#duddingstoncraigentinny — Public Fediverse posts

The Innocent: the thread about Scotland’s oldest railway tunnel and how it revolutionised the city

Writing on the topic of the Scotland Street Tunnel, it’s hard not to stumble into the rabbit hole of railway tunnels and look at another, older, rope-worked incline tunnel in Edinburgh – that of St Leonard’s – better known these days by the moniker The Innocent.

At 560 yards, it’s just a little over half the length of Scotland Street and its 1-in-30 gradient is a little less severe than the latter’s 1-in-27. It’s also less roomy, with a 19½ x 14¾ feet cross section vs. 24 x 24 feet. Like Scotland Street, it was worked by gravity downhill and by a static steam engine at the top of the incline to haul waggons uphill by rope. It has a reasonable claim to be Scotland’s oldest railway tunnel – Dundee’s 330 yard long Law Tunnel was completed over a year before it, but traffic started running through the Innocent a few months before that on the Dundee & Newtyle Railway.

Bartholomew Post Office Map, 1865, showing the Innocent Tunnel and St Leonard’s Station to the left. The colours represent municipal electoral wards. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

First things first – the formal name for the railway was the Edinburgh & Dalkeith Railway so what’s with it being known as the Innocent Railway ? One frequently repeated explanation is that nobody died, or was seriously injured, during the railway’s operational life. Let’s clear that up now – people did die and others were injured on this railway (more on that later), so that’s not where the name comes from. Rather, it comes from how “innocently” backwards the railway, with its plodding horse-hauled traction and ramshackle facilities seemed compared to the rival steam-powered “whizzing, whistling, sorting, buffing and blowing railways and having one’s imagination exasperated by their frantic speed“. It was in Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal of January 1846 where the name first appeared in print, as a gentle nickname. By this time the railway was 15 years old but already belonged firmly to a previous generation and had recently purchased by the bigger and more modern North British Railway.

Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, No. 105, January 1846

Oddly, even Chambers gets it wrong, sayings “[it] never breaks bones” and “a friend of ours calls it ‘The Innocent Railway’, as being so peculiar for its indestructive character“. Tell that to the young woman who fell between two waggons on Saturday 3rd March 1838 and had her skull fatally crushed! Or to the passengers of the Portobello stagecoach who, on Monday 10th August 1840, had an empty train of waggons collide with their conveyance on a level crossing, injuring a number of them.

FATAL ACCIDENT – Caledonian Mercury – 5th March 1838

Construction wasn’t incident free either. Initial borings of the tunnel commenced at Duddingston in July 1827 and appear to have proceeded steadily and without hitch until February 1829 when a workman was killed and 8 received a variety of injuries – many serious – when 8 yards of masonry archwork, 30 tons of stone blocks, collapsed on them. Robert Inglis lost his life, leaving a widow and two young children; Robert Mercer had his right leg amputated by Mr Liston at the Royal Infirmary; James Gilmour suffered fractured ribs. So the Innocent may have had a lesser rate of incident than its competitors, but it’s evidently not true that there were none and that no serious injuries were incurred or lives lost during its operations. However they were obviously proud of their safety record, as its called out in an 1832 advert:

“Without the slightest semblance of accident”, The Scotsman – 1st September 1832

The Innocent opened for business in 1831 and the Edinburgh Evening Courant reported in August that year that it was then “in full operation” with trains of waggons “re-issuing twelve to fifteen tons of coals, with the speed of a mail coach” as they came out of the tunnel on the haulage rope.

Coal was the reason the railway was built – to bring the black riches from the Midlothian pits around Millerhill, Sheriffhall and south of Dalkeith, and from a branch to Cowpits in East Lothian, into the city of Edinburgh, at a depot in St. Leonards. A further branch extended to the harbour at Fisherrow for import or export of coal – this harbour soon proved not to be a useful destination and so the route was extended on a new branch to the Port of Leith. To the south, the Marquess of Lothian would build an extension across the South Esk river as far as his pits at Arniston at significant personal expense and the Duke of Buccleuch took a branch from Dalkeith to his pits around Smeaton.

