending

the Earl's original rules and selling up to businesses.

And with the NHS not yet in existence,

three of the Feu's big houses were converted to private hospitals.

The stair was big enough to put a hospital bed-lift in without

actually making any alterations at all.

So they put the bed-lift in and converted the house into a hospital.

This carried hospital beds with people on them

up to the operating theatre.

The wards, all the way down through the building.

Here is our kitchen,

which was the operating theatre of the hospital.

My aunt had her appendix out here - no, her tonsils.

Yes, I had my tonsils out and my sister had her tonsils out.

What I remember about it was we got ice cream,

which was a very seldom treat.

We were given ice cream after the operation.

And I then proceeded to be sick, ice cream

and blood all over the place.

HE CHUCKLES

It was designed to be blood-spattered up to about there,

and the floor actually falls into that corner,

there was a drain in that corner.

By the '50s, the aristocracy was feeling the pinch.

People were moving out to smaller, more manageable places

and the Feu's grand reputation was fading.

But the fixer-uppers had begun to arrive, young couples living

in upper-class austerity attracted by some surprising house prices.

We bought it in 1959.

It was 1960 before we actually moved in.

We were very young, we hadn't been married very long,

and he was only...must only have been about 29.

He was looking at this empty property,

which was on the market for five months, nobody wanted it.

No wonder.

Five floors of cream and green paint and disinfectant and frosted glass

partitions in all the big rooms, you know, it was a nursing home.

It had been a nursing home for 30 years or more.

All he said when he came,

and I said, "What do you think of it, darling?

He said, "I think it's simply awful."

He said, "But you can't build these views."

"You can't build these views," I remember him saying it.

Do you remember how much you paid?

We struggled. It was £5,000.

£5,000.

How many storeys?

-Hmm?

-How many floors?

Five floors. No, it was just unsalable.

It was magnificent outside, but it was...

I mean, I can't tell you how frightened I was because of this

great lift-shaft all the way up the thing.

And I had two 18-month children. Simon was one of them.

There was still some aristocratic residents,

and there was certainly...

I remember as a child, you know, there were a few Rolls Royces about,

but they were old Rolls Royces, you know.

HE LAUGHS

I've heard stories from other people who, you know -

of my parents' generation - who lived in Edinburgh as children

who weren't allowed to come down to the New Town,

to this part of the New Town cos it was a bit, you know, a bit risky.

And I remember David bringing me in here and saying, here it is.

I mean, it seriously was in a bad state of repair.

And as far as I could see, the only nice thing were the

four apple trees in the garden that we still have. And everything...

SHE LAUGHS Everything had to be done.

When we first arrived we had very little money,

we couldn't afford to do it up at all.

We used to show people round this house and they used to say,

FALTERINGLY: "Yes... Very...very nice."

THEY LAUGH

Here's the bath.

And we used to say to the children that it could go walking,

it could go walking in the night, that there's lion's feet.

Goodness me.

Isn't it wonderful?

Our little girl learnt to...used to swim with arm-bands in this bath.

When we were re-doing the bathroom, we thought

we might remove the bath and have something rather different.

-And we were told it would have to be broken up to get it out.

-Really?

They couldn't get it out of the door as it is.

And that raises a very interesting question -

how did it get here in the first place?

THEY LAUGH

Put it in and then built the rest of the house around it.

Well, there wouldn't be a bathroom when it was built.

-Of course...

-We think probably not.

As the young professionals restored their faded mansions,

businesses were still arriving,

taking advantage of the vast spaces and low rents.

So, Jim, can you tell me where we are?

In Moray Place,

outside the office where I started as an apprentice about 68 years ago.

What were you doing here?

I worked for Sir Basil.

Well, he wasn't Sir Basil in these days, he was just Basil Spence.

The Spence family stayed on the first floor.

They lived up there, did they?

They lived up there. He did quite a bit of entertaining. Yes, yes.

We used to go outside and have coffee

at around 10.00-10.30 in the garden.

People chatted about what they were doing

and the schemes they were working on.

This week we're delighted to have with us Sir Basil Spence,

one of Britain's most controversial architects.

He was born in Bombay in 1907.

His father was a Scotsman from the Orkneys

and worked in the Indian Civil Service.

When Basil Spence turned to making homes for people,

he turned back to Scotland - the Gorbals in Glasgow.

I was, by that time, an associate in the practice,

and I ended up on the supervision of the building of the Gorbals.

'The plan for Glasgow of tomorrow is taking shape,

'the over-crowded and over-developed city will give place

'to a new and free-flowing city.'

