Pictures published for first time show Dundee landmarks in 1987
These images provide an amazing insight into life in the city.
They were taken by DC Thomson photographers while out on other assignments and marked a shift in photographic practice from monochrome to colour.
For nearly 40 years, the collection of colour slides was largely forgotten about.
They were digitised after gathering dust.
They show the brown blockwork of the Wellgate Centre.
Vanished views of Tayside House and the Stakis Earl Grey Hotel are captured alongside the brutalist architecture of the Overgate shopping mall.
The photos hark back to the days before the City Square was pedestrianised.
Some scenes have changed beyond recognition.
Others have changed very little. City Square There was a pedestrian crossing on the High Street in 1987. Image: DC Thomson.
A view across the pedestrian crossing towards the City Square and Caird Hall.
On the left is Burton menswear and the Pronuptia bridal store.
Cathay Palace Chinese restaurant replaced Café Val d'Or when it closed. Perth Road Cars driving down the Perth Road in 1987. Image: DC Thomson.
Looking down the Perth Road in November 1987.
The TSB bank was still there.
Do you remember the large bright-yellow bins? City Churches A view of the Dundee City Churches. Image: DC Thomson.
Little has changed in this scene from the Nethergate in March 1987.
A group of people walk past the City Churches.
There is a taxi rank on the right hand side and in the distance you can make out a Tayside Region Volvo Ailsa blue-and-white double-decker bus. Overgate Centre The exterior of the Overgate Centre in 1987. Image: DC Thomson.
A high view of the old Overgate shopping mall including the concrete walkway.
It was looking rundown and neglected.
What Every Woman Wants can be seen in the background, which in 1987 was selling 'baggy traditional hip hugging marble wash' jeans for £9.99. Tay Road Bridge gardens There is an individual sat on a bench reading. Image: DC Thomson.
A magnificent floral display at the Tay Road Bridge Gardens.
The circular garden under the approach road was surrounded by benches.
Pipe bands used to play in the gardens. Dundee Howff This picture shows part of the graveyard that was surrounded by trees. Image: DC Thomson.
The Howff is a historian's own heaven.
There are 1,751 gravestones in the cemetery, which came into existence in 1564.
There are many more people, however, buried there. Tayside House Tayside House standing beside the Tay Hotel in March 1987. Image: DC Thomson.
The Tay Hotel on Whitehall Crescent alongside Tayside House.
Tayside House was demolished in 2013 and the Tay Hotel is now the Malmaison.
Dundonian entertainer George Duffus gave a talk to Dundee Rotaract club about what makes different people laugh in the Tay Hotel in March 1987. RRS Discovery The Discovery alongside another ship in the dock. Image: DC Thomson.
The Discovery was still in a wet dock in March 1987.
Dundee Heritage Trust paid just £1 to the Maritime Trust for the Discovery and she arrived at Victoria Dock in April 1986 from London's St Katharine's Dock.
She returned home after 85 years spent away. Post Office The Renaissance structure with its detailed columns and cornices. Image: DC Thomson.
The three-storey former Dundee Post Office building in Meadowside.
In 1987 a first class stamp cost 18p.
The interior became Circus Nightclub in October 2001 after closure and London Nightclub and Cubic Nightclub under subsequent ownership changes. Wellgate Centre An exterior view of the Wellgate shopping centre. Image: DC Thomson.
The brown blockwork entrance of the Wellgate Centre in March 1987.
There are signs on the frontage for British Home Stores and Mothercare.
Every Dundonian will recall the Wellgate waterfall, which was made up of curtains of plastic wires which water flowed down and trickled into a pool below. Stakis Earl Grey Hotel Stakis Earl Grey Hotel in 1987. Image: DC Thomson.
Construction of the Stakis Regency Casino and Stakis Earl Grey Hotel.
The casino offered roulette, blackjack, three-card poker and slot games with a bar and restaurant providing food and drink into the wee small hours.
The 129-bedroom hotel occupied an unrivalled site on the banks of the Tay with a stunning vista across to Fife framed by the bridges. Shopping centre There are people walking past the shop windows. Image: DC Thomson.
Another view of the Overgate shopping centre from February 1987.
The Shoe People, Lunn Polly and Home Charm are among the shops in the picture.
