On
a day of sunshine and snowstorms I went for a walk along the Water of Leith and
the railway paths that run around it. On
my way back I passed through St Mark’s Park and along the path under the old
railway there. This brought me out into
a rather picturesque area near a weir and what appears to be an old, industrial
era chimney standing on its own.
This chimney is not at what it first seems. Look around it. There are no openings at the bottom where one would expect to see space for a fire to burn or where pipes were once connected. That is because this chimney is not in fact a chimney. It is a sewage vent or a stink vent. It is part of the 1864 interceptor sewer that was built to connect to earlier sewage systems in Edinburgh and carry raw sewage out into the River Forth. It carried on doing this until the 1970s when the Seafield Waste Water Treatment Works was built.
The stink vent was an important part of the sewage system as it acted as a safety valve and released the noxious and inflammable sewer gases that would build up in the system. It was built nice and high so that the wind would carry off any obnoxious smells.
I left the Skulferatu that accompanied me on today’s walk in a tree not far from the stink vent and with a nice view of the Water of Leith.
The
coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –
Latitude
55.968462
Longitude
-3.189978
