Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 590373
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/590373
Crawley Cistern, a distinctive masonry building 60 ft long with a stone-slab roof surmounting a semicircular vault springing from 3 ft above floor level containing the 45ft by 15 ft open-topped masonry cistern, was designed by W. H. Playfair under James Jardine’s direction (JArdine was the engneer to the Ediburgh Corporation WAter Works). The tank is at the head of a nine-mile cast-iron aqueduct, with a maximum diameter of 20 inches, passing via Liberton and under Castle Hill to Hanover Street in the New Town on a plinth in a 6 ft by 5 ft wide tunnel.
The pipes were supplied by the Butterley Company and each was proved by subjecting it to a pressure equal to that of a column of water from 300 to 800 ft high. The whole works cost £145 000 and were dubbed by The Scotsman in 1825, ‘the most extensive, perfect and complete ever executed in modern times’.
R Paxton and S Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.
