Dollys Tea Room.

It was a members’ night at the camera club on Thursday, and one of the said mambers told us that there was a great need to document the mundane. “It won’t be here forever!” he said, and proceeded to show us several excellent studies of what had been commonplace up to 50 years ago. I’m all in favour of his point of view and have been boring you with some of the mundane aspects of the village from time to time. The Chapel Cross Guesthouse was, for most our time here, The Roslin Glen Hotel, but after changing hands about ten times the family that own the “Original Rosslyn Hotel” over the road took the business on and now run it, as you can see, as an extension to the “Original” and as a tea room. I suspect that the sign writer who scribbled the message on the inside of the window – back to front – is the same person that annotated “Murphrys Seat”  that I blipped a few weeks ago. The apostrophe is the clue.


 There was an issue with the name of the guesthouse when they first opened about a year ago, it was called something like "The Rosslyn Chapel Guesthouse," the Chapel Trust accused them of breach of copyright so they had to change all their signage as a consequence. It was all a bit petty I felt, and so did they. Anyway, the local pigeon population obviously use the new sign for target practice. There’s no suggestion that the Roslin Institute will call in the heavy squad over the use of the name Dolly, though I’m sure that if they did, a certain Miss Parton will insist that the Institute posthumously change the name of Dolly, their now defunct sheep. If there is anyone out there ignorant of the history involved, I’m sure that I can create a blip to cover the topic.