30 Albany Street
1841 – 1943 John and Margery (neé South) Jopp and children
The Jopp family lived in the house from 1841. By 1900, only Elizabeth Jopp was living in the house, supported by a cook and one housemaid. In 1923, following the death of John Jopp, his widow, Mary, came to Edinburgh from Bournemouth to live with Elizabeth. Elizabeth died in 1929 and Mary in 1934. Mary’s daughter, M.E. Jopp, lived on in the house until her death around 1944.
1945 - ? Office of Home GuardThe Home Guard (initially "Local Defence Volunteers" or LDV) was a defence organisation of the British Army during the Second World War. Operational from 1940 until 1944, the Home Guard was composed of 1.5 million local volunteers otherwise ineligible for military service, such as those too young or too old to join the services, or those in reserved occupations. In Edinburgh (photo of Home Guard on canal) a whole platoon of the Home Guard was raised from the members of Murrayfield Golf Club and a meeting was arranged at the Royal Burgess Golf Club of volunteers able to provide cars or motor-cycles. ‘The Home Guard brought all parts of the community into contact with each other in ways that would not otherwise have been possible.’ In the 3rd Edinburgh, which was headquartered at Braid Hills Golf Club, David Pinkerton Fleming, a judge in the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary found himself on patrol one night with a volunteer who he had last seen in the dock!This may have been a temporary office for the demobilisation process.
1960s and 1970s Martin HouseIn the late 1950s Vivien Etheridge and Father Jock Dalrymple, then a priest at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, co-founded Martin House, a hostel for women, and their children, who had experienced abuse by their husbands. This pioneering project was one of the earliest ‘refuges’ to be established and operated into the 1970s.
Here a photo of Lord Provost Duncan Weatherstone presenting her with the Sir William Darling Bequest for good citizenship.
In 1996 the Women's Royal Voluntary Service moved their clothing store from their premises at Number 44 to here for a few years.