150 years after the creation of the Moray Estate,

Glasgow was to have its own planned community.

Like the Moray Feu,

Spence's tower sea was to be a new design for living.

It was a multistorey building and a very interesting, exciting design.

'This is the Gorbals.

'Not long ago it was a dark network of slum property.

'Let's meet a family that's moved into one of these new flats.

'This is Mrs Jack, born and bred in the Gorbals

'but not in a building like this.

'You need a lift to take you up and down, but Mrs Jack

'feels that the view from her living-room window is well worth it.'

The lifts started to go wrong. They were really poorly maintained.

And gradually, over the years,

the balconies became just dumping grounds.

Well, it was never used as it was designed to be used.

Why not?

That's one I don't know, I really don't know.

The 10th Earl of Moray had been able to design a new town

for the aristocracy because he was one of them.

But from his office on the Feu, Spence had tried to plan

a community for a city and a people to which he didn't belong.

Why, when you designed the flats in the Gorbals, did you make them

so depressing in appearance,

and yet the houses are so comfortable inside?

Well, you know, that's - what one says - is a subjective criticism.

I thought that there should be a little garden attached to

each house so that you can grow even small trees there if you wish,

peaches, perhaps.

It doesn't work.

We tried putting plants out and they were blown off.

The wind sweeps right through.

Because of the multistorey structure down at ground level

on what appears to be a calm day, it was always very windy down there.

And well, I think Sir Basil would have been very

upset and disappointed if he had been alive

when they were blown-up and demolished.

How did you feel?

I just felt sad really that, you know,

all this effort had gone into something that was now just

become a heap of rubble and that was it.

Spence's tower sea was demolished in 1993,

and the people of the Gorbals prepared to start over.

But the solid stones of the Moray Feu stood firm.

And now the fortunes of the professional aristocracy

had begun to turn.

By the 1980s a new economic orthodoxy had taken hold

and the top rate of tax had been slashed to 40%.

The upper-class was pulling away from the majority once again,

using their new money to buy back into the Feu.

In some areas prices are rising steadily,

in others they're stagnant.

And then there are the hotspots, like here in Edinburgh City Centre,

described as one of the most expensive places to live

outside London.

This came up.

It was the time when you had to bid quite a lot over the asking price.

And I think the asking price was something like 380 or 400.

And we bid, because we nearly bought it in 1944,

we bid £444,444.

£440,000 for this place?

Mmm. Yeah.

It seems pretty reasonable now.

It does now.

This was the office, in fact.

And when we arrived here there was a huge counter down here

and sort of furniture everywhere, and...

And the fireplace was painted in pebbledash, white pebbledash.

The grandchildren love this bed, they play bouncy castles on it.

It was in a bit of a state, wasn't it, when you arrived?

Yeah. That's putting it mildly.

This has now become the dining-room.

The bathroom was awful. Here we are, there's the bathroom.

Isn't that nice?

Oh, they're lovely, aren't they? Really gorgeous.

But you look after everything in this house.

-Yes.

-How many cleaners do you employ?

-None.

How many house-maids?

None. Alan does the silver and the...

No, no, none at all. No, I do it.

Just occasionally we...

As you see the cameraman disappear forever.

SHE LAUGHS

The main trading business I have in Edinburgh is

involved in looking after funds.

The smallest client is probably about 10 million

and the largest is 400 million.

Is that lady anyone you know there?

Both of them are relations of mine. Yeah. One prettier than the other.

HE LAUGHS

DOORBELL RINGS

-That'll be the Simpsons at their own old door.

-Yeah.

We should probably let them in.

We're rather early. You remember me, Henrietta.

You're not early at all.

Right, now would you like a cup of coffee?

Where would you like to have your coffee, Patrick?

I'll just have it where it is. Thank you.

Well, it's in the kitchen in that case.

-Yes, all right. Well, shall we...

-Well, come on down.

You'd lived here for 44 years, and we bought it for...

-All the fours, yes.

-All the fours.

-All the fours.

£444,444. I can't remember if it was 44p, can you?

I think it probably was, just to sort of round it up nicely.

-It might have been. It might have been.

-All the fours.

Well, it was a bit of an advance for me,

I paid 4,500 for the whole thing.

Well, if you'd have told me that I wouldn't have done nothing like that.

THEY LAUGH

You can almost see our house.

Yes, well, it's round there, isn't it?

As he would tell you, it's in the slums.

In fact, that green is the gardens in front.

Well, Patrick thinks it's a slum.

Why did you leave here, Patrick?

-Henrietta...

