#comiston — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

A fox, hare, swan, peewee and a cannonball: the thread about Edinburgh’s first piped water supply

Comiston is an old placename, stretching back to 1337 in records. It comes from Coleman’s tun in Old English; or the farm of a man called Coleman. You may know that it is the site of the Comiston Springs, the source of Edinburgh’s first public water supply, and if you are interested in such things then the National Library of Scotland Map Library is your friend as it shows them all.

OS 1:25 inch map, 1892 survey. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

There are multiple natural springs in this area and given its relative proximity (about 3 miles) and the elevation to allow water to flow under gravity, it was an obvious place for the city to look for its first reliable source of clean drinking water in the 17th century. It had the right to do so since 1621 when an Act of Parliament was passed authorising the Magistrates of the city to bring in water “from a distance” and to carry out necessary works in the land though which it passed. They eventually bought the rights to the springs and water of Comiston from Lady Comiston for £18. A Dutch or German engineer resident in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Peter Bruschi or Brusche, was contracted to bring the water into the city. The springs were captured by pipes that led to a central cistern house, marked on the map above. One source says it had been built as early as 1674 (although that was perhaps just referencing the date when Brusche was contracted. At their fullest flow the springs could provide 23 to 36 cubic feet of water per minute, dropping to 9 to 10 cubic feet in the depth of summer.

Comiston springs cistern house, CC-BY-SA 2.0 Callum Black

This was the source of clean drinking water that was led to the city reservoir on the Castle Hill, where it arrived in 1681, which could contain 9,070 cubic feet of water. Brusche was able to defy the doubters and make water run “uphill” to the Castle Hill as it was 44 feet lower than the Comiston cistern. His lead pipe was three inches in diameter and he was paid £2,950 to lay it. It would remain the sole source of piped water in the city until 1722, when an engineer called Desaguilon laid an additional pipe of 4.5 inches diameter. This was joined in 1787 by a 5 inch cast iron pipe.

“The first Waterhouse or Reservoir, Castle Hill”, a John Le Conte watercolour of 1840 showing the old water reservoir and house on the Castle Hill which supplied the city, and was a convenient location for the housing of a fire engine. © Edinburgh City Libraries

From there it ran downhill under gravity to public wells along the High Street and Canongate where it could be collected for free.

“A Walk thro’ Edinburgh. 1817”. Image showing the Tolbooth Well by James Skene. © Edinburgh City Libraries

The Comiston cistern house is still where it always ways, although suburban sprawl means it is now in the middle of a housing estate and down a lane off the appropriately named Swan Spring Avenue in south suburban Edinburgh.

The cistern house marked in red behind the neat houses of Swan Spring Avenue.

So why Swan Spring? Well the four springs that led to the central cistern house in four conduits were each named for an animal; the swan, the fox, the hare and the peewee (the Scots term for a lapwing). The Fox Spring also has streets named for it. In cistern house, where the four conduits arrived, there are (or perhaps now, were) four lead statues of all the animals to denominate the pipes.

Inside the cistern house. © Scottish Water

These statues (or it may be copies of them, I am not clear) are now kept in the museum of Edinburgh.

The animals of Comiston Springs. Left to right the Swan, the Fox, the Hare and the Peeswee (Lapwing), from the Blipfoto of Flumgummery.

Interestingly, I have found a 1976 photo that shows the animals in different positions. Which is right? I suspect the statues may have just been taken in and posed in these images for the photographer, then returned to safe keeping.

Inside the cistern house, 1976. © TSPL

And here they are 10 years previous to that in the Water Board offices in Cockburn Street, so it seems they’ve been in the habit of taking them out and putting them back at least twice!

The Comiston animals, 1966 © The Scotsman Publications Ltd

I can recall learning this story as a schoolchild when once or twice you got to go to the council-owned Cannonball House on the Castlehill where the tour guide, Mrs Quick, would regale you with local history. She was obviously very good at this as it has stuck with me all these years. A formative experience clearly! Cannonball House is that old tenement at the top of the Castle Hill, which the story says is named for the cannonball lodged in its walls that this was shot out of the castle at Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Right? Well, personally I think no.

Eighteenth century cannon were not peashooters, they were high velocity weapons. A cannonball like the one in the wall would have tore straight through the building, not lodged gently in the wall protruding out slightly. Given the size, it’s likely to be a “42pdr” (i.e. a “full cannon”, firing a 42lb shot with a diameter of 6.7 inches). This would have had an initial muzzle velocity of 1,200 feet per second and a kinetic energy sufficient to turn a domestic masonry wall to dust. The source of the story is the antiquarian James Grant in his book Old & New Edinburgh. Although Grant is usually reliable, we cannot rely 100% on what he collected in his books as being just local fable or hearsay – writing in 1947, local historian George Scott-Moncrieff says it is “not very convincingly reputed“.

The cannonball embedded in the walls of “Cannonball House”. CC-BY-SA 4.0 Enchuffla Con Clave

So, if it’s not a relic of the ’45 what is it? Well there’s two theories. The obvious one is that it was just a convenient piece of material to fill a hole in the wall, but at 42lbs it’s a very heavy piece to lift all that way up. The nicer theory is that it’s a levelling marker for the gravitation feed from Comiston Springs – although it isn’t quite high enough for that as the Castle Hill reservoir is 44 feet below the Comiston cistern house.

I have a third, purely conjectural, explanation of my own. The first mentions of it being called Cannonball House in the local newspapers are only in 1909 when it came up for sale, the name was given in quotation marks so if not official, certainly had local recognition. It was purchased by the Edinburgh School Board to serve as a teaching annexe for the overcrowded Castlehill Public School next door (now the Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre). They even stuck this name on the facade in stone to commemorate the completion in 1913! So perhaps the story of it being hit by a cannonball in the ’45 is true. We do know that there was intermittent and at some times quite intense exchanges of gunfire between the Castle garrison and the Jacobites. Perhaps some humorous builders found a suitable round stone (it may even have been a cannonball) in the demolition rubble during the alterations and decided to include it as they rebuilt the western gable, to fit the name of the building? Certainly during the works some significant alterations were made to both the inside and outside of the building, and antiquarian additions were made to the façade from bits and pieces recovered from other parts of the building. Ultimately, who knows…

There’s a nice BBC article on the subject of these springs but it does overlook that the engineering was German.

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