TLC FOR THE PRESTRESSED
After a hard day’s splashing about in the rain, do you sometimes feel you could do with your post-tensioned tendons being grouted, your bearings replaced, and/or your deck waterproofed?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you may begin to understand what it feels like to be St Mark’s Bridge at the moment.
The crossing over the Water of Leith, close to the site of the former B&Q store on Warriston Road, will undergo major structural repairs, starting on 21 August and lasting 24 weeks.
Traffic to and from the ‘Canonmills Garden’ building site will travel via Logie Green Road and Powderhall Road.
The bridge project was originally planned to take place in Financial Year 2017/2018, but had to be rescheduled when priority work on Burnshot Bridge and North Bridge required reallocation of Council resources.
Interesting past
The current prestressed concrete bridge dates from 1953, before which there was an iron structure here built in 1863.
Before that, there were stepping stones upstream in Puddocky (marked on the Ordnance Survey of 1852) and a ford, traces of which can sometimes be made out through clear shallow water as diagonally aligned slabs on the riverbed closer to the bridge itself.
The name ‘St Mark’s’ derives from a small chapel which once stood – nobody seems quite sure when or how long – just to the north east of today’s bridge.
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