Talk:Trinity Chain Pier

Wishlist

I'd really like to get:

• Better book sources for the article Done
• What was the building used for between 1898 and 1945? Done
• How much of the original fabric of the ticket office survives in the pub? I assume it's more than zero. Partly done
• Was any cargo hauled from it? It doesn't look suitable and all the sources talk about passenger traffic. Done

Anything else as well. Seems astonishing there are not more quality sources about this iconic landmark of historic Edinburgh. --John (talk) 21:39, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

If you haven't already, you need to check out an Ian Allan shop, which always give one the faint feeling of needing vaccination against nerd cooties after visiting them (Allan was the inventor of trainspotting, and his shops reflect this), but precisely because they're catering for obsessives, they tend to stock all kinds of books on trains, planes and boats that even the best specialist department at a Waterstones etc can't match. Robert Humm is also very good for "out-of-print-for-a-hundred-years" books. (The cost of these things isn't as much of an issue as it seems; because of their rarity, you can generally sell them on with no trouble.) It might be worth writing to the Riverside Museum in Glasgow (or seeing if Lirazelf has any contacts there)—given the amount of public money they've hoovered up to document Scottish transport history, they might have something on this, although IIRC their bookshop could politely be described as "shortbread-and-tea-towels McTat". ‑ iridescent 21:53, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for those suggestions. I have quite a few Ian Allan books already, so I think the nerd virus is already well established in my corpus. I will have a look but money is always tight around here and I may end up waiting for a free solution, if one is possible. --John (talk) 22:10, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Dropping key phrases into Amazon is always a good bet as well—because they're trying to sell you things, their algorithm is considerably better than Google's at pointing out things in which you might be interested. (If there's such a thing as the Edinburgh Newspaper Library—I assume it would be part of the National Library of Scotland—that would probably be a good place to go looking, as there was presumably a lot of coverage both of it being built and it collapsing. I don't know if ACrockford still works at the NLS, but even if she doesn't she could presumably at least tell you who you need to ask.) ‑ iridescent 22:23, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the Amazon trick, I had forgotten that. --John (talk) 06:40, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

This painting is out of copyright, and stealable under Bridgeman/Corel. You may want to approach this person and ask if they're willing to release that video into the public domain. (Emphasise that an appearance on the Wikipedia Main Page will probably generate more views for the video in a single hour than it's received in its entire history.) This photo is almost certainly in the public domain as well, although it looks like Edinburgh Libraries are claiming copyright over it, so you have to decide whether antagonising them is worth the hassle. Per my comment at Lirazelf's talkpage, your main priority should be persuading Edinburgh Museums and Galleries to release a high-quality upload of Pier of Suspension, erected at Trinity. ‑ iridescent 09:35, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

…which in turn, has led to the realisation that when it was built, it was called either "Pier of Suspension" or "Trinity Suspension Pier", and dropping "Pier of Suspension, Trinity" into Google brings up a huge stack of references to it in contemporary books and newspapers. ‑ iridescent 09:43, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

That's a very great help. Thank you. --John (talk) 18:20, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm a great deal happier about the sourcing now, and the passenger/cargo question has been answered. I'd still appreciate more info about the missing history of the surviving office, and about the percentage of it which survives in the modern pub. Where would I look? --John (talk) 21:25, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Per my comment on Eric's talkpage, local papers from the time the pub opened would be a good bet. Rifling through Google Books for anything with a title like "History of Leith Docks" and a publication date in the 1930s would also be a good bet, since they'll probably say something along the lines of "the former booking office, now a storeroom" or whatever. (Was there anything significant nearby? If so, run a search for photographs of that, and see if you can make out a sign on the office building.) ‑ iridescent 22:53, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

It was a pub since at least 1905, according to a source that was already in the article, with contemporary photo evidence. So the many sources that talk about the pub's establishment post-1945, are wrong. Interesting. --John (talk) 21:24, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I have no source at all for this, but given its location—which was arguably the single most strategic spot in Scotland, given the existence of Occupied Norway—it's highly possible that non-essential waterfront buildings were commandeered in 1939, and restored to civilian use at the end of the war. That would make both the 1905 and 1945 dates correct. ‑ iridescent 20:11, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree it would be extremely interesting to have an idea of what this building was doing in both world wars. --John (talk) 21:37, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Just saw this! I'm afraid I'm no longer at the NLS since May, and am starting a new job 1st September that is, sadly not a Wikimedia job. Would be happy to make NLS recommendations, though. I'm not sure that there's specifically an Edinburgh Newspaper Library online resource, but certainly the NLS would have backissues of newspapers that could be accessed. One of the best ways to go about it would be to see if you can find the relevant information in the catalogue, and then contacting Reference Services about obtaining access. ACrockford (talk) 22:35, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, I will do that when I have time. --John (talk) 21:24, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

