North Bridge

I stand here everyday on North Bridge waiting to take over my 31 bus and I ashamed to say today is the first time I have read this plaque! I am like many people who were born and bread in Edinburgh, we all take our city for granted. Our city is amazing and doing blips like this and researching them is proving that to me.
Anyway here's a wee bit about North Bridge.
For centuries the barrier to northward expansion was the lake and encircling marsh?the North Loch, or Nor' Loch?that choked the valley along the foot of the moraine and the Castle Rock. King James II (reigned 1437?60) originally had the lake created from swampland as a defense against attack. Even when it was drained and the land was firmed, access to the north had to await the ability of civil engineers to span the valley with a bridge. This was achieved in 1772 with the completion of the North Bridge?70 feet (21 metres) high, 1,130 feet (344 metres) long, and canted steeply northward; today's steel-arch structure dates from 1895.

In the 50 years following the building of the North Bridge, four other bridges were completed, enabling the city to expand where it pleased. Two of these, the South Bridge (1788) and the King George IV Bridge (1834), are multiple-arch constructions that span the Cowgate ravine. These new bridges opened the south to rapid expansion. In the same period Waterloo Bridge, with its Regency Arch (1820), opened the eastern slopes of Calton Hill (northeast of the Castle Rock) to Regency building, while King's Bridge (1833), leaping westward from the Castle Rock, was the vital link in the so-called ?western approach.? Throughout the Victorian and Edwardian ages, the city grew in every direction, recording in its stone tenements and detached mansions every foible of changing taste: Neoclassical, Gothic, Scotch Baronial, Italianate, and a more recent profusion of 20th-century brick and concrete.



Only 4 to go.