View from South Digital image of B/55498

Description View from South Digital image of B/55498

Date 8/1991

Catalogue Number SC 792967

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of B 55498

Scope and Content Wyndford Lock-keeper's Cottage, Forth & Clyde Canal, North Lanarkshire, from south This shows the lock-keeper's cottage at Wyndford, which was built around 1770, with part of the wall of the lock in the foreground. The doorway, surmounted by a pediment, and windows of the three-bayed cottage have been bricked-in. This ruinous cottage was restored in the 1990s, after this photograph was taken. Lock-keepers' cottages were located beside many of the locks on the canal and were occupied by the canal worker and his family who opened and closed the lock. These buildings were usually designed in a functional style although some were more decorative or followed a particular architectural style. The Forth & Clyde Canal was built between 1768 and 1790. It could have been completed sooner but funds ran out in 1777 and more money was not found by the government until 1784. John Smeaton (1724-92) was the designer and first chief engineer for the project. He was replaced in 1777 by Robert Mackell (d.1779), and in 1785 Robert Whitworth (1734-99) took over the building of the final section of the canal from Glasgow. When the canal was completed in 1790 it ran from the River Forth at Grangemouth, in the east, to Bowling on the River Clyde in the west of Scotland. The canal was linked to Edinburgh when the Union Canal was opened in 1822. The Forth & Clyde Canal was closed in 1963 and the Union Canal in 1965 and the construction of new roads meant that it was impossible for boats to travel along the full length of these watercourses. However, the £84.5m Millennium Link project enabled the canals to reopen in 2002. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/792967

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap