Dance The Dean Bridge of Edinburgh 1588

In 1829 John Britton wrote: “A few hundred yards up the river a very splendid bridge is in the course of erection to connect its opposite banks. It is entirely the work of a few spirited individuals, who look for remuneration in the expected extension of the town in that direction. The bridge is from a design by Mr Telford. It is to consist of four arches – the arches supporting the foot pavements being distinct from and flatter than the arch of the road-way. The parapet wall of the middle arch is to be one hundred feet above the bed of the river. The view from it will be strikingly picturesque.”

And so it was, and is.

The river is Edinburgh’s Water of Leith which begins as a small burn in the nearby Pentland Hills and finishes in the Firth of Forth at Leith. Short and small as it may be, at one time it provided water power for some seventy mills along its banks, mills chiefly for the grinding of wheat and snuff. From Juniper Green and Colinton to Slateford and Saughton, Roseburn, Coltbridge, Bells Mills and Belford Bridge, the Water of Leith ultimately nears Edinburgh at Dean Village, an enchanting cluster of houses and old mills in a deep, leafy chasm below the city.

Lord Provost Learmonth was the “spirited” owner of the land to the north of the Water of Leith, the Dean estate, and he was interested in the development of the New Town in that direction. Thus, a bridge was necessary to his plans. With his own funds and more provided by the Cramond Bridge trustees, the Dean Bridge was begun in 1829 and opened to traffic at the end of 1831.

The engineer for the bridge was Thomas Telford (1757–1834). Born in Westerkirk in Dumfries-shire, the son of an Eskdale shepherd, Telford became one of Britain’s great civil engineers and he lavished his talents upon his native land. His highways – some nine hundred miles of them through the Highlands – earned him the title of the “Colossus of Roads”. His bridges span the Tay, the Spey, and the Clyde. His harbours still accommodate ships and fishing vessels from Wick to Nairn, to Aberdeen and Dundee. His great Caledonian Canal permitted water travel from Inverness through the Great Glen and Loch Ness to Fort William on Loch Linnhe, making the hazardous trip around Cape Wrath unnecessary. Today his Dean Bridge still carries its heavy load of traffic between the city and the suburbs. When Telford died he was buried in a place of honour in Westminster Abbey.

The actual design for Dean Bridge was by Alexander Nasmyth (1758–1840), a portrait and landscape painter. It was Nasmyth who painted the by now world-famous portrait of Robert Burns.