#waterofleith — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

If you take yourself along the Water of Leith Walkway then, where you meet Newhaven Road, you will come to the burnt out shell of a building. It’s been this way for the best part of a decade: doors and windows boarded up, now covered in graffiti; a roof open to the elements, now sprouting saplings. Look below the parapet of the adjacent bridge and you might notice a mysterious plaque for Uranus Art Garden. Perhaps this is a gentle joke at the expense of Jupiter Art Land? Who knows, but if you look down through the overgrowth you will see a tiered patio down to the river. Is, or was, this that art garden? If so, how did it come to be here? And just what is the story with this ruinous structure?

The burnt-out shell of 74-76 Newhaven Road. Photo © SelfPlaque for “Uranus Art Garden”. Photo © SelfThe tiered riverside patio terrace. Photo © Self

What you have been pondering was once the public house known as The Bonnington Bridge; a small, neat building – barely a single room – at 74-76 Newhaven Road. It was built around 1868 when an application for a licence to sell excisable liquors was made to the Burgh of Leith by the appropriately named Theresa Beveridge. The premises at this time were also known as The Bonnington Bridge. This appellation obviously refers to the adjacent bridge of that name, first built in 1812. They stand on a plot of land that had hitherto been the garden of a house called Bridge Place and were let from Mr Miller of Bonnington Old House.

Bonnington Bridge in the snow, 1895, looking north with the bar of the same name beyond it to the right. Between the bar and the tenement is Bridge Place. Photograph by John McKean, in the Edinburgh & Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries

Bonnington had long been a centre of milling and was progressively industrialised throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Its population was swelled by workers who provided a ready clientèle for an enterprising publican. In 1880 the licence transferred to Thomas Henderson then in 1890 to William Blyth. In the latter case it was granted on the proviso he “undertook to keep eatables such as sandwiches and bread and cheese and such like for the supply of customers“. In 1894 the vast Chancelot Mill opened nearby and the pub became a favoured haunt for its thirsty workers. Come the new century there license changed hands again; in 1902 to H. S. McKay and in 1904 to J. M. Clark.

OS 1876 town plan of Edinburgh highlighting P.H. (Public House). Note Bonnington Brae house and lodge on the left and Bonnington Old House to the right (east). Tenement housing has started to be built in this area, creeping north of the Water of Leith into an area that had been largely the preserve of villas until this time. Note also the station of the North British Railway to the north where the tracks pass beneath Newhaven Road. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Between 1902 and 1903 the adjacent bridge was rebuilt and widened at the joint expense of the Corporations of Edinburgh and Leith. The boundary between these municipalities ran down its centre (see the dotted line in the above map) and therefore each was liable for a half share of the costs.

Plaque installed on Bonnington Bridge in 1902-03 when it was rebuilt and widened. Photo © Self

The pub’s licence was taken over in 1909 by David Bennet, who would keep it for fifteen years. By this time it had become a tied house of George Mackay & Co., who brewed on the Southside at St Leonard’s Street. Post Office Directories list it at this time as trading under the name of the Bonnington Bridge Tavern. Bennet suffered an elaborate burglary in June 1913 when slates were removed from the pub’s roof and a hole 15 inches square was cut in the sarking boards below to allow entry into the bar. The thieves failed to gain entry to the safe but made off with 18 Shillings from the till.

The next licensee was Mrs Jane Macintyre Whyte who was granted it in October 1925. It then transferred in 1938 to William R. W. Whitson, who would extend the premises to the rear. By the time Durward Moncur took over in 1963 the brewery was New Mackay Taverns. This latter change was the result of Mackay’s being taken over by the English brewer Watney Mann two years previously. The new owners put their Scottish tied houses into this subsidiary and used them to introduce the novelty of keg beer into the country; Watney’s Red Barrel.

Pint of Red Barrel please, Sid. Watney Red Barrel much in evidence in the 1972 film Carry on Abroad.