-I wish you wouldn't ask that question.

With her pictures as well as mine, there wasn't room for it all.

HE CHUCKLES

He misses it very much, actually, and he doesn't like where we are.

That is the truth.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Henrietta.

It's such a killing little thing, isn't it?

Patrick, I think you must be one of the people alive with

the most years on the Moray Feu.

Well, I lived there quite a long time, yes.

I don't know though, I think there are probably decayed old

people still living in Moray Place who have been there for a long time.

Patrick had that floor, that floor and the basement,

and Bill Ayles is up there.

ELEVATOR HUMS

Gosh.

Good morning, Dr Ayles.

Nice to see you all.

It's nice to see you. Can we come through?

The usual Scottish greeting, you will have had your tea.

-You know that one?

-Yes.

-Come in.

This house was bought by the Honourable Lord Sorn in 1929,

and he paid 3,860 for it.

Do you want to take your coat off or anything?

It cost me 11,500. So suddenly prices have soared.

-Shot up.

-Absolutely.

You paid £11,500?

-Yes.

-When was this?

-1965.

That's all the children painted by Alan Sullivan.

That's Nicholas, Jane, Richard and Anthony.

Nicholas has a property company in London.

This is Janey who's married to a lawyer,

and this is Anthony who became my partner in the practice.

Richard, he's...he died.

How did he die?

Sudden heart attack, but a very unusual one.

I'm very sorry to hear about that.

Mmm. Yeah. It was a blow.

This one behind you is painted by my daughter-in-law.

And that's Mary and that's me. And that's the old tiger.

Mary's grandfather was out in India and her father was born out there,

and he - the grandfather - laid the railways from Calcutta to Delhi.

That's the rest of the tiger, missing the head here.

You know there's that famous Love On A Tiger Skin or whatever.

So I hope that sort of thing didn't go on in this house.

HE LAUGHS

There's no answer to that question.

What kind of a woman was your wife?

Happy. Very happy.

She used to do characters, particularly Children's Hour.

'Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.'

I get the impression that you were rather proud of her.

Yes, I was. Very much. Yes, very much. She was great fun.

And we had lots of parties.

Just behind you there was where we all danced, in that room there.

FAINT BALLROOM MUSIC

Is your wife still around?

She's in a nursing home with dementia.

And I see her twice a week or thereabouts.

And the problem is that when I have to get up to go home

she always thinks she's going to come too.

It must be strange. Every time you look at an object, there's a memory.

Yes. And of course, these are little family portraits.

There's John Ayles of Achmore, who goes back to 1687.

And above him I think is John Mount-Ayles. Very comforting.

And I'm lucky to have it all.

It doesn't get too difficult sometimes?

No. Well, it does, yes, actually.

But you know, it's not all that difficult compared to what

some people have to do, people who are very much worse off than I am.

Most of my close friends have died.

Now you said you would like a drink. What would you like?

What have you got?

Well, there's always whisky.

What is very nice is that all these people have known each other

all their lives and their children have known each other

all their lives, and it just goes on self-perpetuating.

Do you love this house?

No. And you know I don't. So don't quote me.

Why not?

Well, we've had a lot of difficulties with it.

But if you didn't have this house where would you be?

I don't know where I'd be.

I don't know where I'll end up. I've no idea.

What, you don't think you'll stay here?

-No.

-Why not?

Well, it's not economical for one person to live in this space.

It's such a nice view, isn't it?

Did your husband love this house?

I think so. But in the last year he didn't do much.

I kept saying to him, let's go out with the dog.

No, he wouldn't.

That's why he died so early,

because he just..his blood pressure let him down.

Have you ever felt the presence of any of the people

from the past in this house?

No-one's been in touch.

-No-one's been in touch?

-No.

So this is the ground-floor of number 31.

We've got number 31 and 32.

And we're about to start the construction work to take them

back to two original five-storey town houses.

But the plan is that this will become our family house,

and we'll live here for the next number of years.

But how many other families in this house?

In this house there are no other families.

This is just a...this will be a five-storey town house.

I had to buy it and get a couple of extra bedrooms,

I couldn't have bought two-thirds of it.

We could probably sleep 20, 24 folk at a push,

without having to squash people into camp-beds, et cetera.

And this is the furniture from our buddies in the law firm

that are moving out, so they're in the process.

If this building had not been occupied by the solicitors

that have been here for over 100 years, I'm sure it would have

been sub-divided and we wouldn't be standing here

talking about a five-storey town house.

This house in London -

one of the nice areas, in Knightsbridge or Mayfair -

probably about 20 million.