In the background is the William Low supermarket. Tay Road Bridge car park Tay Road Bridge car park in 1987. Image: DC Thomson.
Several cars in the waterfront car park.
You would park there to go to the Olympia swimming pool.
The large gasometer from Dundee Gas Works can be seen in the background. McManus Galleries Dundee McManus Galleries. Image: DC Thomson.
Cars coming past the McManus Galleries in March 1987.
The one-way system that was in place is completely different these days.
Rabbie Burns is seen surveying the passing show. Royal Exchange Assurance There is a clock above the entrance sign. Image: DC Thomson.
The Royal Exchange Assurance building on Panmure Street.
It was originally built in 1957.
The bus stop adverts include one for Outspan oranges. St Andrew's Parish Church The exterior of the church in 1987. Image: DC Thomson.
Cars parked along the pavement outside St Andrew's Church in King Street.
St Andrew's Church was completed in 1774.
When it was built in the 18th Century the area was semi-rural. DC Thomson The headquarters of DC Thomson. Image: DC Thomson.
The foundation stone was laid for the DC Thomson building in 1904.
Christened 'Courier Buildings' and dominating the west side of Albert Square, the company's new home was one of the most advanced buildings in Europe.
The exterior red sandstone cladding came from Dumfries. The Steeple A floral display in 1987. Image: DC Thomson.
A flower bed in front of The Steeple Church.
It was one of a number of floral displays across the city centre.
The picture may well evoke nostalgia for the days when the streets were clean. Chamber of Commerce The A-listed building in 1987. Image: DC Thomson.
Dundee Chamber of Commerce in March 1987.
These were the days when you would see a red phone box on every street.
The building is now home to the Brewdog pub and a function suite. Sinderins The parting of the roads at Sinderins. Image: DC Thomson.
The Sinderins junction where Perth Road and Hawkhill join together.
The tenement gable was refurbished in 1987.
The traffic system is the same today. Dundee Law View of Dundee showing the Law. Image: DC Thomson.
A view looking over the city to Dundee Law.
The summit is the highest point in Dundee and includes the war memorial.
It was formally unveiled by Sir Iain Hamilton in 1925. City Chambers Looking across Dundee City Square in March 1987. Image: DC Thomson.
The City Square filled with cars before it was closed off to traffic.
The Thomas Cook travel agent is on the right of the City Chambers.
Littlewoods, Boots and H. Samuel stores are in the background. Dundee High School Image shows the exterior of the high school. Image: DC Thomson.
Looking towards Dundee High School from McManus Galleries.
Cars are parked in the playground.
There are now bus stops outside the school railings. Concrete walkway There are several pedestrians walking past the shops. Image: DC Thomson.
The concrete walkway lined with shops in the Overgate Centre in 1987.
You can make out the signs for Mothercare and Birrell's Shoe Shop.
It's the final image in our stroll through Dundee in 1987.
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Telegraph
4 days ago
- Telegraph
‘My Nazi ancestors looted her Jewish ancestors. Now we are best friends'
The attic of the family inn near Braunau am Inn in Upper Austria had always been off limits to Katharina Mayrhofer. 'It was forbidden,' explains the 38-year-old artist. 'My mother wasn't allowed to go in there either, even as an adult.' But in the late 2000s, while looking to renovate her student accommodation, Mayrhofer asked her grandfather, Josef Kaltenhauser, who owned the inn, if she could check the furniture she had heard was stashed upstairs. To her surprise, Kaltenhauser agreed. 'He liked the idea that I restored old things,' says Mayrhofer, then a student of classical sculpture. What she discovered in that attic would lead to a restoration – but also to uncovering dark family secrets as well as forming new life-long friendships. Her discovery has also now become the focus of a new exhibition in London – although one that's unlikely to have found favour with her grandfather. The exhibition, at London's Wiener Holocaust Library, is on looted goods. Mayrhofer remembers that as soon as she entered the attic with her mother, Sabine, 'I felt something was really wrong… I saw this table and immediately knew it couldn't have belonged to our family.'' She had studied furniture design as part of her course and recognised that the black lacquered writing table, with elegantly tapered turned legs supported by an ornate stretcher, did not originate from this region of western Austria, which borders Germany. 'We're farmers, innkeepers, rural people. I immediately looked at my mother and said, 'What's this doing here?' I could tell it was from a time before art nouveau. It had to have belonged to a wealthy family, but not our family.' Her mother's reaction compounded her shock. Sabine Mayrhofer, a history and German teacher, said she thought it had to do with the family's Nazi past and had an inkling that the table might have come from Schloss Ranshofen, the grand former monastery on the edge of Braunau. 'I knew nothing about my family history until then,' says Mayrhofer. 'Nobody ever spoke about it.' But that day, she explains, she knew she wanted to find the truth, no matter how dark and shameful. 