Edinburgh, Gilmore Park, Union Canal, vertical lifting bridge. General view of bridge from South-West.

Description Edinburgh, Gilmore Park, Union Canal, vertical lifting bridge. General view of bridge from South-West.

Date 1900 to 1930

Collection Collection of photographs by George Chrystal and Francis Maxwell Chrystal, photographers, Edinburgh,

Catalogue Number ED 6945

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 785586

Scope and Content Leamington Bridge, Union Canal, Edinburgh, from the west (bridge originally at Fountainbridge; canal closed 1965 and navigation restored 2002) This hydraulically-powered vertical lift bridge, constructed c.1908, originally stood at Fountainbridge. It was re-sited at Leamington Road when the Edinburgh basins closed in 1922, and replaced a wooden drawbridge which stood on the site. The original bridge keeper's single-storeyed cottage stands on its south side (right), and the North British Rubber Works building, one of the few surviving canal industries in the 1920s and 1930s, stands to the north. Leamington Bridge was one of several interesting bridges on the canal. Most of the bridges along its 50.8km length from east to west were of a plain but elegant stone-arched design, and were built to a standard specification. Hence all looked similar but were not the same. There were differences in span and width, and most of those that carried minor roads across the canal had iron railings instead of solid stone parapets. Their arch keystones were uniformly inscribed with numbers in sequence from east to west, 62 in all. Bridge No 1, at Viewforth, bore the carved symbols of Edinburgh and Glasgow on its east and west faces respectively, and the penultimate bridge, Bridge No 61 at Glen village, Falkirk, had keystones bearing human masks, the one on the eastern face smiling and that on the western face weeping. The Union Canal, the last of Scotland's major canals, was a commercial venture begun in 1818 and completed in 1822. It was built principally as a means of importing coal and lime into Edinburgh, and ran from Port Hopetoun in Edinburgh to join the Forth & Clyde Canal at Camelon, Stirlingshire. However, within 20 years of completion most of its passenger traffic was lost to the railways, and the Edinburgh basins closed in 1922. The rest of the canal remained navigational until 1965 when it was finally closed by an Act of Parliament. In 2002, Britain's largest canal restoration project, The Millennium Link, restored navigation, and with an extension to the Union Canal and a link with the Forth & Clyde Canal through the Falkirk Wheel, boats were once more able to travel between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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