In March 1965 a loyal customer of fifty plus years, seventy three year old John Black, sued bar manager John Ward for £500 for loss of earnings. Black claimed he had been ejected from the premises – after cracking a joke about being overcharged – with such force that he required hospitalisation and seven weeks off work. The newspapers did not report if his claim was successful. Ownership changed again in 1969 when it was moved to Waverley Taverns (Scotland) Ltd, another Wattney Mann holding company. This was the result of a further takeover, merging the former Mackay’s premises with those of Drybrough’s of Craigmillar.

The decline of heavy industry in the district in the 1960s and 70s saw the pub’s demographic drift away from being a humble howff for the working man. By the early 1980s it had forged itself a new reputation as offering the latest opening times in Leith – 2AM every weekday – and always being good for a “lock in“. To keep the punters entertained there was live Jazz on Thursdays, country night on Fridays and a Golden Oldies disco on Saturday. And Go-Go dancers. Go-Go dancers every lunch time, late on weeknights and all day Friday and Saturday. Sunday was the Lord’s Day and therefore there would be no dancers and no drinking: the doors remained firmly closed.

Scotsman, 26th November 1982. The opening hours were varied to 1AM every day Monday to Saturday in 1993.

When the author of 1987’s Leith Pub Guide‘s – the appropriately named Derry Beer – visited he recorded it being known locally as either The Bonny or The Bridge. In his opinion the place “really comes to life at night” and was a favourite spot for stag nights and rowdy bowling club celebrations. The landlord at this time was John Murray, who also ran a print shop over the road.

The Bonnington Bridge in 1987, picture from the Leith Pub Guide by Derry Beer.

The 1990s saw a series of landlords come and go. In 1992 it passed to John Moriarty, who also ran the Alhambra Bar on Leith Walk (one wonders if he was a relation of the famous Mary Moriarty who ran the Port O’ Leith). In 1995 it was taken over by Michele Marr and in 1998 transferred to Gary Reid and James Gourlay. These latter owners changed the name to the Newhaven Inn, a somewhat odd choice given the fact it lies a kilometre south of that particular village. The name stuck despite the geographic anomaly and was retained when it was taken over in 2003 by Ian and Moira Brown. By this time the trading hours had moved with the times, the doors opening on Sundays but with the late nights pared back; midnight on Thursdays and 1AM on Friday and Saturdays.

In 2006 a further change came to the little pub when it found itself in the vast portfolio of national operator Punch Taverns. This was the result of an extended and convoluted series of takeovers in the pub trade. Wattney Mann was taken over by Grand Metropolitan in 1972, who sold their tied houses to Courage in 1991. The latter was bought by Scottish & Newcastle in 1995 who sold their tied houses to Punch in 2003. The new owners were granted planning permission to build a small extension for a new kitchen and add a raised outdoor seating deck overlooking the river. This was possibly a response to the ban of smoking in enclosed public spaces in Scotland year (has it really been 20 years?) At this time the name was also sensibly changed back to its original Bonnington Bridge.

The “Bonny” in 2008 when the Google Streetview car passed. This shows the work done as granted by the 2006 planning permission, adding the small kitchen extension and outside seating deck.

The Bonny hit the news in May 2009 for the wrong reasons when a cannabis farm was discovered in its basement. Police officers searching for stolen property there found more than 350 plants, valued between £50-150,000, behind a series of locked doors in the cellar. They were being tended by an undocumented immigrant, 40 year old Ming Lee, who told them he had been paid £100 a week to tend them. Lee claimed to have been locked downstairs for two weeks and had only been allowed out once to buy food. At this time the owner was still Punch, who denied any and all knowledge of what had been going on.

Punch shuttered the pub and would never re-open it. Obviously deciding it was time to call last orders they put it up for sale later in the year. Planning permission was granted at that time to turn it into a fireplace showroom and that might have been that for our story had it not been for a company called Nocturnal Aviators Limited. Formed as Malsen Limited in 2001, the company was dormant until it bought the pub for £120,000 in April 2010. It planned to return it to its original use, having been granted planning permission to thoroughly expand and modernise it. Its goal was to take advantage of the position overlooking the Water if Leith and pivot the business from traditional boozer to a family-friendly, food-centric bistro. The man behind this was the company’s sole shareholder and director; former Scotland Rugby international turned publican and businessman, Norrie Rowan. After making a name for himself on the Murrayfield turf in the 1980s, he remade it in the 1990s by excavating The Vaults and The Caves out of the cellars and arches beneath South Bridge. In doing so he forged a reputation for doing things his way, digging first and asking questions later, repeatedly coming into conflict with city planners and engineers along the way.

