This thread was originally written and published in December 2019.

Lochend, in the district of that name, is a natural loch fed from its own springs. Historically it was also fed by a stream called the Strype which drained the lands to its west into it. From the 18th century onwards it was also the water supply for the Port of Leith, but the quality was poor and so much of it leaked out of wood and leather pipes that it could never slake the thirst of that town.

The name Lochend comes from the fact this was one end of the Barony of Restalrig; the opposite end was the community of the Calton which was therefore sometimes known as the Craigend (Craig being Scots for a rock or cliff). As a result the name of Lochend Loch is a self-referential tautology. The loch long had utility as an area for wildfowling, fishing and collecting reeds for thatch. When it froze over it was a popular skating rink.

The loch was formerly bigger and deeper than it is now, a combination of water extraction and improved drainage having lowered the surface. In 1876 the surface is recorded by the Ordnance Survey at 83.4 feet above sea level. In 1894 it was 78.54 feet and in 1944 it was 77.99 feet. That’s a drop of 5.4 feet or 1.64m.

It can be seen on the map below that in 1817 the loch edge is near to the old dovecot – the round building at the top of the map. The water pumping house, just next to the fold in the page, is well within the loch. Both of these structures are now some distance from the loch edge, so the shoreline has retreated significantly since then.

The 1817 survey gives the depth as 23.75 feet at its maximum. Local legend held that it was bottomless, and that a horse and card had been driven in never to be seen again. This may be influence somewhat by the tail of an accused witch, Bessie Dunlop, who was burned at the stake in 1576. Bessie was convicted on the grounds that she had consorted with a man named Tam Reid, who had died at the battle of Pinkie 30 years previous. Tam had conferred healing powers on her. On one occasion, while riding near Lochend Loch she had stopped to water her horse and with Tam had watched an apparition of a company of fairy horse riders charge into the loch to disappear.

When the Corporation built large housing estates in the area; at Lochend, Craigentinny and Restalrig, in the 1920s and 30s, the loch and surrounding grounds was purchased from its historic owners – the Earls of Moray – and formed into a new civic park to serve the neighbourhood. Between 1928-30 the park had been shut and 3,000 lorryloads of spoil from excavating the foundations of the housing schemes had been tipped in around the edges to form pathways. The loch and its grounds were tidied up and became the central feature of the park as a duck pond.

By 1958 the loch was unfenced except for a section kept partitioned off as a bird sanctuary. On Aug 19th, John French, 10, from Piershill was playing with 2 friends, took off his socks and shoes and waded a few yards in. He slipped, fell below the surface and his friends never saw him again.

It took 4 days for John’s body to be found; volunteer members of the Scottish Sub-Aqua Club Search & Rescue team had worked around the clock to try and find him, but he was finally recovered just a few yards from where he had disappeared from view, 10 yards from shore. The Corporation immediately formed a sub-committee headed by the Superintendent of Parks and the City Engineer to come up with proposals to make the park safer. They reported back the following month, their preferred option was infilling the loch to a safe depth of 2.5 feet. The Civic Amenity Committee approved this course of action, which they were told would take 3 years, with “complete drainage rejected”. At this point there were not too many dissenting voices as the tragedy of young John’s death was still fresh in peoples minds.

The Corporation got to work and lorryloads of demolition rubble from the city’s slum clearances began to arrive. But they soon ran into problems as land reclamation at Leith Docks was paying a premium for rubble and most of it was being diverted there. In 1961, they made the decision to declare the loch a general landfill site for “clean waste“. But the lack of infill material wasn’t the only problem; the City Engineer reported they were “finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the water level“. The loch was fighting back. Once people saw what was happening to it, there was increasingly vocal local outrage at what was being done. “Official Vandalism” wrote one to the Evening News. “The ruination of one of the best bird sanctuaries in Edinburgh… What once was a delight to the eye is today a very sad sight” wrote another. In June 1961 it was reported that the landfill tipping into the loch had polluted it with oil, and the resident swans and cygnets covered. James Christison of Albert Street wrote to complain of the “stench of rotting weeds and freshwater shellfish” hanging over the water.

The City Engineer was called to account and now recommended complete infill and asked for 3 more years. Labour councillor for Craigentinny, Joe Mackaill, was having none of it “it is a beautiful park and a beautiful pond and I will fight all the way to keep it that way“. In July 1961, another letter to the Evening News observed “Lochend appears now to provide a convenient dumping ground for the debris from demolition sites and other waste materials which are possibly difficult to dispose of on account of lack of facilities“. Local residents complained from all the dust coating their washing and windows, and of the smoke cloud that hung over the neighbourhood as the site had a permanent bonfire to burn off wooden furniture and garden waste that could not be tipped in the loch. But the tipping continued, the Corporation countered that they were obliged to take any waste they were provided with now that the Loch was an official landfill site. It seemed that the “best” waste, rubble and soil, was sorted and diverted to Leith Docks while Lochend kept the worst.

The Evening News sent a photographer, who took a picture behind a rickety barbed wire fence showing the loch 3/4 full of “old tyres, empty tea chests, kitchen sinks and house doors… And an enormous quantity of builders’ rubbish“. The loch’s strongest defender in the Corporation, councillor Mackaill, died unexpectedly in March 1962. His cause was taken up by Councillor (later Baillie) Marion Alexander who noted the “disquiet, indignation and even disgust” at the situation

There was an increasing discontent now that the loch should never have been in-filled, and that course had been an over-reaction. Letters were sent to the Evening News that the safety of children was the responsibility of their parents, “not the ratepayers“. “It is time the councillors for South Leith woke up to the desecration of this beauty spot and did something about the matter” wrote Peter Robertson of Easter Road. The pressure paid off. In November 1962 Councillor A. D. Jameson (Progressive – Portobello), chair of the Civic Amenities Committee, announced that they were relenting and that the loch would now be restored to its original (surface) size once the infill was settled at the safe depth.

I’ve overlaid some snippets of aerial photographs through the ages on a modern image to show the rise and fall (or rather, the fall and rise again) of the Loch level. The papers now went quiet on the issue, but 3 years later in 1965 it was observed that “Edinburgh Corporation, at the [Scottish Wildlife Trust]’s suggestion, have successfully improved Lochend Loch.” These improvements had included planting an artificial island in the centre of the loch with trees. The island has been subsiding ever since, built up from unstable waste that has rotted and settled and decomposed over time. This explains why the park these days has a spooky, mangrove-like, sunken forest of half-dead trees in the middle.

The below animation shows the loch surface over time.

Sadly there was a further tragedy at Lochend in April 1997, when 13 year old Arron Duffus fell off a raft he and his pals had made from abandoned foam insulation and wood sheets. Arron lost his life and eleven others ended up in hospital who also fell in or had tried to save him. The fencing around the loch – which had broken down – was replaced and heightened. The park was also given a clear up to remove the various abandoned cabins and sheds that had once been used as pigeon lofts and greyhound kennels from where the raft materials were taken. A local “friends” group has been trying their best, with some success, to make sure the park and its loch is better maintained and cared for in more recent years..

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