People like to blame the council for a lot of things that go wrong in Edinburgh, but there are times when the criticism is entirely unjustified.

This was most definitely not the case in 1967, however, when one of the council's forerunners, the Midlothian County, ordered the building of an ocean liner-sized office block to serve as their Old Town headquarters.

Occupying a huge 15,000 square feet site on the corner of George IV Bridge and the Lawnmarket, the construction of what would become the HQ of the old Lothian Regional Council must surely rank alongside Edinburgh's greatest architectural blunders.

Work started on the £1 million project in June 1967, with a string of historic buildings swept away, including the upper portion of Victoria Street's original terrace and the Melbourne Pl

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