Bonnington used to be a heaving industrial area, with Newhaven an important centre for fishing and Granton home to saw mills, shipbuilding yards, and the gasworks – meaning plenty of scope for football teams
Raimes Park / Victoria Park
One of the earliest football matches to be staged in Edinburgh took place on Ferry Road, at Raimes Park in December 1873, between two selects made up of players from teams based in the west.
There is an interesting link with one of Scotland’s oldest pharmacies, Lindsay & Gilmour. In 1816, John Raimes moved from Yorkshire to Edinburgh and made a living supplying the city’s early pharmacies. His brother Richard joined him in 1820. Around the same time, Robert Lindsay established a pharmacy on Elm Row at the top of Leith Walk. He was joined by William Gilmour in the 1860s and the Lindsay & Gilmour brand was born.
As the Raimes company grew and evolved, it became known as Raimes, Clark & Co. Ltd. and in the 1970s the firm purchased the Elm Row pharmacy.
Raimes, Clark & Co. ceased operating as a wholesaler as recently as the 1990s and focused on developing the Lindsay & Gilmour pharmacies.
While John Raimes lived in a house on Smith’s Place just off Leith Walk – where the firm is still headquartered – Richard’s home was in Bonnington Park, and the extensive grounds were used to host sports days for the company’s workers.
When Richard died, the park became public property and was renamed Victoria Park but it was still known locally as Raimes Field or Raimes Park until fairly recently.
Despite the occasion of the exhibition match, the ground wasn’t as well used for football as some other spaces in Edinburgh, even after it became a public park, but it was used for military drills pre-1900 as well.
The Scotsman of December 29, 1873 was somewhat scathing about the exhibition match, branding it ‘characterised by great sameness’.
The report states: “With the object of giving Edinburgh football players an insight into this style of playing, a show match between two teams chosen from various Glasgow clubs, under the captaincies of Messrs Gardner and Thomson , took place on Saturday in Mr Raimes’ Park at Bonnington, the use of which had been kindly granted for the occasion by the committee of the Royal High School Football Club.
“Notwithstanding the novelty of the event and the fineness of the day, there was not above two hundred spectators, including a sprinkling of ladies, and a large number of past and resent players of note under the Rugby mode.
“Lacking nearly all the excitement of the Rugby game, with its running, dropping, chucking, and touching behind, made so famous by the author of ‘Tom Brown’s School Days’, a mode which is almost universal among our schools and principal Scotch clubs, it was not much to be wondered at that ere the close the number of spectators had gradually diminished as, beyond an occasional good piece of ‘dribbling’ and a good deal of ‘heading’ which considerably amused the spectators, there was little to sustain the interest.”
In the 19th century, there were no strict rules on pitch size, surface, and many more elements of the game that we have come to take for granted. The pitch in Raimes Park was described as ‘one of the best in Edinburgh for Rugby football‘ but “rather short for the Assocation style, and thereby prevented several of the best Scotch exponents of the latter game getting fairly under weigh, and showing one of its greatest beauties – viz. ‘dribbling’.“
The journalist opines: “Except that the goalkeeper, no player is allowed to handle the ball, any infringement giving the opposite side a free kick, a rule which looks somewhat absurd when ‘heading’ is so frequently indulged in. It must be admitted that for players getting up in years it seems the preferable game, the exercise not being so violent nor its bone-breaking risks so great as in the Rugby game.”
So there you have it. The game, which finished 1-0 to Mr Gardner’s Eleven, wasn’t viewed as a great success by this particular writer. Interestingly enough, there were a number of features still in use today: 90-minute games comprising two 45-minute halves, changing ends at half-time, free kicks for infringements. This was despite there still being a rather relaxed approach to whether association or rugby rules were used – or a mixture of the two known as “local” rules.
Angus MacKinnon of Queen’s Park scored the only goal of the match. Three months later he scored the winning goal as Scotland defeated England 2-1 at the West of Scotland Cricket Ground in Glasgow – the first player to achieve the feat.
We know that this match was instrumental in forming the club later known as St Bernard’s, but it also played a key role in the formation of Heart of Midlothian. Although a group of friends from the Heart of Midlothian Quadrille Assembly Club had already formed a team using local rules playing firstly at the Tron and then East Meadows, according to Albert Mackie’s book The Hearts, some of these men were in attendance at Raimes Park and it was this exhibition match that prompted them to fully adopt Association rules and form the ‘Heart of Mid-Lothian Football Club’.
