Edinburgh Bridge #11 The South Bridge

With the completion of the original North Bridge in 1772 the next step in the development of the South side was to bridge the long gap from the High Street to where the land comes up to roughly the same height near enough where Chamber Street is now. This was a substantial and expensive enterprise and it took one of Scotland’s and Britain’s most famous architects Robert Adam to design a 19, yes 19, arch bridge that would effectively link his two main projects, the General record Office and the main building for the University of Edinburgh.

The image above is the only visible arch left. The rest of the arches have disappeared with the building of tenements along the both sides side of the bridge and evidence of this is seen in he section with the windows along the side of the front arch. The buildings along the side of the arches created interior vaults which were used by the lower strata of Edinburgh’s populace and they were closed down for would now be called health and safety reasons in about 1825 and were only opened, and then only by accident, by Norrie Rowan an ex-international rugby player cum property developer in 1985. The resultant vaults are now an established part of the Edinburgh tourist experience.