Archaeology Notes

Event ID 714264

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/714264

NT27SW 97 22009 70738 (from 2195 7068 to 2207 7079)

For adjacent and parallel railway viaduct, see NT27SW 100.

Crossing the Water of Leith, this aqueduct runs parallel to the Lanark Road. Eight arches with battered piers. Built 1818-22 and designed by Hugh Baird, but modelled on Thomas Telford's aqueduct at Chirk on the Ellesmere Canal.

J Lindsay 1968; J Gifford, C McWilliam and D Walker 1984; G Hutton 1993a.

This aqueduct is a magnificent, though simple and elegant, structure, based by its engineer, Baird, on aqueducts on the Ellesmere Canal in England and on consultations with Thomas Telford as regards design.

G Hutton 1993.

This eight-arched aqueduct is 500 feet long and stands 75 feet above the Water of Leith. With the waterway passing through an iron trough, it constitutes the most spectacular canal structure insite the city bounds, although it is now somewhat hemmed in to the S by the busy Slateford Road and to the N by a lower arched railway bridge.

H Brown 1997.

This aqueduct is marked on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Edinburghshire 1855, sheet 6), as well as on the current edition of the OS 1:10000 map (1988) and on the OS 1:10000 raster map (ND).

Information from RCAHMS (MD) 1 February 2001.