Opened in November 2025, Brown’s of Leith marks the first phase in the phased refurbishment and conversion of the former George Brown & Sons Engineering Works on The Shore, Leith. For more than 130 years, the building housed engineers and metalworkers, and the project begins by keeping that industrial lineage present. Existing fabric is retained and repaired, with new use is introduced in a way that allows the building’s working character, scale and texture to remain legible.

Brown’s of Leith brings together independent food and drink partners alongside shared spaces, with future phases planned to accommodate artists, architects and creative practitioners. As part of the wider Custom Lane ecosystem, it supports collaboration, shared knowledge and a community shaped through use over time. Haze, Shuck Bar by ShrimpWreck, Civerinos and Woven form the first phase, with a bakery and workshop in development. Open Thursday to Sunday, 8am–8pm, the building holds spaces for eating, drinking and pause, overlooking the Water of Leith.

The refurbishment is conceived as a sequence rather than a single moment. Phase one establishes the ground-floor life and shared social spaces that make the building immediately active, while the upper floors continue to host a small number of resident studios. These include textile artist Hayley McCrirrick, and jewellers Gina Burgess and Madeleine Holloway, whose practices are shaped through hand skill, drawing and material-led processes. Together, they extend the building’s long relationship with craft and material work, and set a tone for the mix of hospitality, making and creative production that will deepen in later phases.

New interventions are kept materially direct and deliberately readable, taking cues from the building’s history of fabrication. Steel furniture for Haze was fabricated by The Ritual Works, continuing the site’s lineage of metalwork through contemporary making. At the bar, waste stone from Hutton Stone’s Darney quarry in Northumberland was reworked into bricks, folding a by-product back into use and giving the project a material story that is both pragmatic and expressive.

Brown’s of Leith is intended as a collaborative place rather than a finished object, a building able to grow with its tenants and evolve through subsequent phases. Over time it will expand its programme of studios, workshops, events, exhibitions and residencies, extending the former engineering works as a place where food, making and art can unfold within retained industrial fabric.