'I wanted to dig as deep as I could.' Mayrhofer's immediate research through questioning her family revealed that her great-grandfather, teacher Josef Kaltenhauser Snr, had been a secret member of the Austrian National Sociality party, the NSDAP, which was outlawed between 1934 and the Anschluss in 1938. On March 12, just hours after Nazi troops stormed the border, Adolf Hitler marched into Braunau am Inn, where he was born almost half a century earlier. At that time, as Nazis like Kaltenhauser Snr assumed positions of authority in German-annexed Austria, the situation for Austria's Jews rapidly deteriorated. Kaltenhauser Snr became the head of the village school, which neighboured the country estate of Schloss Ranshofen, and moved into an apartment on site with his wife, whose mother, Katharina Huber, owned the nearby inn and was also a card-carrying Nazi. Neither faced any recriminations after the war, though Kaltenhauser Snr lost his job – and with it the school accommodation. The family moved into the inn, but within a few years both Kaltenhauser and his wife were dead, leaving Katharina Huber to bring up their children. The table Mayrhofer discovered remained in the family attic, but it was 'always in my thoughts', she says. After she graduated, Mayrhofer started working as an artist in the northern city of Linz, where she lives today. 'I always wondered about looking for the descendants [of its rightful owner]. The historical cruelty in my family bothered me so much, I just couldn't live with it. But I was overwhelmed because I didn't know where to start and didn't even have a name.' Schloss Ranshofen was all she had to go on. Initial research linked it to the Ranshofen-Wertheimers, a Jewish to learn more, Mayrhofer found a listing for Ranshofen-Wertheimer on the genealogy platform MyHeritage. The administrator for the Wertheimer tree was a woman called Diana Jellinek, whom Mayrhofer emailed in December 2019. 'It was a needle in a haystack, but it was my only chance,' she says. 'I wasn't sure how to explain it without sounding crazy. I said: 'I found this table which I think might belong to you. Are you part of the Wertheimer family?'' Jellinek responded almost immediately, not only confirming that her family had owned the property and the surrounding agricultural land, but asking to meet in Vienna the following week. She was planning to visit her daughter, Helen Emily Davy, who was doing a master's in art in the city. Excited but nervous, Mayrhofer instantly accepted. Anyone who witnessed the unlikely reunion at a Vienna café in January 2020 might have wondered what was happening at the emotional gathering. 'There were a lot of tears,' says Mayrhofer. 'I bought them some beautiful coffee cups as a symbol, as I hoped at some point we could sit at the table in their place and drink coffee.' The Wertheimer descendants had been unaware of the table specifically, but knew the agricultural estate had been looted. Schloss Ranshofen had been in the family since 1851 and in the 1930s belonged to sisters Anna, Emilie and Gabriella Wertheimer. They were each married and living elsewhere but spent summers there until 1935, when Anna felt it no longer safe to travel from her home in Germany. In August 1938, the Wertheimers were forced to sell the estate for a fraction of its value, though they never actually received the proceeds because of Nazi taxes. Their property was ransacked and looted while Hitler built an aluminium plant to supply the war effort on the land. In 1938, Gabriella and her husband fled to Britain, where their son had travelled on the kindertransport. Emilie's older son, Kurt, was studying at Oxford university, from where he successfully campaigned to bring over his parents and younger brother, Ernst (who later anglicised his name to Ernest). They arrived in Britain days before war erupted. Anna's children left for Britain, South America and China, but she was stuck in Germany and in July 1942 was transported to Auschwitz, where she perished. Life in Britain was tough, as the family relied on charity and faced internment as 'enemy aliens'. In 1944, Kurt died of TB in a military hospital while fighting for Britain. His brother Ernst lost an eye fighting the Germans in Hanover only months later. These traumas had a profound effect on Emilie, who suffered a mental breakdown in late 1945, followed by several strokes which led to her death in January 1946. Jellinek and Davy, Ernst's daughter and granddaughter, told Mayrhofer that he had died just weeks earlier, aged 97. 'Papa was a really monumental figure in our family, who was very loved and is very missed,' says Davy. 'When he passed away, it was a big moment within our family, and it was only weeks after I moved to Austria. So in what I think is quite a classic grief thing, my mum got really into doing the family tree.' About five years earlier, Ernst had taken Davy, her mother and brother to see Schloss Ranshofen. In 1946, the family applied for restitution but were rejected, as the government argued that the aluminium plant, which is still operational, was crucial to the national economy. They received negligible reparations. Their family archive contains testimony from Emilie and her husband, Stefan, in 1940 in which they described being 'shut out of all business management'. They wrote: 'So it happened in the summer of 1938 that the house, in which private property was located, was occupied by foreign elements, that even boxes were broken into and linen and furnishings were dragged away.' Covid broke out soon after the Vienna café meeting, so mother and daughter first saw the table over Zoom. Later they travelled to Mayrhofer's home to see it, explore their interconnected histories and build trust. 