So although The Scotsman was somewhat dismissive in its account of the exhibition match, the event was ultimately successful as it helped kickstart at least two football clubs in Edinburgh that we know of – the reality is that this one game might have been responsible for a far greater number of teams.
There are references to a handful of games being played at Victoria Park post-1900 but not at a particularly high level.
Chancelot Park
Just across the road from Raimes Park was Chancelot Park, so called for the Chancelot Flour Mill that used to be sited on Dalmeny Road.
The park hosted a number of games at all levels but is best remembered as being home to Leith Athletic between 1900 and 1904, and again from 1914 until 1924 although it was also deemed the home ground of Leith Ivanhoe, a junior side, while Leith Amateurs made use of the park in the early 1920s also.
The Leith Burghs Pilot newspaper of August 17, 1901 carries a very detailed report of a friendly match between the Ivanhoe and Edinburgh Myrtle to open the season at Chancelot Park. The report mentions the “Chancelot Flour Mills practically sheltering the pitch from what little wind there was”. The game finished in a 3-3 draw with former Hearts club secretary George Robertson serving as referee.
Incidentally, Edinburgh Myrtle appear to have played some games in Victoria Park – assumed to be Raimes Park – around the same time.
As with a lot of venues in Edinburgh, and further afield, numerous games at all levels were played at Chancelot Park. It was used extensively by the Boys Brigade and remains attached to the Edinburgh, Leith & District Battalion of the BB which is headquartered on Ferry Road on the corner of Bonar Place.
Bonnington / Bonnington Grove
Working out this ground was one of the trickier elements of this project. According to newspaper archives, several games were played here between 1885 and 1898; mostly lower-level fixtures.
Today, Bonnington Grove (the street) is a short, quiet lane between Newhaven Road and Gosford Place. None of the maps from the 1880s or 1890s appeared to indicate any space on the street where football could be played, even allowing for the looser rules regarding size of pitch.
There is precious little information about the teams that played there such as Newhaven Thistle and Leith Rosebery while newspaper reports refer to both Bonnington and Bonnington Grove. Clearly, in the 19th century, people would know where games were played and the references would be far simpler to comprehend.
With that in mind, it seems as though Bonnington and Bonnington Grove both referred to the land later occupied by the Chancelot Flour Mills and Chancelot Park.
Again, it is important to remember that football games were played on whatever ground teams could get hold of. Just because matches were detailed in newspapers, did not mean they were of a particularly high level. It is impossible to be 100 per cent sure but the best guess is that the football venue referred to as Bonnington or Bonnington Grove was likely the land at the end of the street of the same name.
Numerous teams at various lower levels played here during its existence as Bonnington / Bonnington Grove, including Leith Rangers, Newhaven Thistle, Bonnington Rangers, Leith Roseberry, and Leith Auburn among others.
Denham Green
If you walk along Ferry Road from Victoria Park heading west, you will eventually reach Clark Road. Turning down this street you will pass Bangholm Avenue and Bangholm Road on your right, and Clark Place on the opposite side of the street.
Towards the junction with East Trinity Road is a small residential estate called Caithness Place and if you stand in the middle of the car park you will be standing on what used to be the Denham Green football field.
Denham Green was originally a house on land owned by Sir Henry Moncreiff-Wellwood. He served as Baronet of Nova Scotia and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and Chaplain to King George III in Scotland.
Caithness Place, completed as recently as 1988, was almost certainly named after the 13th Earl of Caithness, who was a resident of the Denham Green estate in the 1830s.
As has been covered already, it was not unusual for landowners to permit teams to play on their property. Denham Green had a short-lived existence as a football field, hosting matches involving Adventurers and Edinburgh Casuals in the 1890s, including a match between the two in October 1894.
There are no records of football matches being played at Denham Green beyond April 15 1895 when, according to The Scotsman, “less than half a dozen spectators” watched Adventurers beat Casuals 3-1.
Two days later, an advert in the same newspaper offered use of Denham Green to cricket and football clubs. Casuals were only active between 1894 and 1896 while Adventurers led a nomadic existence, playing games at Slateford Road, Gorgie Park and Mall Park in Musselburgh as well as Denham Green.
Buccleuch Park
The earliest mentions of Buccleuch Park in newspaper reports appears was in the late 1890s, when Granton Oakvale and Granton Blue Bell seem to have been the primary users of the park. In October 1896, Oakvale defeated Edinburgh Carlisle 5-2, and Granton Blue Bell defeated Leith Blue Bell’s second XI by 8 goals to 3.
