Craigmillar

Craigmillar (Scottish Gaelic: Creag a' Mhuilleir), from the Gaelic Crag Maol Ard, meaning 'High Bare Rock', is an area of Edinburgh, Scotland, about 3 miles (4.8 km) south east of the city centre, with Duddingston to the north and Newcraighall to the east.

Until around 2008, the area consisted mainly of inter-war and post-war public housing schemes, ranging from private bungalows to Edinburgh Council-owned high rise tower blocks. The housing scheme at Niddrie Mains was created through the Housing (Scotland) Act of 1924, with lands bought from the Wauchope Estate. The area was designed and laid out by the then City Architect, Ebenezer James MacRae from 1927. The Craigmilllar estate, immediately below the castle, was planned in 1936. Despite the relative modernity of most of the housing in the area, the settlement of Craigmillar itself is very old, and contains Craigmillar Castle, which was begun in the late 14th or early 15th century, and occupied until the early 18th century. In 1660, the Craigmillar estate was bought by Sir John Gilmour.

The City of Edinburgh Council is now well into a regeneration programme which has seen the demolition of the earlier estates and the area has benefited from many initiatives aimed at tackling the social deprivation that has characterised the area for many years.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw seven breweries being built in what was open country at Craigmillar/Duddingston, concentrated in a small area beside the railway line and taking advantage of the local aquifers providing excellent water for brewing. The first of these was the Craigmillar Brewery of William Murray & Co. Ltd built in 1886 and followed within a few years by Andrew Drybrough's brewery, also called the Craigmillar Brewery (1892), the Duddingston Brewery built by Pattisons Ltd (1896), bought by Robert Deuchar Ltd in 1899 following Pattisons' liquidation, the North British Brewery (1897) which was taken over by Murray's in 1927 becoming known as Murray's No. 2 Brewery, Maclauchlan's Castle Brewery, Raeburn's New Craigmillar Brewery and Paterson's Pentland Brewery, all opening in 1901. These breweries stopped brewing at various times, mainly in the 1960s, but Drybrough's survived for several years ceasing brewing in January 1987.

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Wikipedia