But then if my auntie had a moustache she'd be my uncle.

HE CHUCKLES

Did you grow up in a house like this?

No. I grew up in a tenement, a two-bedroom -

sorry a two-room tenement with four of us.

Oh, I could bore you stupid -

no hot water, no telephone, no fridges, dah-dah-dah.

But I did always want... I used to come here when I was at school.

I was quite keen on art and I used to come here

and draw the street from various different locations.

I always thought one day it'd be nice - when I'm big -

to come back and live here. And I got big.

So the living-room, kitchen, dining-room and family area -

that will be open-plan, as you would expect in a modern house -

is going to be 1,700 square feet.

When we re-unify the building,

this will have about 10,500 square feet over the five floors.

Maybe six times the average house.

You've got to remember there's four of us in the family -

Jackie and the two girls - so, you know, you need a lot of bathrooms

when you've got three women in the house.

Seven's maybe a bit toppy. THEY LAUGH

Everybody does the same, you stick a big table that can seat 20 people.

You never use it all year, apart from maybe New Year

and a couple of weekends.

It's actually...it's actually a waste of a room, basically,

but you have to do it.

I was in banking, I was in private equity and I got lucky,

in the good old days. I worked hard, you know,

some people are in the right jobs at the right time, I was one of them.

I was one of them.

The old money is being replaced by new money.

You know, as old money relies on assets and runs out of cash,

you know, then people that are lucky enough in careers to have

made money, new money, they come in.

It happens all over the world, you know, nothing unusual about that.

In the tradition of my ancestor,

we are planning to build a new town in the Highlands.

It's a project we've been working on now for over ten years,

and the name of that town is to be Tornagrain.

A lot of thought and research has gone into this project.

It feels like it's been a very long time.

I can't wait till we start digging.

So one day in a couple of hundred years' time they might be looking at

an image of you and saying, oh, it's the man responsible for Tornagrain.

Yes. Hopefully with a smile rather than a grimace.

Right, so what have we got here?

So this is where we're going to start,

and this is the first phase of the first phase.

It's about a 190 houses, so it's this area here.

And the close-up of it is this, this area here.

We can walk up first, up the street just along here.

So what's this street called?

Well, it hasn't got a name yet,

but it'll be sort of semi-formal, actually.

I said, you know, I want a bit of the Moray Estate here.

I want a crescent leading onto an oval, leading onto a polygon.

And they design it in, and then they design it out again.

But I'll get my way in the end.

You just come up this, the old farm track,

it comes round here, and...

Are you going to get rid of this farm track?

No, no, we're not going to do that.

That track, it's been on the map since the 18th century.

Life's been going on here for hundreds of years, we don't want

to lose that, we don't want a Year Zero where everything's obliterated.

Throughout Tornagrain there's 1,500 social houses

and they're not being put into any particular area.

So you're not going to have a council estate?

No. It's a cross-section, a mixed community.

The Moray Estate was upmarket and pretty exclusive,

that wouldn't be appropriate here. It's for everybody.

There's a good view just down here.

You know, it's fantastic to have a project that really sees you

right the way through, and...

-Right the way through life?

-Right the way through life.

I mean, if you're in a project like this for 40 years...

How old are you going to be then?

In 40 years, I'll be 87.

Are you trying to get one over on the 10th Earl?

HE LAUGHS

No, definitely not. No.

Well, he's gone down in history, hasn't he? And perhaps...

Well, I... It's... I mean, that's not the objective. No.

It's to create a nice place for people to live,

that's the bottom line.

Do you expect it to change very much in the next 70 years?

No, I don't think so.

I don't see any reason why it should.

They're very solid these stone-built houses.

CHOIR SINGS: # I vow to thee, my country

# All earthly things above

# Entire and whole and perfect

# The service of my love

# The love that asks no question

# The love that stands the test

# That lays upon the altar

# The dearest and the best

# The love that never falters

# The love that pays the price

# The love that makes undaunted

# The final sacrifice. #

In the next episode...

Duke Street, Glasgow, the longest street in Britain.

But just 40 years ago,

many of the buildings that lined this street were under threat.

-What are you going to do about it?

-Knock 'em down.

This is the story of how a group of neighbours took on the might

of the Glasgow Corporation in a battle to save their homes.

We're East Enders. Forget your London East Enders,

we're the East Enders,

and we will fight to the death for what we believe in.

If you want to learn more about social change

and issues such as poverty, class and housing,

the Open University has produced a free publication.

Go to...

..and follow the links to the Open University or call 08452710018.