The Story of 13 Albert Terrace, Morningside, Edinburgh
From its beginnings in 1884 to its present life: a house of continuity and refinement.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Edinburgh was experiencing a building boom. The New Town was expanding, and families were seeking homes that combined modern convenience with traditional Scottish craftsmanship. It was in this context that No. 13 was conceived.
This view of nearby Morningside Road has changed little since the nineteenth century
In 1884 the ground at the southern end of Dove Loan was laid out for building by William Orman. He did not prosper: Orman was declared bankrupt, and in 1886 his trustee sold the house, then 4 Albert Gardens, to William Riach, an Edinburgh journalist. It stood on the last plot of the row, with open views across the southern hills.
In 1927, Colonel Bruce Turnbull, recently retired from the Indian Army, purchased the house as the new family home. The Turnbulls established it as a warm, cultured centre of family life, complete with Indian rugs, a black-and-gold gong for mealtimes, and a three-part copper Tibetan trumpet from Colonel Turnbull's service with the 23rd Sikh Pioneers.
During the Second World War, the house became a place of welcome and refuge. The Turnbulls took in an Austrian girl from the Kindertransport, as well as an aunt and her Canadian Air Force husband. Colonel Turnbull also served Edinburgh as a Town Councillor for nearly twenty years, becoming Bailie, Senior Magistrate, and Convener of Parks.
In 1968, the Turnbull family sold the house to Brian and Dorothy Fiddes, closing four decades of Turnbull ownership. Dorothy had herself been a child evacuee of the war, and their son Nick grew up in the house.
The Complete Story
Setting and Surroundings: Dove Loan
Though today a quiet side‑street, Albert Terrace once pulsed with movement and trade. In its early decades, Dove Loan carried travellers and traders out of the city. At the time, the lane was a principal route out of Edinburgh, branching from Morningside Road toward the old weaver's village of Tipperlinn. It was also the route taken by the ceremonial Riding of the Marches, the annual parade on horseback that thundered past its stone façades, marking the civic boundary in ceremony and celebration, a pageant still echoed in the Borders towns today.
Over time, the lane became enclosed by gardens and villas, the old roadway subsiding into the peace of suburbia, yet the bones of the old route remain visible in the line of the cobbles as it wends toward the south.
Dove Loan, the historic route that became Albert Terrace
The First Owners (1886–1927)
The ground on the south side of Dove Loan was taken for building in December 1884 by William Orman, under a ground annual to Alexander James Paterson. Orman appears to have developed the four houses along the lane, first addressed as 1–4 Albert Gardens, continuing the line of the grand Regency row of 1–9 Albert Terrace next door. Those earlier houses are now Category B listed, distinguished by their ashlar façades, classical detailing and the pair of decorative storks poised at either end of the roofline.
The title records for the house, which trace every owner since 1886
Family tradition held that the builder created the last and finest plot for his own retirement. Regrettably the truth is less a little sad. The project bankrupted Orman, and in May 1886 the trustee on his estate sold the nearly-completed Number 4, our house, to William Riach, journalist, who moved here from Millerfield Place. By the early 1900s the four houses had been renumbered as 10 to 13 Albert Terrace. My researches have failed to establish whether the rare surname is coincidental or connected to the esteemed Scottish architect Alan Reiach (of Reiach & Hall) who set up his first practice at 7 Albert Terrace.
William Riach died in about 1908, and in February 1909 his widow Jane Riach sold the house to Hamilton Maxwell, a Writer to the Signet, an Edinburgh solicitor. He owned it for eighteen years before selling, in May 1927, to Colonel Bruce Turnbull and his wife Jessie for £2,950.
The Turnbull Years (1927–1968)
In May 1927 Colonel Bruce Turnbull, recently retired from the Indian Army, and his wife Jessie bought 13 Albert Terrace from Hamilton Maxwell for £2,950, and moved in from Tipperlinn Road nearby. His wife, Jessie Barbara Allan (Ker) Turnbull, came from a distinguished Edinburgh and East Lothian family of stockbrokers and ministers, and the couple quickly established the house as a warm, cultured centre of family life.
Colonel Bruce Turnbull
Archive: Michael Turnbull
Life in the House
The Turnbull home was noted for its quiet order and understated elegance. The hall was furnished with Indian rugs, and a black‑and‑gold gong signalled mealtimes. A particularly striking heirloom was a three‑part copper Tibetan trumpet, brought back by Colonel Turnbull from the Younghusband Expedition to Tibet (1904), a vivid reminder of his service with the 23rd Sikh Pioneers in the Indian Army.
Their children, Barbara (b. 1912), Ronald (b. 1914), Hester (b. 1917), and Tom (b. 1925), grew up at No. 13 after the family's return from India. It was a lively, gracious household, rooted in traditional values yet marked by a global sensibility.