The 1825 survey of the route by its engineer, James Jardine, highlighted for clarity. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

In the mid-1820s, coal could come into Edinburgh either from Lanarkshire – by the Union Canal – from Fife or Northumberland – through the Port of Leith – or locally from East and Midlothian – by cart. However, the winter weather frequently strangled supplies by all 3 of these channels and as a result the growing city frequently suffered from winter fuel shortages, as deliveries dwindled and prices increased. What was needed was a more reliable and cheaper way to bring local coal into the city – a railway was thought to be such a way. Interested gentlemen issued a prospectus for the Mid Lothian Railway from Newbattle to Edinburgh in the winter of 1824. They forecast the best Midlothian coal could be sold in Edinburgh at 8s per ton if brought in by the railway, 40% cheaper when compared with the then market rate of 11s 6d per ton. It was therefore unsurprising that the Lothian “Coal Lords” were all early supporters – Archibald Primrose, 4th Earl of Rosebery; Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch; Sir John Hope of Pinkie, 11th Baronet; Francis Wemyss Charteris Douglas, 8th Earl of Wemyss & 4th Earl of March; and John Kerr, 7th Marquess of Lothian.

The Mid Lothian Railway soon became the Edinburgh & Dalkeith Railway of the above map. It re-used some of the trackbed of an even older horse-drawn railway, the Edmonstone Waggonway, which had opened for bsiness in August 1818. This line connected pits at Millerhill with a depot at Little France on the lands of Lt. Col. John Wauchope of Edmonstone & Niddrie Marischal. The Innocent threatened Wauchope’s older route and he successfully objected to its 1825 Parliamentary Bill. When a second Bill succeeded in 1826 he changed his mind and came to an agreement with the promoters. This allowed the use of some of his existing trackbed, to have his pits connected to the new railway and also to be paid a share of all the coal being carried across his lands. As a result, the Edmonstone Waggonway was surplus to requirements and was gone by 1831 when the Innocent commenced operations. Edmonstone Coal was soon being advertised for sale at St. Leonards, “direct from the pit head“.

Looking up the “Innocent Tunnel” in 2009, with the modern cycle path laid down its centre. CC-by-NC 2.0, Peter Reed via Flickr

The Innocent found itself a roaring success and was soon carrying over 300 tons of coal a day, all of it (except through the tunnel) by horse power alone. The colliers all provided their own horses and waggons, relieving the railway of having to oversee this aspect of operations. In 1836, a newspaper as far off as the Londonderry Standard reported that “the immense load” of a train weighing 54 tons was moved a distance of 6 miles by just 2 horses.

A Waggonway – at Tanfield on Tyneside. The horse provided the means to move the waggon on the level or uphill. Going downhill it was tethered at the rear and the waggonman would control the speed of descent using the large wooden brake lever. The Coal Waggon – Northumberland Archives Ref. ZMD 78/14

But it wasn’t just a case of bringing the coal into the city, the railway also promised to revolutionise how the city’s fuel supply was sold and distributed. At this time, people bought their coal from a preferred merchant and would specify the quality and origin, which depended on the particular pit and seam it was cut from. Some coals produced more light, some more heat, some burned with less smoke, some were cheaper, etc. These were sold like brands, e.g. the Marquess of Lothian’s Great Main Coal or Sir John Hope’s Craighall Jewel Coal, but customers were reliant on the Carters to deliver it to them and had to trust that they were getting what they had paid for. The railway would break the stranglehold of the Carters, who were widely thought to be overpriced and dishonest, selling coal of dubious quality and volumes on the side, and selling direct to the public.

Banner of the Incorporated Trade of the Carters of Leith. © Edinburgh City Libraries

The railway promised only to supply coal from named and trusted pits (those of the Lothian Coal Lords who backed it, naturally) and hand-picked a selected number of coal merchants to handle the trade from its St. Leonards depot. Neither the railway nor their merchants actually had any stores of coal of their own at the depot, these were the property of the customer’s chosen Collier so it came direct from their stocks. However the company employed a “Weigher“, Robert Gibb, whose job it was to ensure that the weight and type of coal that left the yard matched the customer order; signed and sealed.