'We sat round Kathi's dining table and started to piece the jigsaw together and compare what we had with what she'd found,' says Davy. Around that time, Mayrhofer discovered a label on the table's underside which showed it was transported by rail from Vienna. Her family had no links to Vienna, while the Wertheimers had long owned property there. There are some blanks in the research that will probably never be filled; nevertheless the women have enough evidence to confidently conclude that the table was looted from the estate and taken to the school apartment. After Kaltenhauser lost his job, it moved with him to the inn. Mayrhofer and Davy then decided to restore the table together and in spring 2022, the artists took up residence in Schloss Ranshofen, which today acts as a wedding venue and also houses a music school. 'We wanted to give the table its spirit back,' said Mayrhofer. Inspired by the Japanese method of kintsugi, they used gold paste to highlight the cracks and scars in order to tell the table's complicated history. During the restoration, they wore skirts crafted from two moth-eaten tablecloths that Mayrhofer found in the attic and which she suspects were probably also looted. 'The way I reconstruct it in my head is almost cinematic, like a double exposure,' says Davy. 'We would be working out if we could fit the table through a doorway, then suddenly I'd see it through my grandfather's eyes. It was emotionally overwhelming for both of us.' They kept the restoration quiet, as they were unsure how it would be received by locals. Mayrhofer explains: 'Unfortunately, as Braunau is Hitler's birthplace, it's a place that attracts pilgrimage, so we were quite careful about telling people – because we didn't want any sabotage.' Descendants of all three sisters attended the exhibition's opening last week, where they explored photographs, documents and artefacts, as well as the table. Perhaps most startling is a wooden box found among Kaltenhauser Jr's possessions after his death in the pandemic, which turned out to be a Nazi time capsule. It features an inlaid image of a Nazi soldier and a swastika-shaped key, while inside are ancestral passports of his parents which served as 'proof' of their Aryan descent. There are also old payslips for Kaltenhauser Snr from 1938 to 1944, and many photographs, including pictures taken directly in front of the sisters' house, Schloss Ranshofen. 'Maybe he kept it because it connected him with his father, who died very young,' said Mayrhofer. 'But maybe because to him and his family a Nazi was not a bad person.' This is something her mother will 'always struggle with', she says. 'My grandfather always spoke about his father being a Nazi in a proud way, so when my mother was growing up she thought it was something good.' Featured in the exhibition is a photo album Sabine put together as a child, with a picture of her grandfather captioned: 'This is my grandfather. He was a Nazi!' So would the Wertheimer descendants consider a renewed appeal for restitution? Davy says: 'There are rumbles every now and then in the family of, 'Should we try again?'. But it's a lot of work – and a lot of emotional work. Some family members are more keen to reopen that door for the legal and money side. For me, this exhibition is about the emotional and holistic side.' Mayrhofer suspects other items looted from them are hidden away in nearby properties and should be returned to their former owners. 'The objects are like a materialisation of the history of the people who owned them,' she says, adding that Austria has a long way to go when it comes to this kind of public reckoning. The library estimates that property worth £135bn in today's money was looted from European Jews between 1938 and 1945. Austria passed the Art Restitution Act in 1998, which required state museums to search their collections for looted goods; however, there remains no legal framework for restitution of privately owned objects. Dr Barbara Warnock, the curator and head of education at the library, says looting was key to the Nazis' modus operandi. 'It was such an intrinsic part of what happened – to steal people's possessions – that you could see it as being a more important motivation than perhaps was considered in the past,' she says. 'A table is maybe an unusual object when people think about looting and restitution. A lot of attention has been on artworks, as they're often more valuable and kind of 'sexier'. This wider focus, not thinking about just artwork but about everyday objects that are meaningful to families, and things like books, is just as important.' Incredibly, the artists today consider themselves more than friends. 'It sounds corny, but we're more like family,' says Davy. 'I've babysat Katharina's kids [she has two] and she's stayed with my mum.' It is to Davy's mother, Diana Jellinek, that the table will go after the exhibition closes. Choked up, Mayrhofer says that her children 'know everything' about their family history. 'I'm really glad they're growing up with this heritage,' she says. 'They know you have to take responsibility, because if nobody else did it before you, it's your job.'