During the Second World War, the house became a place of welcome and refuge. The Turnbulls took in an Austrian girl from the Kindertransport, as well as an aunt and her Canadian Air Force husband. The home at 13 Albert Terrace thus stood, in a turbulent era, as a haven of decency and generosity.
Colonel Turnbull: Soldier and Civic Leader
From this address, Colonel Turnbull became a familiar figure in Edinburgh's civic life. Elected to the Town Council for the Morningside Ward in 1933, he served for nearly twenty years until his death in 1952. His posts included:
- Bailie (1944–1947)
- Senior Magistrate (1946–1947)
- Judge of Police
- Convener of Parks, championing Edinburgh's playing fields and green spaces
- Chairman of the Civic Amenities Committee (from July 1950)
He was awarded the C.B.E. in 1937 and appointed Deputy Lieutenant of the City of Edinburgh. Neighbours remembered him as formal but approachable, a man who combined military discipline with civic warmth.
Colonel Turnbull died at home on 21 January 1952, aged seventy‑one. His obituary in the Scotsman recorded both his distinguished career and the fact that he had died "at his home, 13 Albert Terrace."
Indian Hockey's First President
Before he came to Albert Terrace, Bruce Turnbull had shaped a sport on the other side of the world. Born in Poona in 1880 and educated at Merchiston Castle School, then housed in Merchiston Tower a few streets from Albert Terrace, and at Sandhurst, he served as India's Inspector of Physical Training from 1922 to 1926. When the Indian Hockey Federation was founded in 1925, he became its first President.
In 1928 he became India's first representative on the council of the International Hockey Federation, and helped coach the Indian team that won the country's first Olympic hockey gold in Amsterdam that summer, the team of Dhyan Chand. He umpired Olympic hockey matches at both the 1928 and 1936 Games, and from 1935 to 1937 was President of the Scottish Hockey Association.
Sources: Olympedia and The Hockey Museum.
The Turnbull Legacy
Ronald Turnbull and Maria Thereza do Rio Branco on their wedding day, London, May 1940
Archive: Michael Turnbull
Niels Bohr
His widow Jessie continued to live there for some years before moving to Chamberlain Road, where she died in 1966.
Their son Ronald Bruce Turnbull (1914–2004) grew up at No. 13. After Fettes, Cambridge and a spell as a journalist on London's Evening Standard, he was recruited to the Special Operations Executive. In May 1940, weeks after the German invasion of Denmark, he married Maria Thereza do Rio Branco, the daughter of a Brazilian diplomat in Copenhagen. From 1941 to 1945 he ran SOE's Danish operation from the British Legation in Stockholm, the link between the Danish resistance and London. His obituary credits him with persuading the physicist Niels Bohr to escape occupied Denmark in 1943. Bohr was flown from Stockholm to RAF Leuchars in Fife in the bomb bay of an unarmed Mosquito, and barely survived the flight. Turnbull also sent London drawings of a V-1 flying bomb that had crashed on Bornholm, some ten months before the V-1 attacks on Britain began. He made the same flight himself several times. He was appointed OBE, made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog, and awarded the American Medal of Freedom. Maria Thereza was killed in a car accident in September 1945. Their son Michael, born in 1941, later came to live at No. 13 with his grandparents.
A House of Welcome
During the Second World War, the Turnbulls took in an Austrian girl who had come to Britain on the Kindertransport; the family came to regard her as an adopted aunt. They also gave a home to an aunt and her Canadian Air Force husband.
After the war, in the late 1940s, the Colonel's grandson Michael arrived from Brazil, aged about seven, to live with his grandparents. He had flown alone via Recife, Dakar and Lisbon in a converted Lancaster bomber, wearing a suit with plus-fours that his father thought the height of British fashion. His grandfather met him in London and took him north by train. Much of what we know of the Turnbull years at No. 13 comes from Michael's later memoirs.
A New Chapter: The 1968 Purchase
In 1968 the Turnbull family sold the house to Brian and Dorothy Fiddes, closing four decades of Turnbull ownership.
There was a quiet echo in the sale. Dorothy had herself fled the war as a child: a British girl living in Belgium when war broke out, she was evacuated and walked for days to the coast with a large group of children to reach safety in Britain, and was fostered on a farm until the war ended. Almost thirty years later she came to live in a house that had sheltered a Kindertransport child.
Their purchase began a new era of care and continuity at No. 13.
A House of Continuity
From its beginnings in 1884 to its present life, 13 Albert Terrace has been a house of continuity and refinement, a place that has sheltered builders, soldiers, civic leaders, refugees, and families across more than a century. Its walls have absorbed the sound of the gong for supper, the laughter of children, the quiet of post‑war Edinburgh evenings, and the hum of new generations finding their own rhythm within its rooms.