Waverley Bridge & the Lost Nor' Loch
Why is it significant?
Lean on the parapet of Waverley Bridge and look down at the glass roofs of the station spreading through the valley, trains sliding in from both ends, with the cliff of Old Town tenements on one side and Princes Street on the other.
Key Facts
| Place | Waverley Bridge & the Lost Nor' Loch |
|---|---|
| Address | Waverley Bridge, Edinburgh EH1, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.95160, -3.19160 |
| Part of Walk | Painted, Carved and Planted: Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens and the Mound |
| Generated | Generated |
Lean on the parapet of Waverley Bridge and look down at the glass roofs of the station spreading through the valley, trains sliding in from both ends, with the cliff of Old Town tenements on one side and Princes Street on the other. You are looking at one of the very few railway stations in the world named after a novel.
Waverley was Walter Scott's first novel, published anonymously in 1814, the story of a young Englishman swept up in the Jacobite rising of 1745. It was such a sensation that his following books were sold simply as the work of the author of Waverley. When the railway took over this valley in the 1840s, the station soon took that name too, a tribute to the city's most celebrated writer.
Before any of this, the valley held the Nor' Loch, a lake created in the fifteenth century to protect the Old Town's northern flank. For three hundred years the city poured its sewage, rubbish and slaughterhouse waste down the slope into it. People drowned in it, by accident and on purpose, and it is often said that women accused of witchcraft were ducked in its water, a reminder of how cruel those trials were.
In 1759 the draining began, so that Edinburgh could break out across the valley into a planned New Town. It took decades of work. The eastern end became gardens, the railway took the bottom, and a medieval church was demolished to make room for the tracks. Every garden on this walk grows on the bed of that vanished loch.
Now look west along the valley to the tall, dark spire rising out of the trees like a Gothic rocket on a launch pad. It is the monument to the man who gave the station its name. Walk back up to Princes Street, turn left, and go into East Princes Street Gardens to stand at its foot.