To most, the very thought of an island of rats sounds like the stuff of nightmares, but to one eccentric Edinburgh millionaire, it was home.
Back in the 1990s, the Ingliston and Newbridge gossip mill was in full flow with tales of a renowned local businessman and landowner who was said to have a sprawling animal sanctuary backing on to his cottage.
Situated near the Royal Highland Centre at Ingliston, the verdant refuge was home to all manner of animals, including half a dozen peacocks, a large flock of geese, fan-tailed pigeons and nine ponds packed with various species of freshwater fish.
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But while all this was unusual enough, what really got tongues wagging was the rumour that said 8.5-acre garden included an island on a man-made lake filled with several hundred rats.
The man behind all this was Nigel Maby, who struck fortune in the 1970s as the founder of the area’s legendary Ingliston Market through his company Spook Erections.
Suffice to say, aside from being a shrewd businessman, Maby, who also owned four Great Danes, was something of a real-life Doctor Doolittle. A lifelong member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the open-air market magnate had spent a considerable amount of money and effort developing his animal haven.
Over a period of more than two decades he planted trees, created ponds and lakes, and brought in tens of thousands of tonnes of rocks and soil to transform what had been a rather nondescript field on the fringes of Edinburgh Airport into a veritable wildlife Eden.
The man-made habitat was so alluring to wildlife that it was regularly visited by herds of local deer, foxes, bats and all manner of waterfowl, rodents and other small mammals.
As for the rats, of which there were around 300, they were not of your typical inner city “vermin” variety, but an exotic mix of different species with various colours of pelt.
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“I’ve tried to do it as naturally as possible,” Maby told The Herald in 1996, “It’s all out of my own head.”
He added: `We put out sugar for the ants, and swill for the wild birds. They all contribute droppings which encourages more insects and that in turn encourages spiders and wrens.''
Speaking to Edinburgh Live, a woman, a former regular at Ingliston Market, recalled seeing Nigel Maby’s rat enclosure for herself.
She said: “I remember parking near the rats. They were in what I would call a deep pit with a wall around it like an enclosure you would get at a zoo for meerkats.
“They weren't wild rats, they were multi-coloured. Someone, perhaps my husband, told me they belonged to the owner of the market.”
Nigel Maby sadly passed away in 2004. The once-successful Ingliston Sunday Market, which he launched in the 1970s, closed for good the following year in a haze of controversy over many of the stallholders selling counterfeit goods.
It’s unclear what became of the late Nigel Maby’s animal sanctuary, but it’s understood the estate, part of which hosts the annual Royal Highland Show, is now owned by a different family.
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