Notice in the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directory, 1832-33, explaining the operation of the Innocent’s coal sale operation to customers.

oGibb soon proved that the Carters were indeed swindling customers and delivering inferior quality and underweight shipments, catching them red handed. He followed a Carter who had had accidentally left his paperwork behind at the depot and watched as a lady in Alva Street took delivery of the load. Making enquiries with her, he found that she had a receipt showing she had paid for 20cwt of the Duke of Hamilton’s Great Lanarkshire Coal from the canal, but he knew from his paperwork that the cart had delivered 18cwt of Sir John Hope’s Cowpits Coal from the railway: the Carter had swapped the paperwork over. The railway was quick to act and took out notices in the newspapers and the Post Office Directory to let it be known that their officers would be following and watching the Carters and that customers should only accept coals with a Weigher’s certificate signed and stamped by Gibb himself. They also let it be known that the dishonest Carter had been turned over to the Sheriff and that any others caught cheating would never again be allowed to transport railway coal.

Caution to the Public Against Fraud in Coals – Edinburgh Evening Courant, 31st March 1832

To add further checks against fraud, the Weigher’s certificate would be marked with the time of dispatch and customers were to reject any coal delivered more than an hour after that time. This meant it was unlikely that there had been time to adulterate the load. Customers were also instructed to under no circumstances to allow the carter to keep the certificate after delivery, in case he should try use it again. Any one suspecting foul play was invited to inspect the Weigher’s register at the St. Leonards yard. The Railway was thereby guaranteeing both the quality and weight of the coal received, “to secure to the consumer what he has hitherto been little accustomed to, a knowledge of what kind of coal he buys, and of what price he really pays for it“. And with that, the Innocent Railway had totally disrupted the Edinburgh coal market – forever and for the better. The system was soon further improved, by contracting the management of the sale and delivery of coal to one Michael Fox, one of the line’s original engineers. He promised that all deliveries would be made in his own carts, “always being of the best quality and full weight“.

Michael Fox’s advert for railway coal. The Scotsman – 1st September 1832

The railway – or rather Michael Fox again – was also quick to catch on that people would pay to ride along the rails as passengers and that they would bring in additional revenue. Starting in June 1832, he put a carriage on the rails and advertised it at 6d per passenger thus introducing the passenger train to Edinburgh. This was his own initiative and a runaway success, the Railway ended up buying it off him in 1836. His service carried 150,000 passengers in its first year and brought in revenue of £4,000. As a passenger railway, per track mile, this made it busier than the steam-hauled Liverpool & Manchester Railway. By September that year, Fox was advertising a timetabled service between St. Leonards, Sheriffhall and Fisherrow, with inside and outside seats (9d and 6d respectively) and that he had winter-proofed the former to “render them dry and safe from the effects of the weather“.

RAILWAY COACH – Edinburgh Evening Courant – 4th June 1832

Michael Fox was obviously something of a serial entrepreneur – in 1835 he was advertising “swimmers’ specials”, trains from St. Leonards that would take bathers to Portobello or Seafield to take the waters. As far as I’m aware, nobody ever troubled to make an illustration of the Innocent Railway at work, so this double-decker horse-drawn rail carriage will have to do.

Engraving of a horse-hauled railway carriage crossing a river

oWhen the technically more advanced North British Railway pushed south from Edinburgh to Berwick, the Innocent at first objected then allowed itself to be bought for the princely sum of £113,000. The NBR ripped up the horse-drawn “Scotch Gauge” Innocent and relaid it as a Standard Gauge steam-powered railway in 1847. They also took on the Marquess of Lothian’s railway as far as Gorebridge and rebuilt this in a similar fashion, thereby adding the adding the first push south of the railway that would eventually become the Waverley Route to Carlisle. The Innocent remained open until 1968 as an important but overlooked branch line into the city for coal, brewery and warehousing traffic. It was steam worked until almost the end, the old J35 engines “manfully struggling up the gradient“, sometimes taking multiple attempts to reach the top. “If they avoided asphyxiation in the hell hole, the crews were rewarded with a good dram from the bond“. The route that they followed is now a popular walking and cycle route, officially known as the Innocent Railway.