• Fabric of the pub; given the numerous rebuildings and restorations, I am getting a feeling the number may be zero. I may bite the bullet and ask the bar staff the next time I make it in. --John (talk) 21:27, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Looking on Google Maps, it looks like there's a Waterstones just up the road by the Ocean Terminal. It would likely be well worth going in there and looking for the "Local History" section; they have a company policy of always having a dedicated section for books about the place they're located, and quite often have a lot of very arcane small-press local interest stuff which flies below the radar of the search engines and library catalogues. (It will no doubt suffer the Curse Of Edinburgh, and have a lot of drivel with tartan covers and titles like "Hoots!", but there's a high chance there'll be something out of print since 1978 with a title like "Memories of Leith's Lost Docks". Waterstones may be a charmless corporate vulture which sucks the life out of high streets, but they're very good when it comes to supporting small local publishers. ‑ iridescent 21:25, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

CAMRA

I took out this:

It was CAMRA pub of the year in 2001.

because I could find no other sources to corroborate the claim. It did not win CAMRA's UK-wide award in that year. It may have won the Scottish award. Any thoughts? --John (talk) 15:21, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I've found another source so I am going to put it back in. --John (talk) 22:36, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

References

Comments and possibly unanswerable questions

• Who was Mr Parrot, and how does he figure in the story? Did he own the thing, or was he just the contractor employed to put it together? If the latter, who did own the company when it opened; was the Trinity Pier Company a front for Brown or a public company?
  • Yes, excellent questions, I shall continue to research. I don't think it was a public company; early on there is talk about the "proprietors", then it was sold on to one individual or a company.
  • I've tried to say a little more about the ownership and constitutional matters. The records seem murky. I will continue to research it. I have removed Mr Parrot as he only seems to appear as builder in that one source. He is mentioned in a couple as the designer of the bridge, which clearly isn't correct. Better not to say it unless better sources emerge. I've removed the Piers ref completely as it contained at least one basic error. The story is good enough without adding things that may be wrong or unattested. --John (talk) 17:30, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
• For obvious reasons, the pier itself was well above sea level, but in none of the pictures are any kind of steps, ladders etc visible. How did the bathers get in and out of the water?
  • There were ladders. I was up late last night reading old newspapers with my library card access. There were many drownings and near-drownings, right from the early days of the pier. Life-saving was a big priority for some of the local swimming clubs. None of the incidents are individually notable enough for the article, but many of them talk about steps and ladders. There is mention of a bathing platform. I added this with a source.  Done
• Why was it built? I get the obvious "for the ferries to dock at" answer, but the traditional solution to this has been an enclosed dredged harbour, not a pier. I'm struggling to think of any other UK commercial port that built piers for shipping (with the arguable exception of Ryde).
  • It was built because the existing harbours at Leith and Newhaven were struggling with the rising demand. Piers were/are popular on the west coast as well; most of the small ports there are or were built this way. It was built the particular way it was because the designer believed this way was cheaper, quicker to build and easier for ships to dock at. He liked chains and suspension bridges. Clearly the suspension pier was not a success as only three of them were built in Britain. (Were any built in other countries though?)
• Did the design of the pier affect the design of the two famous 19th-century attempts to build stable structures in the firths, the Forth Bridge and the Tay Bridge (either as something to avoid, or as a source of inspiration)?
  • There were proposals to build suspension bridges over the Forth, but they were not taken up.
• Did the Trinity Pier Company become the Alloa Steam Packet Company, or did they sell it at some point? Assuming they sold it, do we know what it sold for and whether the builders ever recouped their investment?
  • I agree the matter of the ownership history bears further research. I added the marine worms and the impact that had on its profitability. I think overall it did not make much money. Further research required.
• It could probably do with a map of the Firth of Forth with the location of Edinburgh, the pier, and the main ferry routes marked. (All this needs is File:FirthofForthmap.png and half an hour in Inkscape.) Wikipedia has a global audience, and I suspect to most non-Scots (and a fair few Scots) "there were ferries from Trinity to Aberdour, Alloa, Charlestown, Dysart, Leven, Largo and Stirling" may as well read "there were ferries to Igglepiggle, Ninkynonk, Upsydaisy, Tombiloo and Makkapakka". (Take a look at something like Brill Tramway—another now-defunct transport project from around the same period—and note just how much time is spend explaining to readers where points A and B are, why anyone would wish to get from one to the other, and how this method compared to the alternatives.)
  •  Done; I made the map, but I agree we need some context about how this fitted in with the general development of transport in this era.
    • I've tried to address this by including a Background section. Do you think it is too long? I need some help with the referencing; I can't get the url of the City of Edinburgh PDF to work, and the handling of different page numbers in book sources needs some serious help. User:Eric Corbett, or User:Iridescent, or any kind soul who is better at reference formatting than I am, please can you help? --John (talk) 21:25, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
      • I had a go. I'd still like to get the refs working better before this is on the main page. --John (talk) 22:58, 1 September 2015 (UTC) Never mind, I think I figured it out. --John (talk) 21:08, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
• Brown lived in London and his company was based in Wales. Do we have any idea why he felt a city at the opposite end of the country with notoriously bad weather was the best place to try to put his ferry-pier ideas into practice, rather than somewhere closer to home like the Thames, Severn or Channel?
  • Edinburgh was a happening place then as it is now. There was a huge demand for personal transport and there was a successful model on the west coast. A market to be tapped. And his wife and dad were Scottish.
• I'm not familiar with the Edinburgh waterfront, but "It is the only pub in Edinburgh to face directly onto the sea" sounds a very unlikely claim, which needs a better reference than whatpub.com if it's true. Just looking along a short stretch of waterfront for the "pub" icon in Google Maps throws up [1] and [2] nearby, both of which appear to match the description (although the latter looks like somewhere best avoided).
  • Edinburgh has many waterfront bars. If you haven't been to the Old Chain Pier though, it literally hangs over the water. I think the claim is true, though I would be open to a better wording.

