Authorised in 1817 and completed in 1822, th e take a circuitous route around his estate, The lJnion Canal was closed in 1965 by Act of Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal was built necessitating the constm ction, west of G len village, Royal Parliament and road construction soon limited tbe principally as a means of importing coal and lime ofa deep cutting and a 2,070-feet (63Im) tunnel Commission on the navigable lengths of canal. In partnership with into Edinburgh, but also with high hopes for excavated tbro ugh solid rock. Ancient and Scottish Enterprise and seven canalside local passenger traffic. The canal feeder system was a noteworthy Historical autllorities, British Waterways Scotland The last of Scotland's major canals, the Union engineering ach.ievement in its own righ.t. It entailed Monuments of successfully bid for funding from the Mille1ll1ium Canal embodies much of the engineering expertise the creation of a reservoir at Cobbinshaw (NT Commission and the European Union to undertake that had accumulated over the previous half 0158), high in the Pentland Hills, the water running Scotland Britain's largest canal restoration project, The cenhll)'. Known as the 'Mathematical River' , it is down the Bog Burn and other successor streams Millennium Link. This £84.5m project restored Scotland's only surviving contour canal, [or, with before emptying into the River Almond at Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical navigation to the Union and Forth and Clyde the exception of an original (and now buried) flight Midcalder, below which thc water is deflectcd into a ~onuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) Canals in 2002, thereby allowing boats to travel of locks at its western end, the canal fo llows the feeder channel on the west bank of the river. This 'Jational Monuments Record of Scotland (NMRS) once again between Edinbnrgh and Glasgow, and 240 feet (73.1 m) contour throughout its 31' /2-mile three-mile (five km ) channel, a canal in miniature, Jolm Sinelair House between the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The (50.8km) length. It also incorporates Scotland's crosses the Almond on a Baird-designed cast-iron 16 Bernard Terrace regenerative effect of this restoration is already oldest tunne l, and the design and scale of its three aqueduct and then, traversed by small overbridges Edinburgh EHS 9NX showing along its 11 Okm length. principal aqueducts compare with the best in and cutting tbrough four tunnels, it eventually flows The Falkirk Wheel, th e world's first rotating I1ritain. UnfOltunately, the Union Canal's late into the Union Canal immediately west ofthe Tel: 0131 -6621456 boatlift, was constructed to re-join the two canals. appearance on the scene meant also tbat within 20 Almond Aqueduct, 75 feet (22.9m) above the river Fax: 013 1-662 1477 Created to replace a tlight of 11 locks which linked years of completion, its passenger traffic began to from which it is drawn. Web site: www.reahms.gov.uk the two canals at Camelon, this magnificent be lost to the railways, and by 1849 the camil itself The five-arched Almond Aqueduct is the smallest E-mail: [email protected] structure stands 115 feet (35 metres) high and each was in the ownership of the Edinburgh and of the tln-ee major aqueducts designed by Baird with Edin b lf"~/I. PorI I-Iopetollll, c. 1825; enf!: /'{/villg depic,ltng the approach to the cClllal l erminus. (SC67793Y) of its two giant caissons can carry four boats at a Glasgow (later the Korth British) Railway advice from Thomas Telford. These impressive Further information abouL the Union Canal and time in a IS-minute lining and lowering operation. Company. structures are bandsomely constructed with tapering about the sites illustrated in this broadsheet is It was opened by Her Majesty The Queen on 24 From the early 1790s onwards, engineers had rock-faced piers and, in side, incorporate iron water available from the NMRS at the address given May, 2002_ been commissioned to survey and report upon tro ughs, 13 feet (4m) wide and 6 feet (1.8rn) deep, above. The NMRS is open Monday to Thursday Tbe Falkirk Wheel Visitor Centre is open every possible routes, most of them foll owing direct lines spanning the hollow arches in place ofthe usual 9.30 - 16.30 and Friday 9.30 - 16.00. day 09_00-lS.30 (last entry IS.OO) and admission is belween Lei th ami Glasgow. [( was nut until 1813 cla y, a technique (irst introduced by Telford at Chirk free. For further information telepbone 01324- that a plan by Hugh Baird, rcsidcnt engincer of the on the Ellcsmcre Canal. The eight-arched Slateford In the preparation of background material for tlns 619888, and