Inside lost UK village that was replaced by huge shopping centre on roundabout

24 September 2023 , 16:48

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The site used to be home to two-storey workers' houses, a school and a tollhouse (Image: Capital Collections)

A shopping centre near Edinburgh has been a stalwart for residents for many years - but few know the large modern building sits on the site of a long-lost village.

Cameron Toll Shopping Centre, of the Savacentre chain, is located on the original site of a tollhouse built in the early 19th century. The old building was situated on the southern side of the Scottish capital near Blackford, and was used for collecting road tolls two centuries ago.

The toll house was part of a small patch of two-storey workers’ houses in an area now known as Sharpdale - or Cameron Bridge, after a small stone crossing which took travellers over the Pow Burn stream. Sharpdale was an often-used rest point on the road leaving Edinburgh southwards for over a century.

A popular local inn also rested on the site now covered by an Aldi, Argos, Boots, Clarks, CeX game store, and a rich variety of other retailers and shops fulfilling a resident’s every need. Victorian children were once educated in the infants school on the site, and thirsty horses enjoyed water from the drinking trough in the middle of the road.

The large and modern Cameron Toll Shopping Centre has taken place of the village (Capital Collections)

Hemmed in by a double railway bridge by the late 19th century, the tiny settlement survived until shortly after the Second World War when the houses were cleared during roadway improvements. Many of the existing residents were relocated to the newly-built Inch housing estate.

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With the former village swept away for what would become a major new roundabout, the "Sharpdale" name was lost to Edinburgh until the construction of the Cameron Toll Shopping Centre on a mostly vacant plot of land south of Lady Road in the 1980s. Driving into Cameron Toll from the northeast entrance will take you into the car park via the modern-day Sharpdale Loan - a poignant reminder of the historic little village that once stood nearby.

An old map of what Sharpdale once looked like (NLS Maps/Creative Commons)

Commenting on an early 1900s photograph of Sharpdale posted to the Lost Edinburgh page on Facebook, Hugh Mckay said: "This picture awakens old memories as my wife's family lived in one of these houses. Her grandparents lived there and later moved along the road to the cottages at Bridgend where her dad and his siblings were born."

David McLean