The pub hangs over the water

• • A furlong away, the main bar and dining area of the Starbank Inn, for example, look straight out to sea (though it's true there is a road in the way). One might say here "It is the only pub in Edinburgh to face out to sea with no intervening roads or buildings". Deipnosophista (talk) 14:07, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
    • Yes, it's the road that makes the difference. That wording seems a little clumsy to me. --John (talk) 18:57, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
• The CAMRA line should probably be re-removed. If it had won a national award, or been recognised as Edinburgh's greatest ever or similar, fair enough, but "Joint winner of Edinburgh pub of the year 2001" is hardly an Academy Award, and says nothing about how the pub is regarded currently as opposed to fourteen years ago. (I can see some notorious shit-holes listed at the eminently AFD-worthy List of award-winning pubs in London.)
  • I'd be loth to remove this now having put so much work into sourcing it. I think it is a notable thing worth mentioning. CAMRA is a fairly heavyweight source for pub quality.
• Lose "It specialises in traditional Scottish pub food"—the same could probably be said of every pub in Edinburgh that has a kitchen. It would be more noteworthy if a pub in Scotland didn't sell Scottish pub food.
  • I think the point was that in a context of cosmopolitan dining, where many local restaurants serve Spanish tapas or Japanese sushi or haggis pakora this one serves decent traditional pub food. Duly removed though, point taken.
• There are obvious difficulties finding photos of the thing when it was standing, but it surely can't be too hard to find photos of the surviving remains at low tide, or of the pub—this would at least add a spot of colour to a very monochrome page. If noone's in a position to go down there and take some photos, the pub would probably be happy to release some—if even a dozen people are intrigued enough by the article to go take a look and buy a pint and a bag of scratchings when they're they're, the pub has more than recouped its costs. ‑ iridescent 19:01, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
  • On my to-do list. Hoped to do today, but maybe tomorrow. Done
    • Some good questions there. I shall try to answer them over the next 24 hours. --John (talk) 20:18, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
    • I have answered in-line, I hope that is ok with you. --John (talk) 23:01, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
    • Thanks again for the thoughtful and thought-provoking questions. --John (talk) 01:44, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

