For those interested in the Comiston Springs, the @natlibscotmaps are your friend maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#z… 
@natlibscotmaps The Cistern consolidated the short conduits from the various springs before they were piped to the city reservoir (photo Callum Black / Geograph geograph.org.uk/photo/1609494)
@natlibscotmaps It's down a lane off the appropriately named Comiston Springs Avenue
@natlibscotmaps Apologies, that's Swan Spring Avenue. All the springs were named for an animal, e.g. Fox Spring
@natlibscotmaps In the well house, there are/were statues of all the animals to denominate the pipes entering from the various springs. Some of these statues are kept in the museum of Edinburgh blipfoto.com/entry/1267619
@natlibscotmaps Here we see them in situ, that's Fox Spring, Hare Spring, Swan Spring and Peewee Spring
@natlibscotmaps Interestingly, this 1976 photo on @Scranlife shows them in different positions. Which is right? scran.ac.uk/database/recor…
@natlibscotmaps @Scranlife But then here they are 10 years previously in the Water Board offices in Cockburn Street, so it seems they've been in the habit of taking them out and putting them back at least twice! scran.ac.uk/database/recor…
@natlibscotmaps @Scranlife There's a nice BBC article on the subject here today; bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotla… But it does overlook that the engineering was German! The City contracted Peter Brusche to supply the water to the old town reservoir on Castle Hill, by gravity via a 3" lead pipe
@natlibscotmaps @Scranlife The dates given vary between 1674 and 1681. Perhaps it just took 7 years to complete the work! I can recall learning this story as a schoolchild when once or twice you got to go to the council owned Cannonball House where the tour guide, Mrs Quick, would give you the lowdown
@natlibscotmaps @Scranlife I don't know why Mrs Quick's name stuck with me all these years, but it did, as did the story of the water supply by gravity. A formative experience clearly!
@natlibscotmaps @Scranlife The path that runs down the valley past the cistern is known by the ancient name of Cockmylane (no sniggering at the back).
@natlibscotmaps @Scranlife Stuart Harris makes a convincing case that it's from the Gaelic Cuach na leanaigh, describing a hollow in a meadow with springs in it. Lane was just an Anglophone surveyor recording "Leanaigh". There are 3 other geographically similar examples in the Lothians #neverspokenhere
@natlibscotmaps @Scranlife Lets jump quickly back to Cannonball House, the ancient tenement at the top of the Castlehill which as we all know is named for the cannonball lodged in its walls, shot out of the castle at Bonnie Prince Charlie in Holyrood during the '45. Right?
@natlibscotmaps @Scranlife Well, no.
@natlibscotmaps @Scranlife 18th Century cannon were not peashooters, they were high velocity weapons. An cannonball like that weighs in the region of 40lbs and would have tore straight through the building, not lodged gently in the wall (photo Gazetteer for Scotland scottish-places.info/features/featu…)
@natlibscotmaps @Scranlife It's likely a 42pdr (i.e. a "full cannon" firing a 42lb shot) ball at that size, which would have had an initial muzzle velocity of 1,200 feet per second. Some quick maths and it's about 1/3 of the power of the best German WW2 anti-tank guns.
@natlibscotmaps @Scranlife Back on topic, if it's not a relic of the '45 what is it? Well there's 2 theories. The obvious one is that it was just a convenient piece of material to fill a hole in the wall. The nicer one is that it's a levelling marker for the gravitation feed from Comiston Springs
