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Do you remember the old Eastgate ?


Glen Mhor

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Do you remember the old Eastgate before the Eastgate Centre took over ?

Quite a thriving centre of small shops, pubs and other businesses - Rosie's cafe, Marios, Riggs the butchers, Wards the newsagent, Fraser & McColls, Ernie Mason's, the Plough Inn. Loads of character now sadly gone and lost forever.

:rotflmao:

Edited by Glen Mhor
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. But that whole area is a blank to me

That's also what a lot of people used to say when they piled out of the several pubs in old Eastgate.

Any IRA FPs remember the assistant jannie of the mid 60s by the name of Oddjob, partly because thast was his function in the school and partly because of his strong physical resemblance to the character of that name in Goldfinger? Oddjob would wander down Stephen's Brae at lunchtime, pop into Greewalds the bookies anf then on into Eastgate... the Plough or whatever. His pathway back up Stephen's Brae at 5 to 2 (or later) was never quite so straight.

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. But that whole area is a blank to me

That's also what a lot of people used to say when they piled out of the several pubs in old Eastgate.

Any IRA FPs remember the assistant jannie of the mid 60s by the name of Oddjob, partly because thast was his function in the school and partly because of his strong physical resemblance to the character of that name in Goldfinger? Oddjob would wander down Stephen's Brae at lunchtime, pop into Greewalds the bookies anf then on into Eastgate... the Plough or whatever. His pathway back up Stephen's Brae at 5 to 2 (or later) was never quite so straight.

Half my time at IRA you could find me in Greenwalds, mind you my fondest memory of eastgate was when we took the day off IRA, went further out to the cattle mart, opened all the corals and chased the cattle up into the town through eastgate. Might have been a few farmers chasing us at the time :rotflmao:

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Anyway back to the thread, can anyone tell me when the buildings in Eastgate were knocked down, ie the building where Marks is now, i can sort of remember the shops on that side, but the big car park seems to stick in me memory banks more.

I've got a feeling that "old" Eastgate began to disappear about 1979-80 to make way for Eastgate Mark 1 (which opened about 1982) and around the same time Falcon Square also went and was used as a car park before the new Falcon Square/ Eastgate 2 appeared more recently. Further out the road Hamilton's Marts (and the Lochgorm of beloved memory of pints of lager for 2/4d!) also went to make way for Safeways (of beloved memory before it got converted to Morrisons where the cafe isn't nearly as good!) which I think opened in 1999.

I don't have all the dates but the 20 years between about 1979 and 1999 saw that whoile Eastgate/ inner Millburn Road area blitzed and transformed.

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Anyway back to the thread, can anyone tell me when the buildings in Eastgate were knocked down, ie the building where Marks is now, i can sort of remember the shops on that side, but the big car park seems to stick in me memory banks more.

I've got a feeling that "old" Eastgate began to disappear about 1979-80 to make way for Eastgate Mark 1 (which opened about 1982) and around the same time Falcon Square also went and was used as a car park before the new Falcon Square/ Eastgate 2 appeared more recently. Further out the road Hamilton's Marts (and the Lochgorm of beloved memory of pints of lager for 2/4d!) also went to make way for Safeways (of beloved memory before it got converted to Morrisons where the cafe isn't nearly as good!) which I think opened in 1999.

I don't have all the dates but the 20 years between about 1979 and 1999 saw that whoile Eastgate/ inner Millburn Road area blitzed and transformed.

Your dates seem right, I moved to Elgin end of '77 and came back a couple years later to see changes, back a couple years later and even more. It seemed to progressively lose it's character over the years :rotflmao:

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Anyway back to the thread, can anyone tell me when the buildings in Eastgate were knocked down, ie the building where Marks is now, i can sort of remember the shops on that side, but the big car park seems to stick in me memory banks more.

I've got a feeling that "old" Eastgate began to disappear about 1979-80 to make way for Eastgate Mark 1 (which opened about 1982) and around the same time Falcon Square also went and was used as a car park before the new Falcon Square/ Eastgate 2 appeared more recently. Further out the road Hamilton's Marts (and the Lochgorm of beloved memory of pints of lager for 2/4d!) also went to make way for Safeways (of beloved memory before it got converted to Morrisons where the cafe isn't nearly as good!) which I think opened in 1999.

I don't have all the dates but the 20 years between about 1979 and 1999 saw that whoile Eastgate/ inner Millburn Road area blitzed and transformed.

