Meet the second years with the worst neighbours in Edinburgh

No house parties for you


Moving out of Halls can be an exciting experience. You’ll kid yourself into thinking that you’ve got a place big enough for a weekly flat party and you don’t have an annoying warden who’ll tell you to be quiet every night at 11pm.

Think again. These second and third years have far worse than a warden coming to tell them to keep quiet.

The neighbour with a baby

Second year Software Engineer student Ross Cockburn and his flatmates specifically asked their estate agent whether their neighbours were students or not.

Ross is especially quiet going up the stairs

Ross said : “Well it sucks because we were told by the agency that we were living beside students. Not a family with a baby. We were planning to have lots of parties but that’s not possible. We’ve had two official noise complaints already and not even had a party. They even told us that our footsteps are too loud.”

The unreasonable neighbour

While wanting to keep your baby asleep is understandable, some neighbours just want to make your life hell. Unfortunately for second year Ed Campbell and his friends, they were landed with a particularly annoying neighbour who didn’t even live next to them.

“At about quarter to 11 one night, we had 12 people round for pres and there was an angry knock at the door so I answered it.

“The woman was complaining about the noise but she didn’t even live above us, she was our upstairs neighbour’s neighbour. Then we had a larger pre-drinks which she had plenty of notice about and we gave her our numbers. I checked my phone at midnight after we’d left and there was a voicemail from a number I didn’t recognise. assuming it was her, I sent a very polite, apologetic text and got the rudest reply.”

The raunchy neighbours

Third year Maths student Cameron, got more than he bargained for with his neighbours.

He said, “I was in my bed and started hearing the woman moaning and initially I thought it was one of my internet tabs, but it wasn’t so I got my flatmate through and then we heard the guy going at as well.”

awkwardly loud

“Pretty strange when I eventually met both of them though.”

The loud neighbour

There’s nothing more annoying than the deafening sound of a pneumatic drill waking you up early in the morning after a night out. Third year Politics student Robin Brinkworth and his flatmates were regularly woken up by their temporary neighbours – next door’s builders.

He said: “We’ve had the flat next door be refurbished for the past few weeks – first they threw the entirety of the flat out into the hall, so walking to Uni first involved an assault course of old carpets, bags of insulation, and inhaling several kilos of dust.

“That moved on to the charming sound of an electronic saw – sawing that wasn’t done in their flat, but rather in the hall – making the dust and sound problems about a million times worse.

“The worst of this was the punctuality of the builders – they must be the only builders in Britain who start work at 9am.”

The demanding neighbour

Second year Politics and Philosophy student, Emma Coles, was given a surprise by her neighbours when she moved into her Marchmont flat. Her neighbours sent her and her flatmates a two page manual of things they should and should not do with their new found freedom.

Whilst the instructions aren’t particularly unreasonable, Emma’s flat definitely were not too keen on hosting parties early this semester.

They also had insultingly low expectations of their new student neighbours, feeling the need to tell them not to shit outside their flat.

Hardly the ‘warm welcome’ they thought they were giving.