A J35 locomotive making the run uphill for the Innocent Tunnel. This was its second attempt, having stalled on the first.

As a footnote, the Innocent may not have been so deserving of that name if its plans to tunnel its way north into the city centre had ever come to anything. One option was a 900 yard tunnel emerging in Holyrood Park, running on the surface from there, the other a monster 2,200 yard bore emerging at Waverley Station from the south – a great “what if” of Edinburgh transport history.

Early Edinburgh railways. The Edinburgh & Dalkeith (Innocent) in light blue, the Edinburgh & Glasgow in green, the North British in brown and the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton in Yellow.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

Around Craigentinny: the thread about Scots, English, Gaelic, Dutch, Cornish and Irish origins of suburban streetnames

I recently wrote a thread about the meanings of the street names on the old Easter Duddingston estate, and how nearly all are linked to the Abercorn family. So now it is the time to boldly stray north of Moira Terrace and the Portobello Road to see what lies on the other side and where its street names come from (spoiler: it’s Craigentinny, and once again they come almost entirely from one family!)

By Craigentinny I mean the area defined by the old estate on that name, which was itself the eastern portion of the older Barony of Restalrig. The origins of Craigentinny are somewhat obscure but the most frequently told version says it was land acquired by one James Nisbet1 from the Logans of Restalrig in 1604. Here he built a tower house (or improved an existing one) which for reasons known to himself Christened Craigentinny. The roots of that name are Gaelic but the precise meaning is lost to time, the usual explanation is Creag an t’Sionnaich or Fox Rock. You can read a bit more on the origins and history of the house over at Stravaiging Around Scotland.

Craigentinny House, much modified in a Scottish Baronial Revival style in Victorian times, c. 1880. © Edinburgh City Libraries

After 160 years in hands of various Nisbets the house and estate was bought in 1762 by William Miller (1722-1799), a wealthy Quaker seed merchant from the Canongate who was known locally as “King of the Quakers“. He had a single surviving son late in life by his third wife, his heir William Henry Miller. William Henry inherited on his father’s death in 1799.

1. James Nisbet (1557-1621), son of Henry Nisbet of Dean, established the Nisbet of Craigentinny line.
   He was followed by his son Sir Henry Nisbet (1584-1667), who was followed by his 4th son Sir Patrick Nisbet (1623-1682). Patrick exchanged titles with his cousin – Sir Alexander Nisbet of Dean – in 1672 with the latter becoming Sir Alexander Nisbet of Craigentinny (1630-1682). He was succeeded by his second son, Capt. Alexander Nisbet (1688-1735), his eldest son Sir William having succeeded instead to the Nisbet of Dirleton line. The former did not have a male heir, so Craigentinny passed via Alexander’s sister – Christian Nisbet (1692-1738) – to his nephew John Scott (1729-1764), the oldest grandson of Sir Alexander Nisbet. John took the double-barrelled surname Scott-Nisbet to inherit the title and sold Craigentinny to William Miller the Quaker in 1762, whose father already possessed Fillyside Farm on the estate. ↩︎

The image below shows the 1847 estate boundary, which was altered slightly when the North British Railway came through this district to make sure there were no isolated parts of Craigentinny or Duddingston on the respectively wrong side of the tracks.

Outline of the Craigentinny estate (and surrounding principal estates) projected onto a modern 2023 aerial photo.

William Henry Miller became MP for Newcastle-Under-Lyme in 1830, spending most of his time on an estate he purchased in England, where he set about amassing one of the most important book collections of its time. It is he who is buried far beneath the magnificent Craigentinny Marbles mausoleum on his Edinburgh estate, which you will find sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the 1930s bungalows of Craigentinny Crescent.