Still from a promotional video issued by Norrie Rowan on YouTube for his 2022 council election campaign

Like his previous schemes, Rowan once again intended to expand downwards. In the basement he would create a restaurant and second bar, from where a new patio terrace on the river bank would be accessed through folding glass doors. Work began, but repeatedly appears to have stalled and never reached a conclusion. Once again one of Norrie Rowan’s schemes brought him into conflict with the Council and there are a series of enforcement actions and appeals detailed in official records (summarised in the table at the foot of this post). And yet again he also managed to upset the city’s Roads Engineers, who charged he had been digging into cellars beneath the bridge without permission. Rowan contended these were within the curtilage of his property and that they had not proved otherwise.

If one looks back using Google Streetview then – from the outside at least – it work appears to have been nearing completion in 2012. At that time however a full new planning application was taken that further altered and extended the place. The defining feature of this updated scheme was a large steel-framed, south-facing, glass dormer that sought to bring more daylight down into the building. It was somewhat at odds with the traditional masonry façade and wood-clad alterations at the side and was was initially rejected at planning. Rowan decided to build it anyway and managed to have it approved retrospectively on appeal.

Google Streetview, April 2016, showing the state of works at The Bonnington Bridge. From the outside at least things appear to be finally getting close to finishing.

Further complaints against him during this time were that we was flytipping on the riverbank – he claimed instead he was cleaning up the mess of others – and that his property was unkempt. Another claim was made that walls were being built on the riverbank without permission and there were two that he was undertaking unauthorised works beneath the bridge structure. No action was ever taken against any of these complaints. It should be noted however that the various walls that were built on the riverbank bare no relation to anything shown on any planning drawings. They do however denote this area as containing raised beds for “planting and sculpture“. Is this the Uranus Art Garden? One wonders if this was something of a wry joke on Rowan’s part after having so many unfounded complaints raised against his scheme.

Drawing from 2012 planning application showing the new basement restuarant area, access through to a lower terrace and the tiered walls and staircase down to a riverside “pathway”, which is actually just a further tier of patio area and not related to the Water of Leith Walkway which runs on a steel structure overhead. City of Edinburgh Council, Ref. No: 12/02512/FUL

By 2016 the pub had been closed for seven years and finally appeared – from the outside at least – to be approaching a state of completion (again). Disaster struck however on August 15th when the building was gutted by a fire, which was sufficiently intense to have been photographed by visitors to Edinburgh Castle. The Broughton Spurtle – self-described stirrer of local news – reported “when we spoke to Police Scotland on 18 August, the cause of the fire had not been established, and enquiries were ‘ongoing.’” They ended with “Let’s hope the owner was insured.” Planning documents submitted to the Council on his behalf in 2019 noted “a lengthy insurance case was being contested“.

Photograph submitted with planning application for a temporary extension to the pub (18/09350/FUL)

It’s not clear if a cause for the fire was ever established. Rowan wrote a letter of reply to the Spurtle in which he detailed his version of the difficulties encountered by the project. He concluded “these delays have led to the situation we now find ourselves in. What could have been an attractive and vibrant access point to the walkway looks likely to remain an eyesore for several more years“.

Google Streetview image in November 2019, a few months after the catastrophic fire.

A less determined individual might have just given up after so much time and the disastrous fire, but in 2018 another of Rowan’s company – Termshield Ltd – sought a 5-year consent with a view to rising from the ashes. This rising was quite literal and involved extending upwards by two-storeys using six shipping containers, welded together. This proposal was refused and an appeal was rejected in 2019. The premises’ licence expired that year and given the site appear to all intents and purposes to have been abandoned since then, they have never been renewed. At this time Norrie Rowan decided to turn his hand to local politics, with limited success.