Your dates seem right, I moved to Elgin end of '77 and came back a couple years later to see changes, back a couple years later and even more. It seemed to progressively lose it's character over the years :rotflmao:

I agree Inverness town centre's been spoilt , i have vague memories of Eastgate when i was little , i liked the variety of shops , i seem to remember an Ironmongers or outdoor shop & the Sheiling across the road & the washington soda fountain & another thing you'll not see nowadays is prams outside shops , sadly a sign of the times

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One of my schoolmates - Colin McNeil - designed the logo for the Eastgate Centre whilst still a High School pupil. He went on to become one of the main illustrators for the 2000AD / Judge Dredd books and graphic novels. As far as I know he still does that.

Wonder if I still have any old Chemistry jotters ... his teenage artwork would be all over them as we used to doodle during class with me drawing a bit, then him adding to it. My feeble efforts were quite forgettable, but you could see even then that he was a truly gifted artist.

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Maybe am getting confused, as there was a woodwork teacher called Mcneil too. If its the one am thinking of,

he used to call most people Charley. Think he was known as Charley Mcneil.

Edited by SMEE
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Yup, thats the fellow. Lived in Fairfield road, has an older brother as I remember (think he was in 5th or 6th year when we were in 1st or 2nd), and his father taught Tech at the High School (and yes, I do believe it was woodwork). He played alongside me in the rugby team and once took a shinty ball full on the nose during PE.

There was a competition for schoolkids to design the EC logo and he won it. His passion however was for drawing science fiction and after doing a little googling in the last 10 minutes or so, it appears he is still illustrating at 2000AD

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My feeble efforts were quite forgettable,

Would this be at Art or at Chemistry or both? :rotflmao:

lol - both really ... average at art, got my o grade chemistry but didnt go for higher. Geography was my subject (took it up as far as CSYS), closely followed by Modern Studies ... guess thats why I have always been interested in human geography, modern political geography, international relations etc.

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You lot are all SO young! I am still young enough to not qualify for concession at Hearts games (and several other meanies of SPL teams who demand concessions for over 65s only) but I can remember as a primary school child being taken for the day out into town and going to a Meal Store in Eastgate! Bags of flour etc., even dog biscuits, for sale in cloth sacks.

Who remembers that? Or am I havering?

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  • 3 weeks later...

You lot are all SO young! I am still young enough to not qualify for concession at Hearts games (and several other meanies of SPL teams who demand concessions for over 65s only) but I can remember as a primary school child being taken for the day out into town and going to a Meal Store in Eastgate! Bags of flour etc., even dog biscuits, for sale in cloth sacks.

Who remembers that? Or am I havering?

Wow shops like that went out with the ark , but one thing i do remember as a bairn is getting Broken biscuits in Woolies

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You lot are all SO young! I am still young enough to not qualify for concession at Hearts games (and several other meanies of SPL teams who demand concessions for over 65s only) but I can remember as a primary school child being taken for the day out into town and going to a Meal Store in Eastgate! Bags of flour etc., even dog biscuits, for sale in cloth sacks.

Who remembers that? Or am I havering?

Wow shops like that went out with the ark , but one thing i do remember as a bairn is getting Broken biscuits in Woolies

When I was a kid, Woolies' broken buscuits could be purchased for 1d (0.4p) a large bag.

As for the cloth sacks, I think that was something which just about went out as the 50s became the 60s. I just remember them. I think on Boys' Brigade threads I've already explained how Lamont Grtaham the former Captain of the 5th Company got the nickname "Scoobies".

When Lamont was a young trainee grocer in a place on Queensgate the name of which has escaped my memory, the message boys (bouchers) used to hide the scoop which he used to fill the customers' brown paper bags from the sacks. Under such circumstances, Lamont would ne heard to bemoan "Where's my scoobies?".... and a legend was born. Few in the BBs knew him as anything other than "Scoobs".

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You lot are all SO young! I am still young enough to not qualify for concession at Hearts games (and several other meanies of SPL teams who demand concessions for over 65s only) but I can remember as a primary school child being taken for the day out into town and going to a Meal Store in Eastgate! Bags of flour etc., even dog biscuits, for sale in cloth sacks.

Who remembers that? Or am I havering?

You certainly are not havering Lizi, I remember the Meal Store, it was next door to Fraser and McColls the ironmongers, unfortunately I do not remember the name.

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