49 Albany Street

1891 – today Albany Deaf Church and Deaf and Dumb Benevolent Society (now Deaf Action)

In 1760, the world’s first regular school for deaf and dumb children was established by Thomas Braidwood in Edinburgh at St Leonard’s Hill in what is now Dumbiedykes Road (named after the deaf scholars who were seen signing away along the then unnamed road). Also in Edinburgh, in 1830, the first Deaf-led church services began. It began through a group of Deaf adults deciding they wished a place to meet for prayers and social contact. The group met first in a small room in Lady Stair’s Close, forming themselves as the Edinburgh Deaf and Dumb Benevolent Society.

Alexander Blackwood (photograph), who had been a day pupil at the Edinburgh Deaf and Dumb Institution, was an energetic member of the Society and in 1835 he led a group that established the world's first-ever benevolent society supporting deaf and dumb people. By 1878, when the Society operated from Picardy Place, around 200 deaf and dumb people were known to the Society.

In 1889 the Society bought Number 49 and commissioned the architect, Robert Wilson, was commissioned to re-vamp the interior, creating a church at the rear, a caretaker’s residence, offices, reading room, lecture room, and library. The layout of the church was specifically designed to meet the visual needs of its congregation, with pews facing the pulpit and no central aisle. Services were conducted by Alexander Blackwood as Deaf lay preachers could lead services in Scotland; unlike in England where the insistence on preachers to be ordained meant that it was harder to develop services for the Deaf. The Society provided more than spiritual sustenance. In 1892, chess, gymnastic and debating clubs were run.

In the 1900s, the Albany Deaf Church raised £50–60 annually to support the work of Mrs Annetta Mills, the wife of an American missionary, who, in 1887, established the first Deaf school in China, in Dengzhou, Shandong province. Mrs Mills' school exerted a strong influence on deaf education in China into the first half of the 20th century. In 1924 the Society purchased Number 51 and combined the two buildings.

Many societies, including a Bowling Club and a Dramatic Club, were formed and in 1922-23 the Albany Deaf and Dumb Football Club were the Scottish Deaf Cup winners.

In 1924 the Society purchased Number 51, and combined the two buildings.

In 1935, the Centenary Gathering of the Society was reported on in The Scotsman: Over three hundred deaf mutes - men, women, and children - entertained each other in the Albyn Rooms , Queen Street , Edinburgh , on Saturday evening. To anyone with little knowledge of the deaf and dumb it was an extraordinary sight to see, in a single building , so many people talking to one another-by signs and dancing together silently or to hear the laughter, pitched to an unusual key , which punctuated the mute converse . Most of those present could not hear, in any degree, the band which played during the evening, but they could feel the vibrations of the music on the floor , and as the deaf mute has a particularly keen sense of rhythms they found no difficulty in enjoying themselves.’

In the 1970s the Society changed its name to the Edinburgh and East of Scotland Society for the Deaf and that decade saw the opening of a bar in the buildings run by the Albany Social and Sports Club. The premises were refurbished in 1995, with a number of interior alterations, and, in January 2011, services at the Albany Deaf Church moved to Greenside Parish Church., and the church became the Society's learning centre. The organisation was renamed Deaf Action in 2003.