BBC News
13-08-2025
- BBC News
Wrecked English warship's cannon found on seabed off Kent coast
Cannons and coils of rope from an English warship that sank in 1703 have been discovered by Northumberland, a large 70-gun ship built in Bristol in 1679, sank off the Kent coast during high winds in what was known as "The Great Storm". The latest survey to inspect the site, held in July, also revealed wooden chests containing musket balls, swords and wooden Meara, one of the Historic England maritime archaeologists who went on the diver, said: "What we're seeing on the seabed is that big, big element of the ship structure. It's fantastic." Shifting sands means experts were able to see that The Northumberland, built for the Royal Navy by Bristol shipbuilder Francis Baylie, is more complete than previously thought."It's the exact kind of ship you think about when you think of great big warships of the age of sail," Mr Meara told BBC Radio Bristol. He said a long series of investigations and surveys will now take place to "answer more questions of the past".Mr Meara, who dived about 65ft (20 metres) to the ship, said: "On the dives we can see this great big iron cannon, there's large bits of wooden ship structure."But because it's so intact you can see a lot of the organic material you don't normally see - things like coils of rope, smaller wooden objects and organic artefacts like that. "They're all lying on that decking, exactly where they would have been when the ship went down." He added any work to lift the warship out of the sea is very expensive and would take significant restoration work."As soon as you lift it out of the water, it's at risk of decay," he said.
The Independent
11-08-2025
- The Independent
Passenger boat runs aground in high surf off Hawaii beach
A yacht-sized passenger boat dramatically ran aground in high surf off a Hawaii beach over the weekend, appearing to nearly capsize in powerful waves. The 60-foot (18 meter) vessel, named Discovery, was precariously caught in the swells near Honolulu's Kewalo Basin Harbor, seemingly on the verge of flipping before it came to rest. The incident unfolded around 8 am on Saturday, a time when ocean swells were peaking and the tide was at its lowest. Two crew members were aboard the Discovery when it became stranded, the US Coast Guard confirmed in a statement. Local broadcaster KHON-TV first reported the events. The boat's fuel, oil and batteries were removed, preventing the threat of pollution, the Coast Guard said. A company planned to tow the boat away at high tide Sunday afternoon. The grounding was captured on video from various vantage points as onlookers screamed and the Discovery careened down a swell on its side before temporarily righting itself in the surf. Surf photographer Ramon Brockington told the television station that the Discovery got caught in a series of waves. 'They could not get over that wave,' he said. 'And it grabbed the nose of the boat, turned it to the left, and they started listing. And it pushed them onto the dry reef.' Brockington said it was 'unreal.' 'It almost looked like it was going to flip, but they corrected,' he said. 'And the ship was surfing. I've never seen that before — a boat of that caliber, size.' The Discovery eventually drifted against a concrete wall that lines the shore. An email seeking comment was sent Sunday to Atlantis Adventures, which owns the Discovery. The company told KHON on Saturday that the two experienced crew members aboard the boat were not injured. 'We are working closely with all government regulatory agencies to have the shuttle boat safely removed from where it was grounded, towed back to its pier location and thoroughly inspected before it is returned to service,' Atlantis Adventures told the station.
