When
I’m out walking through the Claremont Park bit of Leith Links, I often find
myself singing along in my head the verse of Jean Genie by David Bowie that
goes –
The Jean Genie lives on his back
The Jean Genie loves chimney stacks
He's outrageous
He screams and he bawls
The Jean Genie, let yourself go
At
least I think I’m singing it in my head, but, given some of the strange looks I
get maybe I’m singing it out in a tuneless mumble to myself. Why am I singing this while walking in that
area you may wonder, that is if you’ve got nothing better to wonder about. Well, it’s because from that bit of the park
there is a view of a red brick chimney that use to stand in the scrubby wasteland
that was once there. There was no way I
could get closer to look at it, as high fences and walls closed off the land
around it. That is until they built a
new housing estate on the land and kept the chimney there as an architectural
feature. So now, in the middle of this shiny
new housing estate sits what looks like an industrial chimney from the
Victorian era. Only it is not a chimney
is it.
.jpg "View of chimney from Leith Links")
.jpg "An architectural feature at Pillans Walk")
What
is it then you may ask? The brochure for
the shiny new housing estate describes it as being a ‘Scottish Water Chimney’.
Hmm, a water chimney. What does that do
then? When the pressure in the mains
gets too much does water spray out the top of it? No, of course not. Calling it a water chimney is just a way of
covering up that its real function was as a stink vent for the sewage system. A vent to release the noxious and inflammable
sewer gases that would build up down there.
.jpg "The ‘water chimney’ or stink vent at Pillans Walk")
.jpg "The stink vent")
This
stink vent, or sewer vent, was built around 1889 as part of the improvements to
the Edinburgh sewage system, with sewers being built to run under Leith Links
and down to the sea. I think the sewers
are still there, though now connect up to the Seafield Waste Water Treatment
Works, or Shit Pit as the locals fondly refer to it, that was built on
reclaimed land near Leith Docks in the 1970s.
The
stink vent does not seem to be in use anymore, which I’m sure those who’ve just
spent several hundred thousand pounds on one of the houses by it will be
grateful to hear. In 2019 investigations
were carried out by Scottish Water regarding complaints about noxious odours. Odours that appeared to be coming from the
sewage works at Seafield. As part of
this investigation, they looked at the stink vent to see if the smells could be
coming from that. However, they found
that it had been capped and that there was ‘no wastewater exposed to the atmosphere.’
.jpg "The stink vent at Pillans Walk")
.jpg "A monument of Victorian endeavours in sewage disposal and public health")
On
a chilly winter's day, I walked down to the Ropeworks housing estate in Leith,
where this monument of Victorian endeavours in sewage disposal and public
health can be found. I had a sniff around
but couldn’t smell anything nasty there.
Then, finding a little gap in the sandstone plinth on which the chimney
stands, I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on my walk.
.jpg "Skulferatu #92")
.jpg "Skulferatu #92 in a gap in the sandstone plinth")
.jpg "Map showing location of Skulferatu #92")
The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –
Latitude
55.971849
Longitude
-3.158927
what3words:
ruby.drove.couches
I
used the following sources for information on the stink vent –
The Ropeworks, Leith
Sales Brochure
Scottish Water Newsletter #3
February 2019
