Colony houses

Colony houses are a form of model housing built in Edinburgh, Scotland between 1850 and 1910 to provide homes for artisans and skilled working-class families. Each colony house was one of a pair of stacked flats, with the upper and lower units arranged so that each had its own front door on opposite sides of the building, giving each flat its own garden as well as four rooms and a separate outside toilet. The first development, Pilrig Model Buildings near Leith Walk, opened in 1850 and 1851, and after the Edinburgh Cooperative Building Company Limited was established in 1861 it went on to build eleven more colony sites across the city, completing more than two thousand houses by 1911. The developments grew out of philanthropic efforts by church leaders and cooperative builders responding to poor urban housing conditions at a time when mortgages were unavailable to most working people, aiming to provide affordable and healthy housing along with a strong sense of community.