About Annandale Street bus garage, Edinburgh

Built as an industrial hall for the Edinburgh Exhibition Association in 1922, and converted to a depot for Edinburgh Corporation buses in 1926.

Now the Central Depot of  Lothian Buses, the largest municipal bus company in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council (through Transport for Edinburgh) owns 91%, Midlothian Council 5%, East Lothian Council 3% and West Lothian Council 1%.

It is also the location of the company's headquarters, as well as that of parent company Transport for Edinburgh. It became the main city centre depot/HQ after the closure of Shrubhill depot, a few hundred metres to the east.

The main shed is the former exhibition building. Aligned west-east, its facade is the east end, which fronts onto Annandale Street. A modern shed has been added, adjacent to the south side of the larger main shed. It has multiple doors in the east end, behind which are inspection pits. As a city centre site, there is little open air bus parking space - what little there is (in the south east corner of the site, and on the forecourt of the main shed) is used for staff car-parking. Space in the south east corner was increased with the demolition of a bathroom store building on Annandale Street.

The Lothian Bus family consists of Lothian, East Coast Buses, Lothian Country, Airlink and Skylink, and NightBus. Its vehicles operate out of five garages at Central, Marine, Longstone, Musselburgh and North Berwick and they also have a maintenance workshop at Seafield.

It had been the understanding at the time of the Act of Union in 1707 that patronage, the landowner’s right to choose the minister, would not be imposed on the Church of Scotland – but this happened in 1712, leading to several secessions culminating in the Disruption of 1843 when the Free Church of Scotland broke away.
In 1874 patronage was repealed, and in 1900 the various dissident factions came together as the United Free Church of Scotland which merged back into the Church of Scotland in 1929. That year’s General Assembly was therefore unusually large, and it was held in of all places Annadale Street bus garage.

Photos: John Yellowlees; Lothian Buses - with thanks