What is meant by a Main Door Flat in a Tenement in either Glasgow or Edinburgh?

[Shosha1]

I've never lived in a city, but my DB is looking for a flat in one of the above cities.

Some I've been nosing at are advertised as Main Door Flats. Does that mean that only you can use the door to the street? If so how do other people get to the flats above?

I've been looking in Google Earth, how do you get into the 'middle' of the square blocks of Tenements? Through the flats, or is there an entrance I cant see?

It means your flat has a door to the street that only your flat can access rather than having a door from your flat into a shared close (which then has a door to the street).

Access to shared back gardens is generally through a door in the shared close. This is often where the bins are (more often in Glasgow- shared bins are often in the street in Edinburgh).

In Main Door flats, there's usually a separate door next to it that leads to a shared close for the flats above.

Sorry what do you mean by a close? Believe it or not I am Scots but left as a child and lived in a little village

Sometimes a main door flat will have its own back door to the garden or sometimes a small private back garden of its own. In Edinburgh anyway I dont know about Glasgow.

A close is the name for block of tenement flats (actually more the communal stairwell).

Newer flats would just be referred to as flats.

The 'close' is the shared common entrance and hallway, which has stairs to reach the upper level flats. We have main door flats in our tenement - they are the ground floor flats and have private front gardens and private front doors. The close is in the middle of the two main door flats, and there is no door from the close to the flats.

The ground floor flats both have access to the back garden directly from their back rooms. There's a back door in the close that those of us in the upstairs flats use to get out to the garden.

Does that help?

The close is just the shared alleyway in this case out to the back garden. Or back 'green"

It's the ground floor flat which has it's own front door. The other flats have a separate door into the close

It's pronounced as in 'close to me' not 'close the schools'.

Thank you. That makes sense now. So if the row has three doors the middle one will be the communal door to the upstairs flats?

@Shosha1

Thank you. That makes sense now. So if the row has three doors the middle one will be the communal door to the upstairs flats?

Yes, exactly that.

I've lived in quite a few different tenements as have my friends and I don't think in any of them the garden at the back has been used, which is a shame really. I would make sure that you ask what the mouse situation is like before moving in as some parts of edinburgh (Georgie) are riddled in the old buildings.

Yes @Sosha1

I lived in a tenement in Glasgow with a nice back garden. Neighbours would sit in it when sunny and also hang their washing out. Never saw a mouse.

I live in Edinburgh and never heard it referred as a close. People call it 'the stair' and in tenements there's a shared door to the street from the stairwell with the flat doors inside and the back door to the communal garden if there is one. Main door flats don't use the stair and have a private door to access the flat straight from the street. Generally seen as more desirable. They are usually ground floor and sometimes have their own back door to gardens and sometimes a little private garden.

To add the 2 doors, the stairwell and the one main door are next door to each over sometimes only separated by a wall others by a room. Where there's a room beside the stair it can be a little noisy - bare that in mind. A good friends bedroom is next to the stair door and she often gets woken late at night

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-66986970.html this is the one he wanted, but lost because of lockdown, now looking for something similar in either city.

Completely off the point when it comes to flat-hunting, so apologies, OP, but your question reminds me of the children's rhyme about Edinburgh bodysnatchers, Burke and Hare:
www.royal-mile.com/famous-scots/burke-and-hare.html

It shows how the words close and stair were commonly used.