[We are told the community hall is now a very upmarket Airbnb. After we left it had become the office of the architect Roland Wedgewood. So the hall has an interesting history of its own.]
The quadrangle had an empty space between the caretaker’s house and the community hall with its clock tower. This gap opened directly onto the playground of the local primary school. The voices of children at play lent the whole village an air of innocence. The sense of quiet security wrapped itself round me when I woke on my first morning in the village. The windows of our flat looked on to the Water of Leith river as it ran silent broad & shallow from one waterfall to another. Below in the reedy shallows, twelve ducks quacked & babbled amiably; the only other noise was the tolling of the bell of a tiny mission church in its 15th century house at the foot of Bells Brae.