Despite Granton’s relatively small size, the huge amount of industry in the area allowed for more than a few teams in the late 19th / early 20th century with shipbuilding, the gasworks, ironworks, and saw mill all within a short distance of the football grounds.
Granton Oakvale played out a 6-2 win over Leith Everton at the same venue the following month and later that year, Granton Vale suffered a 3-0 reversal at Buccleuch Park at the hands of Leith Craighall in the Junior League.
Granton Oakvale were still on the go as late as 1907, losing a Dalmeny Cup tie at Buccleuch Park to Kinleith Thistle, although there are references to an “Oakvale” playing at Bonnington Grove – this could be a reserve side of Granton Oakvale or another, similarly-named team. Again, there is very little information beyond the occasional brief report in the newspapers of the time.
Of all the Granton clubs, Oakvale appeared to have been the side that lasted the longest, eventually ceasing operation in 1914, presumably linked to the outbreak of World War I. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the other team with a relatively lengthy existence was the Gasworks team, who shared Buccleuch Park with Oakvale.
Incidentally, Buccleuch Park was likely named for the Duke of Buccleuch. The 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, Henry Scott (1746 – 1812), who served as Governor of the Royal Bank of Scotland from 1794 until his death, inherited Caroline Park mansion in 1793 which was just over the railway line from Buccleuch Park.
Caroline Park
In the late 16th century, Andrew Logan constructed a mansion, Royston House, in what would later be known as Granton. A century later the building was completely rebuil by Sir George Mackenzie and later bought by John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll. He renamed the house Caroline Park after his daughter. She married Francis Scott, the Earl of Dalkeith and son of the 2nd Duke of Buccleuch, and gave birth to six children including Henry, later the 3rd Duke of Buccleuch and likely inspiration behind Buccleuch Park.
Thus the two main football parks in Granton were named after a mother and her son.
There were at least two teams using the Granton Caroline name; one appears to have been active in the late 1880s, and the other in the late 1890s.
There is reference to a Granton Caroline team playing in 1893 against Hibs Reserves – whether this was the first team regrouping for one-off matches, a third unrelated team, or an early form of the second Granton Caroline is, alas, unclear.
Very little is known about these teams and whether they were indeed connected but we do know that both were likely to have played games at Caroline Park and that their home field likely gave rise to the team name.
It was not unheard of in the 19th century for team names to reflect the land they played on. For instance, the East Lothian club Macmerry St Clair were so called because a local farmer named St Clair permitted them to play on his land, and the team adopted his name in tribute.
So it’s entirely possible that both Granton Caroline teams got their name from playing in the grounds of the eponymous house.
Neither Granton Caroline side was around for particularly long; it wasn’t until Granton Oakvale were established in 1897, and the Gasworks team in 1906 that the area had football teams that lasted for more than a few months.
During the First World War, a Granton Naval Base side played for three years in the East of Scotland League, facing off against the likes of Denbeath Star from Fife, Midlothian side Polton Colliery, and the Royal Field Artillery’s team.
It is a safe assumption that one or other of these fields were used by the other Granton teams including Granton Thistle, Granton Star, Star of Granton (which may have been the same team under a different name), and Granton Queensberry.
Newhaven
There were certainly a handful of Newhaven teams in existence between 1880 and 1910, such as Newhaven Thistle, Newhaven Park Thistle, Newhaven Sedgemore, and Swift of Newhaven but despite there being a grass area in the village itself – the Links – there is little suggestion that any of the teams played there, and any references to matches simply being played “at Newhaven” could have been referring to a nearby venue or a misunderstanding when teams were announced to be playing at home.
Swift of Newhaven played Star of Granton in 1884; potentially one of the earliest football games to be staged in Granton. The hosts won 1-0.
Newhaven Park Thistle were a strong junior side at the turn of the 20th century. Nicknamed the ‘Fisher Laddies’ they were lauded for scoring 19 and conceding just three in three games in early 1901.
Their success and popularity saw them rent Drum Park from Edinburgh Renton for a New Year fixture against Glasgow Silwood in 1901 although most home games appear to have been played at Bonnington Grove.
Newhaven Thistle were active between the mid-1880s and mid-1890s, playing home matches at Inverleith Park or Bonnington Grove, but were overshadowed by their near-namesakes a few years later.
Scotland's ghost grounds 