Architect’s drawing of the proposed shipping container extension, from planning appeal to 18/09350/FUL

Seven years on from this last activity, if you manage to look through a gap in the rotting boards across the doors or windows you will see a sad site within; bare walls, burnt roof timbers and a filling of flytipped tyres and building waste being slowly overtaken by the Buddleia. Accounts for Nocturnal Aviators Ltd filed with Companies House indicate this ruin remains the company’s sole tangible asset. In its filings for 2025 they are recorded as a “potential development site owned by the company“. One imagines that after a catastrophic fire and a decade open to the elements, demolition and redevelopment might one day at last make a return on this troublesome investment.

The burnt out interior of the Bonnington Bridge Bar in May 2026, open to the elements and being encroached upon by nature, vandalism and flytipping. Photo taken through a hole in the boarded up door. Photo © SelfReference & DateDescriptionOutcome09/03274/FUL – January 2010…form new sliding folding doors to ground and lower floors, form new patio to lower floor, extension to lower floor to form beer cellarGranted10/00327/EAMEN – June 2010Enforcement. Alleged untidy landNo further action09/03274/VARY – March 2011Non material variation…Alterations to external windows and doors and external stairsConsent varied11/00365/ELBB – June 2011Enforcement. Unauthorised works to listed bridge.No further action.
11/00509/ELBB – August 2011Enforcement. Construction of stone walls on riverbank.No further action.12/02512/FUL – July 2012External alterations and formation of stair and dormer window.Mixed, granted on appeal12/00497/ELBB – August 2012Enforcement. Unauthorised works to listed bridge.No further action.12/00104/REVREF – September 2012Appeal for 12/02512/FULGranted13/00195/EOPDEV – April 2013Enforcement. Erection of side dormer without planning permission.No further action. Permission had been granted on appeal.15/00609/EAMEN – November 2015Enforcement. Alleged untidy landNo further action.16/00010/EAMEN – January 2016Enforcement. Alleged untidy landTreated as duplicate of 15/00609/EAMAN. No further action18/09350/FUL – October 2018Alter fire damaged public house by removal of existing attic floor and form two temporary extensions using shipping containers.Refused, refused on appeal19/00043/REVREF – April 2019Appeal for 18/09350/FULRefusedDate of validation used for Planning, date received for EnforcementSummary of planning applications and enforcement actions relating to 74 Newhaven Road, 2009 – 2019

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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2026-05-25 · 05:30 UTC

Problèmes à Gogo: the thread about the Bonnington Bridge Bar

If you take yourself along the Water of Leith Walkway then, where you meet Newhaven Road, you will come to the burnt out shell of a building. It’s been this way for the best part of a decade: doors and windows boarded up, now covered in graffiti; a roof open to the elements, now sprouting saplings. Look below the parapet of the adjacent bridge and you might notice a mysterious plaque for Uranus Art Garden. Perhaps this is a gentle joke at the expense of Jupiter Art Land? Who knows, but if you look down through the overgrowth you will see a tiered patio down to the river. Is, or was, this that art garden? If so, how did it come to be here? And just what is the story with this ruinous structure?

The burnt-out shell of 74-76 Newhaven Road. Photo © SelfPlaque for “Uranus Art Garden”. Photo © SelfThe tiered riverside patio terrace. Photo © Self

What you have been pondering was once the public house known as The Bonnington Bridge; a small, neat building – barely a single room – at 74-76 Newhaven Road. It was built around 1868 when an application for a licence to sell excisable liquors was made to the Burgh of Leith by the appropriately named Theresa Beveridge. The premises at this time were also known as The Bonnington Bridge. This appellation obviously refers to the adjacent bridge of that name, allegedly first built in 1812 but clearly marked in 1804 maps and referred to in newspapers of that time. They stand on a plot of land that had hitherto been the garden of a house called Bridge Place and were let from Mr Miller of Bonnington Old House.