Visit Fountainbridge Places

Welcome to Visit Fountainbridge Places
The Walkfo guide to things to do & explore in Fountainbridge

  

Fountainbridge Places Overview: History, Culture & Facts about Fountainbridge

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Fountainbridge history

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Prior to the mid-18th century (when a sweet-water well, or “fountain” was erected near Grove Street), the area was called Foulbridge: a name relating to a bridge crossing the Foul Burn, a rivulet connecting the Burgh Loch on the Meadows to the Water of Leith but largely operating as a sewer. The name Foulbridge appears in several older documents from at least 1512. From around 1760 the bridge was rechristened Fountainbridge. The bridge disappeared when the stream was culverted (as a sewer) around 1820 but by then the name had attached to the wider area. The name “Fountainbridge” appears on John Laurie’s A plan of the County of Mid-Lothian of 1763. According to the Edinburgh Evening Courant newspaper in 1774 the name derived from the Foullbridge Well of “singularly sweet water”. The Foul Burn is still marked as a “common sewer” on maps until at least 1784. The original Houpetoun basin was the Edinburgh end of the canal. It was a very busy place, handling the import of coal, grain, building materials and passengers into the city. It was named for the Earl of Hopetoun, who owned the collieries. Another basin, named after the Duke of Hamilton was later built nearby accompanied by the Port Hamilton Tavern Fountainbridge was extended as West Fountainbridge in 1869, renamed Dundee Street in 1885. The Leamington lift bridge was installed around 1906 where replacing a previous bridge built in 1869. In 1856 a wealthy US entrepreneur, Henry Lee Norris, established the North British Rubber Company in the buildings of the former Castle Silk Mill alongside the Union Canal. The Castle Silk Mills produced top quality Kashmir shawls known as Edinburgh shawls, but had closed by 1844-5 and the building was taken by the rubber company. ‘Edinburgh shawls’ had been a major capital investment in a brand of textile which was difficult due to the difficulties of sourcing silk and competition from better known brands in Renfrewshire, especially Paisley. The company’s Castle Mill premises eventually covered 20 acres (8.1 ha) of land in the area and employed thousands of workers over five generations in manufacturing a variety of products from galoshes and rubber Wellington boots to solid rubber wheels for Thomson steam traction engines (after 1870), pneumatic tyres (after 1890) and hot-water bottles. The company’s design for trench boots, which was officially chosen by the War Office during the Great War, led to a lucrative government contract which saw the firm supplying up to 2,750 pairs a day, reaching a total of 1.2 million pairs by the end of the war. Similar contracts resulted in the production of 1/4 of a million pairs of gymshoes, 47,000 pairs of heavy snow boots for the French Army, 16,000 tyres and 2.5 million feet (760,000 m) of hosepipe. Another company which established itself in Fountainbridge in 1856 was McEwan’s Brewery. The site on the north side of Fountainbridge and Dundee Street was chosen because of its proximity to both the Union Canal and the new line of the Caledonian Railway. Within five years, the firm’s annual turnover was £40,000 and it went on to become one of the market leaders in the Scottish brewing industry over the next century. The Second World War brought another boom with the production of millions of civilian gas masks and barrage-balloon fabric. In 1958, the company produced Britain’s first traffic cones for the M6 motorway. The United States Rubber Company gradually took control of the company. The United States Rubber Company was renamed Uniroyal in 1961 and North British took on this name when eventually taken-over in 1966. In that year, Uniroyal relocated the tyre manufacture to Newbridge, then outside Edinburgh. In 1957 Castle Mills began the production of Royalite thermoplastic sheeting. In 1967 Royalite production was moved to a new factory adjacent to the tyre plant at Newbridge. The manufacture of PowerGrip drive belts was relocated to the former Arrol-Johnston factory at Heathhall, Dumfries around 1970. All that remained at Castle Mills was the hose factory which continued until its closure in late 1973. Fountain Brewery become part of Scottish Brewers in 1931 after a merger with Youngers who subsequently merged to create Scottish & Newcastle Brewers.In 1973, as a result of a £13 million investment, a new Fountain Brewery was opened on the south side of Fountainbridge on the former site of the North British Rubber Company’s premises while the hose factory was converted to a bottling plant. The site was home to a social club known as the ‘Tartan Club’. The brewery was modernised, leaving little of the original buildings. In 1886 Cooke’s Royal Circus was built in East Fountainbridge for John Henry Cooke (1837-1917). It was demolished and the Palladium built on the site in 1911, operating at first as a cinema and later as a theatre. In later years one of the gap sites was briefly offered as a big top venue for the Edinburgh Fringe From the early 19th century until the late 20th century Fountainbridge was home to two of the city’s major industries and a mixture of working-class tenement housing, which in part degenerated into some of the worst of the city’s slums between the 1930s and the 1960s. Before being elected Prime Minister in 1964 the then Labour Party leader Harold Wilson toured the area with Pat Rogan and promised major redevelopment under a Labour government, though this did not take place for another generation. Slum clearances in Fountainbridge were underway in 1966 as part of city wide actions by Edinburgh Corporation between 1950 and 1973 in which 35,237 individuals left their homes and 16,556 houses were closed or demolished erasing for ever streets and neighbourhoods housing vibrant communities.

