University of Edinburgh students strolling around the Student Centre in Bristo Square, December 1985.University of Edinburgh students strolling around the Student Centre in Bristo Square, December 1985.
University of Edinburgh students strolling around the Student Centre in Bristo Square, December 1985.

17 photos to transport you back to Edinburgh in 1985, including dramatic gun shop siege

Nineteen-eighty-five was a year of grand openings and great change in Scotland’s capital city

At Abbeyhill, in the east of Edinburgh, there was a dramtic firearms incident.

A police raid on the shop Field and Stream in Montrose Terrace led to the owner firing a shot in an eight-hour stand off.

Eric Miller was later jailed for 34 months.

Judge Lord Bannatyne condemned the pensioner’s “cavalier attitude” and lack of co-operation during his sentencing at the High Court in Perth.

But the judge made an “exceptional circumstances” exemption to the normal mandatory five-year sentence for possessing a gun because the weapon was more than 100 years old, heavily corroded and the trigger no longer worked.

Elsewhere, there was the Emperor’s Warriors exhibition at the City Art Centre, which attracted tens of thousands of people over the summer and is still talked about to this day.

Take a look through our picture gallery, and be transported back to 1985.

Eric Miller was later jailed for 34 months.