The Craigentinny Marbles, CC-by-SA 4.0 Blackpuddinonabike

When William Henry Miller died in 1848 he was unmarried and without heir (there are baseless antiquarian rumours that he may have been variously a Roman Catholic, adopted, a woman or even intersex, but those are beside the point here). His will disbarred his closest relations from inheriting and the estate was instead bequeathed to his “nieces” or “cousins”, Sarah and Ellen Marsh, who continued to lived at Britwell and Craigentinny. There is an unsolved mystery as to the precise relation of the Marsh sisters to Miller; they certainly weren’t direct relations and may instead have been close companions of his Mother. The sisters had to defend the will in court – there were years of legal wrangling and competing claims by other Miller relative – before they could inherit. When they did, the Lord Lyon granted them the use of the Miller title and arms.

On the death of the surviving sister, Ellen, the estate was inherited by a distant cousin of the Millers, Samuel Christy. He was an English hatter from the well known firm Christy & Co. and also a Quaker. As part of his inheritance Samuel formally changed his surname to Christy-Miller. This was was soon changed to the Scottish form of Christie-Miller (the Christys were, after all, descendants of an Aberdeen Christie).

Cover of “One Hundred and Seventy Five Years of the House of Christy” by Arthur Sadler FRSA

Note that some sources will tell you that William Henry Miller was also known as Christiemiller; that’s patently not true. He died in 1848, and Samuel Christy didn’t fully inherit and change his name until fourteen years after his death in 1862! To confuse matters further, Samuel also had an unrelated uncle called William Miller Christy! It was this establishment of the new family name of Christie-Miller that gives us our first street name on this local history tour – Christiemiller Avenue (and later Place and Grove), which was developed from 1931 onwards.

Christiemiller Avenue, Place and Grove highlighted. 1944-45 OS Town Plan of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Samuel Christie-Miller was predeceased by his only son so Craigentinny passed to his nephew Wakefield Christy in 1889, who thus became Wakefield Christie-Miller and gives his name to Wakefield Avenue. (Wakefield being his mother’s maiden name.)

Wakefield Avenue highlighted. 1944-45 OS Town Plan of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

At the other end of the bungalow belt from Wakefield Avenue is Britwell Crescent. Britwell is a medieval Cambridgeshire name (from Bright Well) and it was where William Henry Miller had bought the estate and house of Britwell Place as his southern residence on becoming an MP in 1830. It was here where Miller built a library for his book collection in a purpose-built, fireproof wing. This property passed via the Marsh sisters to the Christie-Millers and is now known as Grenville Court.

Britwell Place, now Grenville Court, site of William Henry Miller’s library

Moving east through Craigentinny again, we come to Sydney Terrace, Place and Park. These are named for Sydney Richardson Christie-Miller, who inherited the estate in 1898 on the death of his father Wakefield.

Sydney Terrace, Place and Park highlighted. 1944-45 OS Town Plan of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Bordering these last streets are Vandeleur Avenue, Grove and Place, which are named for Evelyn Vandeleur, wife of Sydney. She was of the Anglo-Irish gentry but Vandeleur is an old Dutch and Flemish name – Van de Laer or Vanderloo means one who lives in a grove. There have been Vandeleurs in Kilrush, Co. Clare, since Oliver Cromwell’s time. That Dutch / Flemish connection is highly unusual in Edinburgh place names (it may be unique!) and I think we can say the same of the next street along, Kekewich Avenue, which is Cornish! The connection here is that the Christie-Miller family lawyer when this street was formed was one C. Granville Kekewich, esq.

General Sir John Ormsby Vandeleur, great Grandfather of Evelyn Vandeleur. By William Salter, pre-1849. National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG3762.

Up from Kekewich is the solidly Scottish Bryce Avenue and Grove. Andrew Bryce of Southside Bank Farm was the estate factor for the Christie-Millers. His Victorian farmhouse still exists, hiding in plain site between Vandeleur and Kekewich Avenues off the Portobello Road.