for details and bookings [or a boat trip Forth and Clyde Canal, set out the advantages of Aqueduct over the Water of Leith on the outskirts of broadsheet RCAHMS acknowledges the expetience telephone 08700-500208. effecting a link with that canal near Falkirk and ~d inhurg h is 500 fe et (152m) long, while at ~ 10 feet assistance of Professor Roland Paxton of Heriot­ creating an Edinburgh basin in the Fountainbridge (247m) in lengtb and 86 feet (26.2m) in height, the Watt University, RCAHMS Commissioner and area of the city. 11 is plan was adopted, and an Act 12-arched Avon Aqueduct is Scotland 's gra nd est, Chairman of The Institution of Civil Engineers' of Parliament of 1817 provided for a canal five feet second only in Britain to Telford's celebrated Panel for Historic Engineering Works (PHEW), (J .Sm) deep to run hom 'near the City of POl1tcysyllte Aqueduct. Mrs Sandra Purves, Secretary of the Scottish Edinburgh ' (later Port Hopetoun) and to join the Designed for barges and low passenger boats, the Group ofPHEW, Professor Chris Eilbeck and Forth and Clyde 'at or near Lock Number 16, Union Canal was traversed by fi xed masomy Guthrie Hutton. opposite to Camelon House' (later Port Downi e). overbridges. They are of a standard plain but elegant The estimated cost was £240,500_ Construction segmental-arched design, and the towpath The publication of the broadsheet has been made work began at the eastern end in March ISI 8, and abutments of most of them have been deeply scored possible by the generous support of by 1822 the canal was complete and in use. At by tow-ropes . Most of the bridges which carry British Waterways Scotland and Sir Robert about £461,760, the achml cost was almost double minor access roads have iron railings instead of McAlpine Lld. the estimate. solid stone parapets, but their arch keystones were As built, thc canal was 37 fcet (11.3m) and 20 uniformly inscribed wi th numbers in sequence from Crown Copyright: RCAHMS 2002 feet (6.lm) at the surface and bottom respectively. east to west, 62 in all. The penultimate westem TSBN 1-90241 9-29-4 From above Camelon , at the western end, a curving brid ge at Glen village (No 61) is a larger than flight of II locks brought the canal down 110 feet normal structure spanning the gorge on tl1e approach (33.5m) in just over half a mile (0.8km) to the level to the canal tunnel. Its keystones bear human masks, of the FOIth and Clyde Canal at POIt Downie. In the one on the eastern face smil ing and that on the Front cover: 1823, a year after completion, the canal was west weeping. The faces are said to reflect the Avon Aqueduct fi~om south-east. extended westward some 1,7 10-feet (5 12.2m) to a relative ease and difficulty of engineering work on Linlithgow; _~lans e Road Basin and Canal Centre .1;'-0/11 south-east. new terminus (Port Maxwell) in order to reduce the either side of the structure, since the short distance Ill....... Carved keystones and panels on Bridge No 61 distance for passengers walking between the two westward involved the grim tusk of building a long Edin bl/r g h. carlO/ basins, 1855: coloured version o//irsl edi tion Ordnance S urvey //la p at I :2500 scale (Edillbwg hshil'e Sheel 2) t:l~.,. British ~~ The Falkirk canals_ Also in the Falkirk area, the owner of tuunel and 11 locks. Cruder versions of the same //iXhlig litillK Ih e Edin brll'gl! callaf baS ins at Lochrin. Port DUI/tlas and Porll-lopetoul! . ('The Laughin. ' and Greetin . Bridge), Glen .... ..._ Waterways Callendar House had forced the canal company to faces gaze out from tbc keystoncs of thc village, Falkirk, (inset left) west, (right) . east. i ~"'Wheel immediately adjacent arcb over the Glen Burn. <'4> I a y",< _k~~;IL '12 13 J' ~ T~ To!' ~ foil·,), Hamislon; engraving of 184U showing a solitary wave experiment being conducted on. th e Union Canal by John Scan Russell. (CollrlcjY a/Pro/essor J C Eilbeck. ! leriot.-rVati University, Edillbwgh). The John Seott lRusscll Aqueduct ( 1989) which carries the Union Canal over the Edinburgh City By-Pass (A 720) at Hermiston is named after th e great Victorian engineer (l808-S2) who, in 1834, Slamannan Raih/J'ay, y ard and canal basin, 1865; coioured Et/illll/wgh. PorI Nope/ullf!. ('. 1923: lV(Jr(!. h u fl.\'{~ flfld qIH1,J'side ./rmJl sOIlIIr - \v (~ ,,'- (SCfi77924) version o/jlrs[ edition Ordnance Survey map ut J: 10, 560 scate first observed aJlld then tested the phenomenon Camelon, rei/kirk, 1864; c%llreciversion. of first edition (.(j/irLirrgshire sliee! XXXi) showing the layout as extended across Ordnance Survey map at J.' J 0, 560 scale (StirJingshire sheet of what he descIribed as the solitary wave of th e cal1al to Bo'ness ilt 1846.