Not so very long ago, our ancestors had to rely on their own two feet or horse-power to travel. A succession of developments in transport benefited not only trade and industry, but also gave people the means to escape the city to the seaside, countryside or suburbia.
Our latest story on Our Town Stories, Edinburgh by road, rail and waterway, is your historical passport to getting around town.
We’ve recently added a plethera of new stories to Our Town Stories.
Keep an eye on Our Town Stories for more stories appearing all the time!
We’re delighted that our friends at Edinburgh Zoo have shared with us their fascinating history and made it available on Our Town Stories.
Discover why the zoo’s logo is a penguin and where escapee sea lions were found in 1924. Take a nostalgic look at the Children’s Farm and meet the many famous animal faces Edinburgh Zoo has looked after over the years. Look behind the scenes at the zoo’s state-of-the-art Wildgenes Laboratory where today scientists undertake genetic analysis in support of conservation projects.
There are also some rather special Then & Now images to find on the Our Town Stories map…
We’ve another new story to look out for on Our Town Stories! John Kay’s story describes one of the most exciting times in our city’s history – the period known as the Scottish Enlightenment.
Kay just had to look out of his window onto Edinburgh’s High Street to observe some of the world’s leading thinkers in the fields of philosophy, medicine and politics going about their daily business. He could also observe some of these illustrious characters in the more intimate surroundings of his barber’s chair. His famous etchings are full of humour and satire and give us a remarkable record of the celebrities and intelligentsia of the time.
Read his story on Our Town Stories and discover what made this such a notable time in Scotland’s history.
Bessie Watson now appears in her very own story on Our Town Stories. 
The material from her ‘Life in a Box’ is handily brought together to tell how she started playing the bagpipes, joined the Women’s Social and Political Union and ended up playing her pipes in the 1909 Women’s Franchise Procession and Demonstration, proudly wearing the WSPU colours as the youngest suffragette.
Move the timeline on Our Town Stories to see other pictures of life in Edinburgh during the Edwardian period. Browse the list of historical maps and discover how Edinburgh’s townscape developed in the same period.
Bessie’s story on Our Town Stories is a great way to consolidate students’ exploration of the archival material in her Life in a Box in Whose Town?
Edinburgh Libraries has launched a brand new online heritage resource which tells the story of the city’s historical past. 
Our Town Stories (www.ourtownstories.co.uk) highlights some of the fantastic images from Capital Collections, and allows us bring them together with historical maps to tell the stories of people, places and life in the city.
Take a look at our fantastic Then & Now pictures and use the slider to play spot the difference. See buildings rise, or disappear, see ghosts from the past vanish and reappear, and townscapes grow. 
Use the same tool on our historical maps to see how the the city’s layout has developed since 1742.
The timeline ruler is another really useful tool which allows you to quickly zip to any time period between 1700 and the present day to see how Edinburgh looked at a particular point in history. Or you can use the dropdown menu to filter images on the map by century or by Then and Nows only.
See our full list of stories from the Story dropdown menu. The stories are built on the heritage collections of Edinburgh Libraries along with some fascinating tales contributed by partner organisations. Find out how fire-fighting has developed in Edinburgh since medieval times with a story by the Museum of Fire or take a literary tour across the map of Edinburgh with stories by Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature. We’ll be continuing to add stories to Our Town Stories over the coming months. If your school has a story to tell and would like to share it online, get in touch with informationdigital@edinburgh.gov.uk to discover how.
If you didn’t manage to make it to our Local and Family History Open Day at Central Library, here’s a taster of what you missed –
Visitors on the day were also given a sneak preview of our fantastic new heritage website, Our Town Stories. Take a look and tell us what you think…
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