Dalgrain Drawbridge And Tollhouse

Round House, Dalgrain.

The house that stands in the angle formed by the Forth and Clyde Canal and the W. side of the Edinburgh-Stirling highway (A 905),at the S. approach to the swing-bridge at Dalgrain, is remarkable for being circular on plan. It is stone-built and harled, measuring 83 ft. 6 in. in circumference (corresponding diameter 26 ft. 7 in.) outside a wall 2 ft. thick. The roof is slated, but the original roof is said to have been of thatch and at a lower level, the wall-head having been raised. The door, which is towards the Canal (approximately N.), opens into a very small lobby, with doors on all three sides; those to right and left open into the two semicircular rooms into which the interior is divided, and the third gives access to a steep, ladderlike stair, which rises in the line of the partition between the rooms to a circular attic. Each of the ground-floor rooms has a fireplace in the partition, the flues from which are carried up through the centre of the attic, and a two-light window in the centre of its arc. The attic has a skylight.

This building is understood to have been the tollhouse for the highway-bridge, and its construction is therefore to be associated with that of the Canal.

RCAHMS 1963, visited 27 March 1953