You can visit Fountainbridge places with Walkfo Fountainbridge to hear history at Fountainbridge’s places whilst walking around using the free digital tour app. Walkfo Fountainbridge has 477 places to visit in our interactive Fountainbridge map, with amazing history, culture & travel facts you can explore the same way you would at a museum or art gallery with information audio headset. With Walkfo, you can travel by foot, bike or bus throughout Fountainbridge, being in the moment, without digital distraction or limits to a specific walking route. Our historic audio walks, National Trust interactive audio experiences, digital tour guides for English Heritage locations are available at Fountainbridge places, with a AI tour guide to help you get the best from a visit to Fountainbridge & the surrounding areas.

“Curated content for millions of locations across the UK, with 477 audio facts unique to Fountainbridge places in an interactive Fountainbridge map you can explore.”

Walkfo: Visit Fountainbridge Places Map
477 tourist, history, culture & geography spots

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Fountainbridge historic spots	Fountainbridge tourist destinations	Fountainbridge plaques	Fountainbridge geographic features
Walkfo Fountainbridge tourism map key: places to see & visit like National Trust sites, Blue Plaques, English Heritage locations & top tourist destinations in Fountainbridge

  

Best Fountainbridge places to visit

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Fountainbridge has places to explore by foot, bike or bus. Below are a selection of the varied Fountainbridge’s destinations you can visit with additional content available at the Walkfo Fountainbridge’s information audio spots:

Holy Corner Holy Corner is a colloquial name for a small area of Edinburgh, Scotland. It is part of Burghmuirhead, itself part of the lands of Greenhill. Holy Corner lies between Bruntsfield and Morningside.

Golfers Land The Golfers Land is a site on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland dating to around 1681. The site gets its name from the town house of John Paterson, said to have been the teammate of the Duke of Albany in what is often regarded as the first international golf contest.

The Canongate The Canongate is the main eastern section of Edinburgh’s Old Town. It began when David I of Scotland authorised Holyrood Abbey to found a burgh separate from Edinburgh between the Abbey and Edinburgh. The burgh gained its name from the route the canons took to Edinburgh. In 1636 the adjacent city of Edinburgh bought the feudal superiority of the canongate.

Victoria Park, Edinburgh Victoria Park is a district in north Edinburgh south of Newhaven and lying between Trinity and Leith. The area was given Conservation Area status in March 1998.

Dean Village Dean Village (from dene, meaning ‘deep valley’) is a former village immediately northwest of Edinburgh, Scotland. It was known as the “Water of Leith Village” and was a successful grain milling area for more than 800 years.

Moray Estate The Moray Estate in Edinburgh was an exclusive early 19th century building venture. Built on an awkward and steeply sloping site, it is a masterpiece of urban planning. It has accommodated the rich and famous from its outset.

Stockbridge, Edinburgh Stockbridge is a suburb of Edinburgh, located north of the city centre. Originally a small outlying village, it was incorporated into the City of Edinburgh in the 19th century. The name is Scots stock brig from Anglic stocc brycg, meaning a timber bridge. The current “Stock Bridge” is a stone structure spanning the Water of Leith.

Merchiston Merchiston is a residential area around Merchiston Avenue in the south-west of Edinburgh, Scotland. The area is known as Merchiston, or Merchiston in the north-east of Edinburgh.

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian, it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth. Edinburgh is Scotland’s second-most populous city and the seventh-most in the United Kingdom. It is the seat of the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and the highest courts in Scotland. The city’s Palace of Holyroodhouse is the official residence of the monarch.

St James Quarter St James Quarter is a retail, lifestyle and residential district in Edinburgh. It is situated in the east end of the New Town. The district is a redevelopment on the site of the St James Centre which closed in October 2016.

Visit Fountainbridge plaques