Edinburgh - feedback please on Davidson's Mains

[mychinagirls]

Dear MNers in Edinburgh - I had some good feedback on here a few months ago regarding my property search in Edinburgh. I am still looking, and have found a good prospect in Davidson's Mains.

Any feedback on the area would be great, particularly from current or recent residents. I am a single parent, one dependent adult daughter. If anybody has a link to any good FB or other forums for that area, that would be a bonus - to help us get a sense of the local area.

TIA

You could try posting on EGG home and away - it's a fb site that's Edinburgh wide, but there's usually a lot of traffic so you would hopefully get some local responses.

Am in Edinburgh, but not Davidsons Mains - so if you have more general Edinburgh questions, fire away!

Davidson Mains has a good primary school, but it is very close to Muirhouse housing estate which is not one of the nicest in Edinburgh - nearby Silverknowes is adjacent to Muirhouse. You can get some anti-social behaviour. Traffic in Davidson Mains can be a nightmare during rush hour and you get the nearby high school kids at lunchtime taking over the local tescos and greggs.

It depends on what you are looking for in a property and your budget.

What do you want to know?

It's got shops, pubs, a bus route, a chip shop, several options for spiritual care....

You can walk down to the beach at Silverknowes, or use the cycle path to head into town or onto the water of leith.

There are no massive pockets of deprivation or big social issues. Property sizes vary and with this (generally) so does the economic status of the residents.

There is a good mix of residents from young families to elderly. Not many young adults pre-kids. But there will be some still living in their parental home. Suspect they tend to socialise elsewhere in the city and just aren't very visible.

The proximity to Muirhouse can make your car / house insurance more expensive. But it wouldn't be a deal breaker for me. I know the area well and I think living there would be fine if it's suburbia with local amenities you are after.

I was brought up next to Davidsons Mains and also recently worked there

i have to say I was pretty bewildered and disappointed with it now. I saw fighting, drunken harassment towards females. No one at work felt safe and it wasn’t the place I grew up in. My best friend has lived in Silverknowes all her life and she warned me about D.Mains, she was right.

I wouldnt recommend to a single female.

One of my colleagues lives there, he's got a lovely house in a quiet (very middle class) area and has never mentioned any issues with radges. The area's not for me as it's too suburban, just depends on what your priorities are.

Thank you all for your feedback and advice - and I learned a new word "radge"!

It's quite suburban and houses in the Royal High school catchment tend to carry a premium price because it's got a good reputation. If you don't need that then you might get more for your money elsewhere. There's a little set of shops with a small Tesco, costa coffee, Greggs, chemist etc so you don't have far to go for local amenities. The traffic at rush hour can be horrendous as people use it as a cut through to try and avoid Queensferry Road (but then the traffic all over Edinburgh is bad!) and I don't think the buses are actually that great - there's only really the 47 that goes into the city centre (the 21 goes to Leith and beyond) or you have to walk up to Queensferry Road for the 43 or one of the Stagecoach buses from Fife (but they don't cover all of the bus stops). 240630 LB Network Guide (MAP) A2 (lothianbuses.com)

Sometimes drive there. It seems to be over run with school kids at lunchtime and school finishing and the traffic gets really backed up along the main street with cars wanting to get to Queensferry Road. But Royal High is the catchment school so busy traffic may be the compromise you have to make. I've heard from my young teens that the nearby park is a no go area in the evening, but imagine many parks will be like that. I think it's probably better than Silverknowes as one poster had said is right next to Muirhouse - was that where some of trainspotting was meant to be?