The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [57]
Grandest of all his many projects was his work on Edinburgh. By 1814, as part of the city’s attempts to restyle itself, the Nor’ Loch had been drained and the trim Georgian grid of the New Town was almost complete. All it lacked was the necessary webbing of roads, bridges and paths to connect the New Town to the Old. Robert was brought in by the Convention to advise on much of this work, including devising a method of connecting the long span of Princes Street to Leith Walk. It was a project requiring both technical skill and aesthetic sensitivity. At present the road ended squarely against Calton’s rump. Robert’s solution was to continue onwards round the lee of the hill, and to construct a further geometry of roads beyond. To do so he had to demolish several existing buildings, dynamite the hillside and plough a route through Calton Cemetery, which contained the graves of his own children. As the judge Henry Cockburn later explained in his Memorials, ‘The way of reaching Calton Hill was to go by Leith Street to its base (as may still be done), and then up the steep, narrow, stinking, spiral street which still remains, and was then the only approach. Scarcely any sacrifice could be too great that removed the houses from the end of Princes Street, and made a level road to the hill, or in other words, produced Waterloo Bridge. The effect was like the drawing up of the curtains in a theatre.’ Robert considered several different solutions, finally, and characteristically, settling on the one that he felt would be good for the value of local property. As he pointed out in his 1814 report, it would also be most convenient for city traffic and would show off Edinburgh’s plentiful assets to finest advantage. ‘As a great addition to the individual comfort and convenience of the inhabitants of Edinburgh, ’ he wrote, ‘the bridge over Calton Street will open an elegant access to the lands of the Calton Hill, from which the surrounding country forms one of the most delightful prospects of distant mountain ranges, detached hills and extensive seacoast, with numerous ships ever plying in all directions together with the finest city scenery that is anywhere to be met with.’ He was proud of his adopted city and in time became almost fatherly towards it. ‘There is, perhaps,’ he once wrote, ‘no other city which presents so many attractions to the man of taste and of science as Edinburgh.’ Waterloo Bridge, Regent’s Road and London Road still link the three divided aspects of the city and still flaunt their views of sea, sky and city.
His Edinburgh improvements are also an illustration of Robert’s peculiarly ideological brand of engineering. His belief throughout life was that all his works should, in some form, act as songs in stone to the greater glory of God and Scotland. The lighthouses not only showed his belief that mankind had a duty to preserve his fellow man, they were also an illustration of his pride in his country. His public works were all expressions of his sense that industry, in all its different aspects, would be Scotland’s saving grace. Robert was an enthusiastic Unionist and an even more enthusiastic Monarchist but he was also eager to prove that the Scots could take on England at all its games, and win. He also believed in encouraging the same sentiments in those who worked for him. He was, in his own way, as much a social engineer as a civil or a marine engineer. He wanted, he said, to encourage others to rise as he had from nondescript beginnings through hard work to prosperity. Those who were lazy, shoddy or diffident deserved the meagre life they got; those who applied themselves patiently to work should, he felt, take their place alongside the best of Scotland’s men. He started apprenticeships, set up pensions and paid for training for those disciples who he believed would be able to make the best of their opportunities. His schemes were, by and large, laudable, but sometimes they gave the impression of becoming production lines for an endless succession of imitation Robert Stevensons.
His rise coincided with one