Sighthill Visit

Here are some pics that I took a few weeks ago back in early april. Me and Robbie went up Broomview House, (9th and 10th floor), then past the low-rise flats and shopping precinct onto Hermiston Court of which we went right up to the top floor (16th). All of the high and low-rise flats are to be demolished in the next few years as the estate has been highlighted as an area which holds some of the city's worst housing (some of the other areas highlighted were Leith Fort, Gracemount highrises and Pennywell Maisonettes) . Decanting of tenants currently living in Broomview House began around December 2006 and the block should be entirely empty in a few months time. The estate was nominated for demolition many years ago, but needless to say it never took place, this was because of problems in finding funding for the work.

View from the roundabout, Broomview House and Glenalmond Court can be seen.

Broomview House


View along deck-access balcony (9th floor)


Middle of the landing (9th floor)


Door to stairs


Lift


View along the landing, boarded up flats can be seen directly right


This is one of the sets of stairs in the block. This landing has obviously had a fire at some point. Also, graffiti has been covered up with paint, causing what are known as 'ghost patches'.



What looks like Rangers graffiti next to someone's front door


This is the view from the 9th floor over part of the adjacent Broomhouse estate.


Areas such as Parkhead, Hailesland, Dumbryden and Kingsknowe can be seen in this pic.


Wouldn't like to fall over the safety barrier....


View outwards across the 10th floor landing, Glenalmond Court can be seen further back.



View downwards and across the block from the 10th floor.


Empty flats with boarded-up windows


This particular flat was empty but had not yet been boarded up so I managed to get a shot of the inside through the kitchen window. One of the Calders high-rises can be seen through the livingroom window.


The lift was in a good condition, the worst damage I could see was a burnt CCTV camera and a missing number on the floor indicator. The lift was clean and didn't smell bad, which is a lot better than what I saw over in Weir Court 9 years ago.



Back on the ground. View upwards round the back of Broomview House, metal sheets can be seen covering the 1st and 2nd floor windows. No, I'm not mistaken, what looks like the 1st floor flat is actually on what is known as the ground floor, seems strange considering it is not directly on the ground.





Hermiston Court




The foyer


The lift, clean and efficient but dented.


The furthest the lift goes is the 15th floor. This is a blurry but fairly decent pic of the 15th floor landing. For security purposes, each set of 3 flats has a security door on their half of the landing. Beside the door there are buttons with the number of each flat behind the door, for entry to be granted, the button for the required flat has to be pressed. In other words, its like a second intercom.

Door to stairs

Lift landing doors looking like they've seen better days.

Right hand pic: front doors to the two-bedroom flats. Left hand pic: front door to one-bedroom flat, of which I think is of bad design as a break in could be made more easily (by smashing the glass).

Low-rise flats

The low-rise flats of Sighthill Green and Sighthill Court. These are also due to be demolished, however there has been some objections from residents as they say they are not bad to live in and many residents have bought their homes from the council (as can be seen from the different styles of windows). The flats were built as part of seperate schemes, some were built at the same time of Broomview House and the others built at the same time of the other 3 tower blocks.