For a “city road,” as Mr. Stevenson termed it, the system he proposed has certain advantages, inasmuch as carriages with any form of wheel may use it, and this freedom of use admits of any amount of traffic being accommodated, carriages having the freedom of passing from the stone track to any part of the road. The introduction of iron “street tramways” may, however, be said, for the present, to have taken the place of all other plans for improving city passenger traffic.
CHAPTER V.
IMPROVEMENT OF EDINBURGH.
1812–1834.
Design for approaches to Edinburgh from the East by Regent and London Roads, and opening up access to the Calton Hill—Sites for the new Jail and Court of Justiciary, and buildings in Waterloo Place—Regent Bridge—Feuing Plan for Eastern District of Edinburgh—Improvement of accesses to Edinburgh from the West and North, and from Granton—Removal of old “Tolbooth” Prison—Removal of University buildings.
Ancient Edinburgh was famed for its narrow streets and crooked wynds, and even at the period when this Memoir begins, much remained to be done for the improvement of the various accesses to the city. These roads, leading from north, south, east, and west, were under the management of different Trusts or public bodies, by all of whom Mr. Stevenson was on various occasions consulted; and the subject seems to have had for him more than a merely professional interest, for his advice was generally far “ahead” of the cautious views of his employers, on whom he seems often to have had no small difficulty in urging the adoption of sufficiently comprehensive designs. His love for the beautiful rose above all other feelings, and he succeeded, not without difficulty and perseverance, in securing for Edinburgh those spacious road improvements which have undoubtedly helped her to claim the title of “Modern Athens.”
The “Modern Athenians” who now enjoy the magnificent approach to Edinburgh by the Regent Road and Calton Hill, or that no less commodious access from Parson’s Green to Leith Walk, known as the “London Road,” can hardly realise the time when the only communication from Princes Street to Portobello was by Leith Street, Calton Street, and the North Back of the Canongate.
At that time Princes Street was abruptly terminated by a row of houses at the Register Office, and the Calton Hill was in a state of nature.
Mr. Stevenson’s scheme of forming a direct access to London and the south, by making a roadway over the Calton Hill, was based on a comprehensive scale, providing sites for public buildings, and an extensive feuing-plan for the eastern portion of Edinburgh, all of which were ultimately carried out under his directions.
But this scheme, boldly conceived and so beneficial to Edinburgh, was not well received by the inhabitants. It had the economical objection of interfering to some extent with house property, a liberty to which people were only reconciled in modern times when sites had to be acquired for railway stations. It had the engineering objection of involving what were represented in those days as dangerous rock cuttings and extensive high retaining walls along the sides of the Calton Hill; but above all, it had the serious social objection that its route ran through the “Old Calton Burying-ground,” and involved the removal of the remains of those interred in it to a new resting-place, to be provided by the Improvement Commissioners. This last objection subjected Mr. Stevenson to some ill feeling; and the fact that the place of interment of his own family was one of those to be removed to the new cemetery, did not succeed in allaying the discontent. It was undoubtedly in consequence of Mr. Stevenson’s perseverance and unfaltering conviction that his advice was sound, and calculated to benefit his fellow-citizens, that his plan was ultimately adopted and carried out.
It is proper to notice that the new jail and the buildings in Waterloo Place were designed by Mr. Archibald Elliot, and at a more recent period the houses in the Regent and Royal Terraces by Mr. Playfair, and the High School and Burns’s Monument by Mr. Thomas Hamilton, all architects of eminence, whose works added to the attractiveness of Mr. Stevenson’s splendid access.