and the surrounding lands passed to the Walker family between 1790 and 1812. In 1870 the house was sold to the Scottish Episcopal Church and from the late 19th century to about 1960 it was used as a teacher training college and by the Edinburgh & Leith Old People's Welfare Committee for social activities, classes and a lunch club until closed down in 2002. The actor Alastair Sim taught at the college between 1922 and 1924. The house was then renovated and converted into private flats in the early 21st century. 19th century to present day Dalry was intensively developed in the 19th century and contains a mix of traditional tenements, "colonies" (terraced houses where one floor has an entrance at one side, and the other floor has an entrance on the other side; street names follow the buildings rather than the roads between them). The Dalry Colonies are accessed from Dalry Place off the east end of Dalry Road and comprise eight streets: Lewis Terrace, Walker Terrace, Douglas Terrace, Cobden Terrace, Argyll Terrace, Bright Terrace, Atholl Terrace and McLaren Terrace and Breadalbane Terrace. Four of the streets are named after politicians, prominent in the Anti-Corn Law League; Richard Cobden, Duncan McLaren, John Bright and Samuel Walker. Another was named for Bailie David Lewis (editor of the Edinburgh-based weekly Reformer publication). and the other three names are places in Scotland. The colonies in Dalry were built between 1868 and 1870 by the Edinburgh Cooperative Building Company Limited, primarily to house Caledonian Railway workers. The Dalry Colonies are Category B Listed buildings. The growth of industrial buildings, in proximity to the railway development of the time created new jobs in Dalry. These included employment with the railways themselves, as well as at the Fountain Brewery, the Caledonian Distillery, the North British Rubber Company's Castle Mill (1856) and the Grove Street Biscuit Factory (1868). This led to a surge in requirements for new residential development, leading to a significant boom in tenement housing building in the late 19th century mainly by the Scottish businessman and baronet Sir James Steel. Steel purchased and developed three main parcels of land; the Caledonian, the Downfield and the Murieston developments, all built by 1887. Sir James Steel's nephews, James Steel Allan (1850 - 1927), Alexander Allan (1866 - 1938) and Hugh Percival (1854 - 1912) built the tenements that front the Gorgie-Dalry roads between the years