Cover story

Backblip because tired

After visiting the chemist for better pain meds I walked home the long way in sunshine, and spotted this old and rather worn utility cover.  It's quite small, only six or seven inches in diameter.  Perhaps it's an access port for an air valve or something like that.

Of the company, Drummond of Loanhead, I failed to find very much of anything at all.  However, if you visit Loanhead, on the far side of the Ramsay Colliery bing you find Foundry Lane where engineering company MacTaggart Scott has a substantial site.  I visited there for a Solidworks seminar once – I turned up slightly overdressed, and the other delegates mistook me for the presenter.

A bit to the south though was the Loanhead Foundry, who cast in iron and brass.  The small facility was, I think, at the end of where Hunter Court now is.  Hunter Court is just off Hunter Avenue, which for the most part was a continuation of Foundry Lane, so my first guess that this was Drummond's foundry – except that it closed in about 1910.

What I also found was that another foundry, the Station Iron Works, was present on the oldest part of the MacTaggart Scott site at the turn of the century.  Those buildings are still extant, so I thought it equally possible that this was Drummond's foundry – except that the National Commercial Directory of Scotland lists MacTaggart, Scott & Co. at the Station Iron Works.

Then, in the 1909 Professions and Trades Directory of Edinburgh & Leith I came across a Henry Drummond, in the business of Plumbers, Gas Fitters and Brass Founders, based at Fountain Place in Loanhead.  This is probably the best lead I have.