BT Training Centre - Muirhouse Green

BT Training Centre

Muirhouse Green

This view looks into the grounds of the BT Training Centre at Muirhouse Green. Presumably the many telegraph poles in the grounds are used for training workers how to tackle work on the telegraph poles to be found around Scotland.

I have read about how this site was used during World War 2, but I cannot recall the details. When I find them again, I'll add them to this page - or perhaps somebody else will e-mail me and tell me first!

- Peter Stubbs: May 31, 2007

Recollections

Willie McAlpine

Lanark, Lanarkshire, Scotland

Thank you to Willie McAlpine who wrote:

Post Office Regional Engineering Training Centre

Poles and Hangers

"Curiosity led me to your page and the photo of the old Post Office Regional Engineering Training Centre that became the BT School.

The poles were for training purposes and the people attending those courses used the two large hangars seen directly behind the pole field.

The modern looking building to the left of the hangars was built in the early -1960s. I was a student there in 1970."

Wooden Huts

"Directly across the road from this building was an array of interlinked wooden huts that were typical of army war-time installations.

Behind them there was an enormous playing field area with several football pitches. All the wooden huts were demolished around 1981 and the then European Economic Community built a spectacular vocational school for the Post Office. I believe that this was part of a regional development programme

So at its peak the school could deal with a considerable number of courses and students. However after privatisation the decline started and I believe that the new EEC building was sub-let and I was told that an insurance company was using part of it."

1980-85

"I worked in the school from 1980 to 1985 so I know all about that time.

It was clear that the original wooden huts were a war-time army installation. My judgement is that they were unlikely to have been barracks.

Although they were pretty rough classrooms in 1980 when I worked in them I suspect that they had always been classrooms or offices."

Rocket Site

"I've been told by several people at that time that in the period immediately after WW2 the site was used by the army as some sort of rocket site. There was the suggestion that the river Forth was a handy safeguard for wayward activity.

I never had any reason to doubt what I was told and assumed that this activity started during WW2. Indeed after the new school was built by the EEC the old playing fields flooded and became a wet land haven for the bird life from the Forth.

When this was eventually investigated it was found that the water source was an old abandoned water pipe that had fed a hut in the far north corner of the site. This pretty much confirmed everyone's suspicion that at one time the whole site must have been filled with huts. Given this it must have been a big affair."

Willie McAlpine, Lanark, Lanarkshire, Scotland: 27 January 2017