A couple more thoughts

• There's a fair bit about railways in the background section, but aside from mineral railways the only significant railway in the UK was the Surrey Iron Railway, which was hardly a great success; what sparked the railway boom was paradoxically the disastrous opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, which was such a fiasco that it got a huge amount of press coverage, which in turn made investors aware that this new experimental technology had potential commercial and military applications. I get the point you're trying to make—that any level route from England to any point north of Perth which didn't involve blasting tunnels through solid rock would have to come somewhere near here, so it's a more strategic location than might be expected just by looking at a map—but as worded, it makes it sound like Brown was some kind of visionary who foresaw the railways and built the pier in anticipation of the traffic it would generate. It would probably make more sense to move everything after 1821 down to a "Legacy" section at the end, along with the stuff on the pub.
  • Good thoughts. Yes, I'm uneasy about the way the Background section runs into events after the pier was destroyed.
  •  Done some moving things around. --John (talk) 23:07, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
• "Steamboat" and "Steamship" have specific and different meanings. Was the congestion at the existing harbour actually caused by steamships—which at the time were a very new and largely experimental technology—or by steamboats? (As a very rough guide, if it's technically capable of crossing the ocean it's a steamship otherwise it's a steamboat.)
  • Wondered about that. The sources seem to use "steamship" so I was going with that. I would imagine most of the boats (and they would have been tiny by modern standards) in the early years would have been paddle steamers, but I don't want to insert my own knowledge into the article. Will look for more sources. Steam packet is often used in the sources but it isn't a very good link. --John (talk) 23:07, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
• Probably really stupid question—why were they taking measurements in the Firth of Forth to test for the existence of the Gulf Stream? Surely this is the single worst place in Scotland to measure something coming by sea from the south-west?
  • It was the comparison between the two coasts that clinched it. The water on the west coast is noticeably warmer at all times of year, which is hard to explain without positing an external current.
• I know there's no way around it and this is the fault of geography, but "across the Firth of Forth with Fife" is jarring. (At least it didn't also go to Forfar.)
  • LOL, I am tempted to come out with some Boswellian apology for the uneuphonious nature of my country's language! I will see if it can be reworded.  Done some rewording. --John (talk) 23:07, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
• When the chains were removed, were they just sold for scrap or are any parts of them preserved anywhere?
  • Did wonder. Bits were displayed at the pub for a while, but no longer. I would imagine the scrap would have been fairly valuable in the late 19th century.
    • Update: I went in for a coffee today. There is a little display of some modern chain which couldn't be anything to do with the pier, some bits of ironwork which possibly could be, but didn't photograph well. But there is also the massive masonry block, preserved within the pub and marked with a plaque. I added a photo and note number 9. Is this WP:OR, do you think? --John (talk) 20:43, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
• I'd lose "In 2006 it was evacuated after a chemical scare" unless it led to structural changes, or the chemical scare was linked to residue from the pier's construction or something. If it was just a smell of gas in the kitchen or a cleaner knocking over a tub of ammonia, it's not a particularly unusual occurrence and fails the "will someone reading this in 50 years time find this relevant?" test. (Personally I'd lose "Its beers are Timothy Taylor Brewery's Landlord bitter, and a selection from Alechemy" as well, which is of no relevance to the actual pier and will go out of date very quickly—if you're planning on taking this to FAC Eric will just take that bit out anyway.)
  • Lost the chemical scare.  Done FAC? I've never had a solo shot at that, do you think it is heading that way? Or GA first? Would you and/or Eric be interested in helping out further?
    • I personally don't really see the point of GA, although I know Eric has a higher opinion of it; to me, it's degenerated from its original ideal into a rubber stamp that says "one editor likes this article". If you're heading for FAC, I'd suggest (fairly strongly) taking it through peer review first; if you do that, be sure to publicise it at WP:UKRAIL and WP:SHIPS, neither of which this quite fits into but both of which are the places you're most likely to find people qualified to discuss 19th-century marine engineering. An obvious gap which needs to be filled before FAC gets considered is the aesthetics of the thing; how did its architecture fit into the rest of Leith, and did the people who had to look down on the thing from Edinburgh consider it an eyesore or a symbol of Scots ingenuity? Ealdgyth and Nikkimaria will probably have some sniffy comments to make about some of the sources, if it does get as far as FAC, and it would probably be worth getting them to vet it beforehand to avoid any nasty surprises. ‑ iridescent 21:39, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

On a more general note, you probably want to get someone who's completely unfamiliar with Scottish geography and history to have a read of it to see if it makes sense to them. I know from experience that it's very easy to make "but it's obvious!" assumptions.  ‑ iridescent 22:12, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

• • Good suggestion. User:Drmies, I don't like to presume upon your good nature but would you be interested in taking a look and advising on this? Thanks, Iridescent for all your help. --John (talk) 22:47, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Or how about User:Dennis Brown? --John (talk) 20:43, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
    • I'll try to get a read through this this week. I'll be busy tonight and tomorrow for sure, but after that hopefully some time. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:49, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
    • I didn't eye it for minutia, just basics and readability. Railway Mania might need capitalizing, as it appears to be a proper noun in the article. Other than that, to this old American with no college degree it was easy enough to understand, the prose is fluid and consistent, it seems very complete and the article flows rather well actually. Some of it might be a little confusing to Americans who aren't used to firths and fjords, but again, that is what the wikilinks are for, and I think it is about as clear as it can be made without overcompensating. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:23, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Outstanding issues

I would still like to see:

• More information about the pier's ownership over the years. Who were Crichton, Scott, Ramsay and Stevenson? We know a little about the first two but we cannot even identify Ramsay and Stevenson. Was it Robert Stevenson or someone else?
• More on the aesthetics, and reactions in general to the pier. How was it perceived?
• Were these 1850s swimming competitions notable in the development of the sport?
• More on the early history of the pub.
• Kind of trivial but I am interested to know: was Elizabeth Draper (named on the 1956 planning application) the same person as Betty Moss (named in all the sources on cutlasses and guns)? I strongly suspect yes but more sources would be good. --John (talk) 09:15, 1 October 2015 (UTC)