Southside Bank Farmhouse, also known as Craigentinny Mains

Off of Bryce is Goff Avenue. Goff is from the Anglo-Irish wing of the Christie-Miller family again, from the English Goffe or Gough – Wakefield Christie-Miller’s youngest son was Edward Goff Christie-Miller. The Goff branch descended from Major General William Goffe, or William the Regicide, a parliamentarian army officer and Cromwell loyalist who had put his seal and signature on the death warrant of King Charles I. This connection again may be unique in Edinburgh street names.

William Goffe’s signature and seal on the death warrant of King Charles I. Parliamentary Archives, HL/PO/JO/10/1/297A

In the northern sector of the Craigentinny Bungalowopolis we find Nantwich Drive and Stapeley Avenue. Both are Cheshire placenames: Stapheley House in Nantwich was bought by the Christie-Millers in 1910 and Geoffrey Christie-Miller settled there. It was turned over to a war hospital in 1914-18. Geoffrey, another of Wakefield’s sons, was a decorated war hero in that conflict with the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. He and his wife honeymooned at Craigentinny House in 1908 and he took an active interest in the running of the Craigentinny estate and family hat business

Geoffrey Christie-Miller, 1881-1969 Buckinghamshire County Archives Roll of Honour.

The last 2 streets with Christie-Miller connections lie to the south of Moira Terrace: Parker Road / Avenue / Terrace and Farrer Terrace and Grove. Christopher Parker and Helen Farrer were parents-in-law to Sydney Christie-Miller’s brother Charles and were godparents to a number of his children.

Parker and Farrer street names highlighted. 1944-45 OS Town Plan of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

All of these streets are part of the bungalow belt sprawl (although there are some earlier Edwardian villa flats) dating from around 1934 and on the lands of the Southside Bank and Fillyside Bank farms. But the estate had a third farm in addition to these, that of Wheatfield. The Georgian farmhouse of Wheatfield is another of those “oh, I didn’t realise I’d been looking at it the whole time” buildings, it’s just down from the Marbles, set back far enough from Moira Terrace behind a tall, gateless wall to be quite unobtrusive and it does not lend its name to any streets.

Wheatfield farmhouse off of Moira Terrace.

Much of the lands of the farm of Wheatfield were purchased by the Corporation of Edinburgh in 1932, along with Craigentinny House and its gardens, the old Piershill Barracks and Piersfield portion of the Parson’s Green Estate for council housing and a new school. These streets were given Loganlea and Loaning names. The former comes from Loganes Ley, a field elsewhere on the old Logan Restalrig barony where the wappenschaw took place: the muster and demonstration of men and their weaponry who were obliged to perform military service for the town or laird. The latter street names come from loaning, a generic and common old Scots placename; a loan being a lane, and a loaning implying a public right of way along it. This refers to the old route across the Craigentinny Meadows, which began at the gates of Craigentinny House.

Loganlea council housing

The Craigetinny Loaning lead across those “Irrigated Meadows” to the farm of Fillyside Bank. Most of the land of this farm was not built upon for housing, it instead was developed to form the Craigentinny Golf Course, with portions containing a Corporation refuse depot and sewage pumping station and the Meadows Yard railway sidings.

Kirkwood’s 1817 Town Plan, with Craigentinny House and Fillyside Bank farm highlighted. The loaning runs between the two. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

But there was some bungalow building on the farmland, inclduing the streets of Fillyside Road, Terrace and Avenue. Fillysydebank, also known as Greenbank, is first mentioned in 1553. It was also at times the East Mains and North Mains of Restalrig. Filly- comes from the Scots Falu-, a topographical descriptor for “yellowish” land. There is yet another old house hiding in plain site nearby, off Seafield Street, that takes the name Fillyside. However it took this purely as a loan when it was built in 1810 and was never on the Nisbet / Miller / Christie-Miller Craigentinny estate land, but just over the boundary from it.

Fillyside House, as seen from Seafield Street

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret