A nice set of three pictures was tweeted by the Council today, showing the “Leamington” Lift Bridge in its original location on Fountainbridge, the original lifting bridge at Leamington and the lum of the Tollcross Depot tramway winding engines towering over it all.

When the Union Canal was cut back to its current terminus at Lochrin in 1922, the hydraulic lifting bridge that carried Fountainbridge across it was relocated to Leamington, where it replaced a diminutive wooden drawbridge, and it is has been known since as the Leamington Lift Bridge.

1893 town plan (NLS). The diminutive drawbridge at Leamington / Gilmore Park and the hydraulic lifting bridge at Fountainbridge. When the canal was cut back from the Port Hopetoun / Hamilton basins in 1922, the latter bridge moved to its present site.

Here’s another shotof the lift bridge in its original location, pretty much where the modern office block which contains the AKVA bar is (or was, for the bar). The baronial style block on the right was the St. Cuthbert’s Co-operative Association building.

And prior to the hydraulic lifting bridge in this position and before the St. Cuthbert’s building, a much simpler wooden bridge crossed the canal. The Fountainbridge Free Church and school can be seen on the left, they were hidden from view when the Co-op building went up. The crenelated structure on right is in both pictures, I assume it may have been a weigh bridge or similar

The St. Cuthbert’s building has a distinctive and unusual curving rear wall.

Which is explained by the fact it had to fit around the canal which turned right (east) after passing under Fountainbridge to its terminal basins at Port Hamilton and Port Hopetoun.

And way, way back before the canal, the densely packed industrial district of the 19th century is in stark contrast to the late 18th century pastoral scene in a painting by Patrick Nasmyth.

The clouds of steam and smoke from the Haigs Lochrin Distillery spoil the illusion though. The distillery operated on and off in the boom-bust cycles of grain distillation from the 1760s to 1860s. The steam engine shown on the map below was likely the first one in Edinburgh, it was likely an “atmospheric engine” for pumping water (thanks to Mark Watson for this information). The Cameo cinema is now the approximate locus of the site.

I don’t have a more authoritative source than the master of one of the local canal boats, but it is my understanding that the current colour scheme of the canal bridges in Edinburgh is symbolic;

• blue for water
• black for the coal it brought
• gold for the prosperity it was to bring
• red for the blood (metaphorical and literal) shed building it

It can be hard to get your head around where the end of the Union Canal was when it was completed, compared to nowadays. This 1849 map shows the two basins at Port Hopetoun and Hamilton between Gardner’s Crescent on the left, Morrison Street to the top and Lothian Road. on the right. Notice at this time, Morrison Street isn’t named as such at the east, instead it’s Tobago Street and then the ancient Castle Barns. Neither is Lothian Road; it’s Downie Place then Earl Grey Street. This end of the town was in a period of flux at this time, rapidly changing from late medieval to new Victorian.

Even in 1849 the place had changed massively since when the canal arrived in 1821/2, as shown on Kirkwood’s Town plan. The canal simply cuts straight through existing properties of Miss and Mr Grimlay into the basin that would become Port Hopetoun. Port Hamilton is nowhere to be seen, instead the property of Mr Thomson is on this site.

Alongside Wood’s town plan 10 years later, we can see land owned by the Canal Company above in 1821 to the right has been developed into the gushet* block defined by Fountainbridge, Bread Street and Downie Place. Port Hopetoun has been completed yet to the west the canal still runs through old gardens. Downie Place was so named in 1822 for the first director of the Union Canal Company, Robert Downie of Appin, and lasted as the street name until Lothian Road took over in 1886.

* = Gushet, a Scots term for a triangular portion of land.

Port Hopetoun was named for the John Hope, 4th Earl of Hopetoun (that stately looking fellow on the statue in the Royal Bank of Scotland’s garden in St. Andrew Square), who invested in the canal and stood to profit heavily by getting coal from his collieries in West Lothian directly to the city.

Such was the initial success of the canal, Port Hopetoun was at capacity in a few years so Port Hamilton followed slightly further west in about 1832. Again it was named after an aristocratic coal master who invested in it; Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton.

We know what things looked like not long after opening thanks to this wonderful engraving of John Wilson Ewbank, taken looking east at the castle towards the bridge that defined the entrance to Port Hopetoun basin. The steeple of St. Giles is distant.

Ewbank is standing near the bend of the canal on Mr Robert Blair’s land, with the trees of Miss Grimlay’s garden clearly visible (see the 1821 Kirkwood town plan above). The large block on the right of his illustration is the first Georgian tenement built by the canal company of Downie Place, just beyond the basin.

Port Hopetoun was quite sophisticated, with a grand 3-storey warehouse with rather spectacular cantilevered wooden overhangs on each side; I assume for lifting loads directly out of (or dropping them in to) boats sitting beneath.

Port Hamilton was a simpler affair, just a long basin with a quay and quite basic sheds around it. Notice the curve of the rear or Gardener’s Crescent, the big pile of horse manure in the foreground and in the distance the lum and cooling towers of Dewar Place electric power station – dating this to after 1895.

A further photo by Francis Chrystal shows Port Hamilton from the other side of the basin. If you look closely at the right bank of the basin you can see stacks of coal sacks on the quayside; even by 1920 obviously someone was able to scrape some sort of profit by bringing coal into the city by canal. The modern brick building under construction is a motor engineering works for Alexanders.

When Ports Hopetoun and Hamilton closed in 1922, they were infilled. The former became the site of Lothian House, a grand Art Deco housing and (formerly) office block which incorporated the Regal cinema (later the ABC and now a sorry excuse for an Odeon, which retains nothing but the facade and a very sad, identikit modern interior).

Lothian House is decorated with cast iron reliefs of figures representing industry and trees. If you look up on the façade of you can also find a memorial carving to Port Hopetoun in the shape of a canal boat and tow horse, with the civic crests of Edinburgh and Glasgow, the cities linked by this waterway.

Port Hamilton was acquired by St. Cuthbert’s Co-op and became a modern industrial dairy and bakery, transport workshops and warehousing. in 1943, aged 13, one Thomas S. Connery took up a job on a milk float for St. Cuthbert’s Co-op from here. He would later go on to make something of a name for himself in cinema.

There are lots more great photos on the Canmore site – all in hi-res so you can zoom right in – of Port Hopetoun in the 1920s here.