Edinburgh North Bridge was designed and built by William Mylne, 1765-1772, to provide a route from the Old Town of Edinburgh to the New Town which was being developed at the same time. During construction, when it was already in use by traffic and pedestrians, part of the bridge collapsed resulting in casualties. John Adam and another architect, John Baxter, were asked to inspect the bridge and advise on repairs. Mylne carried out repairs and the bridge was completed in 1772, at the same time as Robert and James Adam began their designs for the Register House which faced opposite the north end of the bridge, at the east end of Princes Street.

There is an undated preliminary sketch of a bridge with flanking classical-style buildings which Rowan suggests could relate to an unexecuted scheme to formalise the north end of the North Bridge and the buildings that face onto on Princes Street. The perspective appears to be a birds-eye view of the bridge, looking south. Rowan suggests this view is from the dome of the Register House. The sketch shows an open ‘piazza’ with sculptural groups (possibly sphinxes) on the terminating walls of the bridge, and L-shaped classical-style buildings with central pedimented porticoes. The sketch also shows the end elevations of new buildings on the North Bridge with what appear to be castellated turret-style towers which may be a visual guide to indicate the entrance into the Old Town in contrast to the classicism of the New Town. On the verso of the sketch is a rough plan of the bridge and buildings showing basement vaults, including a theatre that had been constructed in 1768, and an outline of a building in the foreground which Rowan suggests is Register House.

There are no other drawings relating to this, and Rowan argues that this drawing was a quick sketch as part of a conversation, ‘very much as an architect will do while developing ideas with a client’ (Rowan, p. 36). The sketch came to nothing and the area at the end of the North Bridge, facing onto Adam’s Register House was developed piecemeal. The bridge was replaced entirely at the end of the nineteenth century.

Literature: A. J. Youngson, The Making of Classical Edinburgh 1750-1840, 1966, pp. 60-65; E. C. Ruddock, ‘The Building of the North Bridge, Edinburgh 1763-1775’, The Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. 47, 1974-76, pp. 9-33; A. Rowan, ‘Robert Adam’s Ideas for the North Bridge in Edinburgh’, The Journal of the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland, XV, 2004, pp. 34-39; A. Rowan, Vaulting Ambition: The Adam Brothers, Contractors to the Metropolis in the Reign of George III, 2007, p. 70

Louisa Catt, 2024