Overview of Moredun

Moredun is a suburb of the City of Edinburgh located 3 miles (5 km) southeast of the city centre. It began as a scheme of temporary prefabricated houses ('prefabs'), built 1948-50 to the northeast of Gilmerton Road to meet the severe housing shortage at the time. These houses were built around an aluminium shell; an unusual building material but one which was cheaply available in large quantities having been produced for military aircraft construction during World War II. Four sixteen-storey blocks of flats were added in the northeast of the area (1965-67), with two further blocks built as a later phase on Moredunvale View. Despite a determined effort by the local authority to demolish the prefabs in the 1990s, a handful still remain (2010), even fewer still in their original form. Castle Rock Housing Association built new homes for rent in 1998. The district benefits from a community centre, a library and two churches (the Tron Kirk Moredun - transplanted in 1952 from the original Tron Kirk in Edinburgh's Old Town - and St. Barnabas Episcopal Church dating from 1950). Moredun and Ferniehill Primary Schools, located on Moredunvale Place and Moredun Park Road respectively, both closed in 2002 and were replaced by Craigour Park School a private-finance funded project on an adjacent site to the latter. Moredun House was an 18th-century mansion which once lay to the southwest of Gilmerton Road, but was demolished around 1920 to be replaced by the Murray Home for Scottish Veterans.