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Summary

Description

South valve house: Hugh Baird, engineer, circa 1820; north valve house: James Jardine, engineer, James Horne, surveyor, 1842-9. Pair of almost identical simple rectangular-plan valve houses, the south one known as the winter house and the north one known as the summer house. Both are components of the Union Canal feeder system, each positioned above a watercourse tunnel, on falling ground below the level of Cobbinshaw Reservoir from which water was taken to feed the Bog Burn and a succession of other streams before flowing into the River Almond and thence to the Union Canal. Long and short quoins. Stugged squared rubble ashlar to north house and droved ashlar to south. Timber doors with ventilation grills.

Barrel vaulted interiors. Cast-iron machinery for opening and closing valves in interior.

Pitched roofs rendered with non-traditional material.

Watercourse to east of valve houses cobbled with ashlar walls and slab copes.

Statement of Special Interest

The Valve Houses (described as 'Water Houses' on the Ordnance Survey second edition map), dating from about 1820 and 1848-9 respectively are important components of a sophisticated water engineering system built for feeding the Union Canal. Although they appear very similar David Brown (2009) states: 'The original draw-off was duplicated to the north during these [1840s] works'. Many water supply schemes were built in the early to mid 19th century all over Scotland, for example the supply of water to Edinburgh, begun 1810, described in the 'Scotsman' of 1825 as 'the most extensive prefect and complete ever executed in modern times' for which James Jardine was the engineer. Similarly the scheme Loch Katrine which dates from the 1850s was universally admired at the time it was built. However the system devised for feeding the Union Canal is considerably earlier than this example and is therefore early and relatively rare.

Cobbinshaw Reservoir was to be the main source of water to feed the canal through the River Almond, though it also drew water from various sources (such as the Barbauchlaw Burn) through the Avon feeder. The valve houses are important components of this large sophisticated scheme which increases their significance.

These are simple functional buildings. Both originally had a thatched roof. The south valve house is contemporary with the building of the canal but the north one dates from the 1840s when alterations were made to Cobbinshaw Reservoir (the headbank was raised by four feet in order to be able to raise the water level) by the engineer James Jardine with the surveyor James Horne. Some of the original machinery for opening and closing the valves is still in place and operational. Maintenance work was carried out to the buildings in the 1980s, including some reconstruction work.

The canal was the brainchild of the surveyor and civil engineer, Hugh Baird, with advice from the eminent Thomas Telford. Hugh Baird (1770-1827) succeeded his father as surveyor to the Forth & Clyde Canal in 1807 and in 1812 was appointed resident engineer to the Forth & Clyde Canal Company. He was involved with schemes as early as the 1790s for a canal which would link Edinburgh with Glasgow but these were not carried out. In 1813 he was commissioned to draw up plans for a canal linking Edinburgh to the Forth & Clyde Canal. At a meeting of the subscribers at the Star Inn, Glasgow on 21 September 1813, the plans were 'highly approven of'. Although he had worked on the Ulverston Canal in Cumbria and the Forth & Clyde Canal, his major work was the Union Canal. He is credited with the design of the structures along the canal including the three major aqueducts as well as the technical engineering work such as the canal feeder system.

James Jardine (1776-1858) who had a distinguished career in civil engineering, working on water schemes, railways, bridges, was engineer to the Edinburgh Water Company from 1819 to 1846. He had been consulted on the original Cobbinshaw Reservoir scheme about 1818. An inscription at the north end of the reservoir records that he also worked on the alterations in the 1840s along with the surveyor James Horne. Horne was born in Clackmannan in about 1798. He practised as a Land Valuator and Surveyor in Edinburgh and worked with Jardine on more than one occasion.

The canal system in the United Kingdom was developed in the late 18th and early 19th century to satisfy the demand by industrialists for an economic and reliable way to transport goods and commodities in large quantities. The canals played a vital role in the Industrial Revolution at a time when goods carried by sea were subject to a duty thus making them very expensive and bad roads hampered the hundreds of pack horses and carts that trundled into the industrial centres each day.

The Union Canal was authorised through Act of Parliament of 1817 and completed in 1822. It is therefore the last of Scotland's great canals to be built and benefitted from the experience gained from building the other canals. Its purpose was to bring principally coal but also limestone, ironstone and sandstone into Edinburgh from the rich deposits of these minerals in Falkirk and West Lothian. It was also hoped that the canal would also attract passenger traffic. It was funded through a combination of subscriptions collected before the project began and shares sold afterwards. The eventual cost was almost double Baird's original estimate. It is Scotland's only contour canal following the ground at a height of 240 feet above sea level for its entire 31½ miles until it reaches the west end where there was a series of (now buried) locks near Port Downie on the Forth & Clyde Canal. A year after its completion the canal was extended westwards to reduce the distance passengers were required to walk between the two canals. (The locks were replaced by the Falkirk Wheel in 2000). Although the canal was a commercial venture, it struggled to pay its way.

Because of its relatively late date, the Union was barely 20 years old when the railways took away much of the passenger traffic and by 1849 it was in the ownership of the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway Company.

Listed as part of the Scottish Canals estate review (2013-14).

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