Thread by @cocteautriplets

Yesterday's library trip was surprisingly productive in another subject of interest, namely the water supply of old Leith. I already knew it was unreliable and came from Lochend Loch via pipes to a reservoir at the foot of Water Street (hence the name). But not much more

So what did I learn? Traditionally, Leith was watered by the Water of Leith, the Broughton Burn and the Greenside Burn. The former was tidal at this time, so you had to take any water quite upstream. The main problem though was all 3 were badly polluted by Edinburgh

Big hooses (of which there were very few in Leith) kept their own wells. There were wells at Yardheads too, but these were private wells for the brewers of the burgh, and even then the supply was meager (there's a reason brewing never figured as a big Leith industry)

There is a description of water being carted in from the well at Restalrig too, although this was the holy well of St. Triduana so this might have been more of a religious tat trade than a serious supply of water.

Water was a serious problem for a number of other Leith industries too; distilling, soap making and sugar refining all suffered and migrated further upstream on the Water of Leith to Bonnington.

In 1752, the "Incorporation of Traffickers of Leith" (the Merchant company) heard that Edinburgh was petitioning parliament for the right to levy a tax on ale of 2d per pint brewed. This would cover Leith too as Edinburgh controlled taxation over Leith.

Leith saw an opportunity here, and lobbied Edinburgh to try and gain access to some of the funds of taxation to improve the water supply in the town. Surprisingly, Edinburgh agreed, *if* Leith drew up costs and plans themselves.

The Deacons of the Corporations of Leith (heads of the trade guilds) quickly set to work. The supply was obvious; Lochend, the only standing body of fresh water in the burgh and fed by springs. (picture Capital Collections capitalcollections.org.uk/view-item?i=15…)

The cost was to be £600, and the plan was to pipe water from the Loch down the gradient to Leith in wooden pipes to a cistern at the junction of Carpet Lane and Water Lane.

The cost was to be met half each by Leith and Edinburgh. A campaign for public subscription in Leith raised only £110, so the Corporations had to foot the remaining £190 themselves. The contractor was a local plumber with no experience of laying a public water supply.

Wooden pipes sound odd, but were cheaper and lighter than the alternative; lead. Whole elm trunks were used as they were resistant to rot, and they were hollowed out and joined with leather seals, you can see some in the Museum of Edinburgh (pic. Geograph geograph.org.uk/photo/2124123)

The contractor had no capital of their own, so work proceeded piecemeal as the money came in, as they needed it to buy their supply of pipes and pay labourers.

Contemporary writer, William Maitland, in his "History of Edinburgh" wrote critically. The Loch was too small and unhygenic. The contractor he said was "a fool", and laid the pipes so deep (15 feet) that cost was high, progress was slow, and repairs were difficult

The pipes were laid either under, or alongside, Lochend Road, which at this time ran through open fields. Water descended by gravity, but a "pumphouse" was constructed at the loch.

The pumphouse is still there, an intriguing, small, octagonal structure. Where else do we see octagons nearby? St. Triduana's chapel and St. Margaret/Triduana's well, of course! Coincidence? Probably not.

So Leith now had it's own piped water supply!

But immediately, there were problems. The pipes were too narrow and the cistern was too small. The system just didn't provide anything like enough water! So at the expense of Leith, it was all dug up again within months and relaid with larger bore pipes

A new, larger cistern was constructed further south. The area appropriately became known locally as "The Big Pipes", and a bar of this name stood until cleared away with the rest of Old Leith in the early 1960s flickr.com/photos/sixties…

Six wellheads were provided for the public, on the Kirkgate at Brickwork Close, in the yard of The Vaults, on the Coalhill at the bridge, on the Shore at the New Quay and at Bernard's Neuk on Bernard Street.

The well at the Shore was to be used for watering ships, but the task of filling casks lead to long queues of locals (women and girls) with stoups (long, leather buckets suspended from a yoke), and so ships were forbidden to water between 5am and 8pm.

Notice that North Leith is excluded from all this, it was a separate burgh from South Leith at this time. In 1771, a Police Act for Edinburgh ("police" at this time covered powers of sanitation, lighting, cleansing and the prevention of infectious diseases) included South Leith

The 1771 act made provisions for the watering, cleansing and lighthing of areas of South Leith including St. Anthony's (the Kirkgate) and Yardheads. (regular readers will see this tangentially gives us more information about Leith street lighting)

One of the provisions was a new water cistern reserved for shipping, at the Ferryboat Steps on the Shore. It cost £850 and ships could get water for 1 shilling per ton. Clearly a lot of water would need to be provided to cover the costs.

But the basic problem persisted, that Lochend was not a satisfactory reservoir and the Big Pipes were insufficient. They were sunk deeper into the loch, but silted up and had to regularly be cleared and the Loch would dry up in summer as a result of deeper extraction

After much lobbying, a 2 inch lead pipe was provided from Edinburgh's water supply to supplement Leith's. A source refers to the Crawley Pipe, but given that wasn't laid until the 19th century it's clearly one of the earlier pipes from Comiston springs.

Leith of course had to pay for the privilege, £1,000 billed to the Leith Police Commissioners. Not long after it was completed, a drought in 1793 resulted in Edinburgh cutting off the pipe. Chalk up another example in the long history of Edinburgh messing with Leith!

The situation remained dire - money was always the problem, the Commissioners had the powers but not the funds, as Edinburgh kept a tight and uncooperative hand on the purse strings.

All that changed in 1799, when John's Place, a fashionable new development of villas to rival Edinburgh's New Town was constructed in Leith as it slowly expanded from the confines of its medieval boundaries

The proprietors of the development wanted to match the New Town, and that meant having piped water. So they proposed to the Commissioners to lend them the money for improvements 5% interest, in return for supplies being laid to John's Place. The Commissioners jumped at the chance

The residents would also pay annual dues for the privelege. On hearing this, "every heritor on the line of the pipe from Lochend" also got on board. Each would pay 1 guinea per annum, and 21 pounds was lent to the Commissioners

Work to improve the supply and provide private supplies took 2 years, but finally it was complete. On the grand day, the private stop cocks were opened and...
...the public cistern ran dry! There's a problem with tapping off your water supply before it reaches its destination!

So the private supplies were all shut off, and could only be opened as and when the town cistern was filled. Slowly, as Leith redeveloped and began to clear away its medieval housing stock with newer developments, others joined the scheme.

The supply remained poor, however, and the water quality was doubtful. Finally, in 1869, the Corporations of Edinburgh, Leith and Portobello combined their water interests and took over the Edinburgh Water Company to run things for themselves.

Thus the Edinburgh District Water Trust came into being (look for EDWT street furniture at your feet), and Leith finally got a proper water supply.

Addendum. I think this is a very good guess at the route of the "big pipes" into Leith from Lochend, overlaid on the 1849 town plan. You can trace it out the park as you can see capstones over the pipe through the grass, and we know it ran under or parallel to Lochend Road

You can then assume it follows the line of pumps along the western edge of the Links towards John's Place. It makes sense that it goes along Queen Charlotte Street (known as "The Links" when the pipe was first laid) as there was no other route into Leith from the east at the time

In the 1760s, the remains of the Marian walls and bulwarks were still a considerable obstacle to the east, although they had largely been repurposed into gardens

Even in 1790, their ghost is still there, there's no sensible reason to cut the trench for a water pipe *up* a hill, if you can just go around it.