Currie
- For people named Currie, see Currie (surname)
Currie is a suburb of the Scottish capital Edinburgh. It lies to the far south west of the city, between Juniper Green (NE) and Balerno (SW) on the Lanark Road, approximately 6 miles from the city centre.
There is no accepted derivation of the name Currie but it is possibly from the Scottish Gaelic curagh/curragh, a mossy or boggy dell or the Brythonic word curi, a hollow. The neighbouring suburb of Balerno derives its name from Scottish Gaelic, while the Pentland Hills derive their name from Brythonic, so either is possible.
Currie is served by bus and by Curriehill train station on the Glasgow-Edinburgh via Shotts Line. Currie is close to the City of Edinburgh bypass and is bordered by the Union Canal to the north and the Water of Leith to the south. Edinburgh Airport is located approximately 4 miles north of Currie and the M8 motorway to Glasgow is around 2 miles north.
In 1995 the population of Currie was 6343 and it contained 2300 houses, 850 of them less than 20 years old.
History
The earliest record of a settlement in the Currie area is a Bronze Age razor (1800 BC) found at Kinleith Mill and the stone cists (500 BC) at Duncan's Belt and Blinkbonny. There are a few mentions of this area in mediaeval and early modern documents. One of the first is when Robert of Kildeleith became Chancellor of Scotland in 1249. Kildeleith means Chapel by the Leith, and survives today as Kinleith. Robert the Bruce gave Riccarton as a wedding present in 1315 and in 1392 the land passed to the family of Bishop Wardlaw. In 1612 the land went to Ludovic Craig, a Senator of the College of Justice. In 1818 it passed to the female line and became the property of the Gibson-Craigs.
There has been a Christian community in the area for more than a 1000 years. In 1018, the archdeacons of Lothian set up their headquarters in the area. John Bartholomew's Civic and Ecclesiastical maps of the 13th century do not show Currie, but the Index of Charters 1309-1413 records Currie as being 'favourite hunting grounds' for the Lords and Knights of Edinburgh Castle. A settlement began to take shape around Currie Kirk and the main Lanark Road, which was the main route south and continues to be known as 'The Lang Whang'.
The period 1921-1951 brought great changes with the building of more council houses in Currie and private building along Lanark Road. Wider scale development began in the late 1960s/early 1970s. House builders started to promote Currie as a pleasant commuting suburb of Edinburgh and much house building took place to the north of Lanark Road West. Currie High School was constructed on its present site in 1960 and extensively refurbished and renewed in 1997. The physical topography has ensured that the original historic core to the south of Lanark Road West including the Water of Leith has remained undeveloped. In March 1972 the historic centre of Currie was declared a Conservation Area.
Currie's community newspaper, shared with Balerno, Baberton and Juniper Green, is The Currie and Balerno News: [1]
Education
The earliest record of education in the area is contained in the Minutes of Edinburgh Town Council in 1598, when Baillie Lawrence Henderson was sent to "the toun o Currie to help the gentlemen of the Parish select a Schoolmaister"; however it is not stated where the school was situated. In 1694, the heritors appointed a Mr Thomson to teach scholars in the Church until Thomas Craig of Riccarton found a place for the building of a school and house for the schoolmaster. The foundations of the school were laid in 1699. The school and school house cost 500 merks. and the salary of the Schoolmaster, a Mr Thomson, was 20 pounds Scots per year.
Currie is served by Currie High School, Nether Currie Primary School and Currie Primary School, formed by an amalgamation in 2005 of Curriehill Primary School and Riccarton Primary School which shared neighbouring campuses.
From the 1970s onwards, Heriot-Watt University moved from its city centre location to occupy the lands of the former Riccarton Estate, gifted to the university by the then Midlothian District Council. The move has now been completed and the main campus of Heriot-Watt University occupies and manages a superb wooded area with enough space for future expansion.