“The company was started by my father’s grandfather, also John Rex, who moved up to Edinburgh from Malton in Yorkshire in his twenties. I remember the ‘yard’ as they called it quite well. It was next door to the building where the dockers signed on for their day’s work. You climbed up a few steps to enter the small wooden office overlooking the yard.

“The premises moved [from Tower Place] to the new one in Western Harbour, just over the swing bridge, in the 1960s. My father sold the business to a Glasgow-based company called Woyka in the late 1960s but remained with them as the sales manager covering the East of Scotland for a few years.

“Eventually the Leith depot was closed and I remember the area being used to store large oil pipes for a while before the area was redeveloped for housing.” – Mike Rex [2017]

[see also 0266-001]

Donor number: 0266-002