Slateford, a village in Colinton and St Cuthberts parishes, Edinburghshire, on the Water of Leith and the Union Canal, ¼ mile SSW of Slateford station on the Caledonian railway, this being 21/8 miles SW of the Edinburgh terminus. It has a post office, with money order, savings' bank, and telegraph departments, a bridge, a canal aqueduct, a railway viaduct, a plain old U.P. church, a public school, a Good Templar's hall (1872), a police station, and the extensive bleachfield of Inglis Green. The Rev. John Dick, D.D. (1764-1833), afterwards professor of theology to the Associate Synod, was minister here from 1786 to 1803; and Robert Pollok (1799-1827), author of the Course of Time, spent the last summer of his life with Mr Dick's
successor, the Rev. John Belfrage, M.D., and preached once or twice in his
church. The aqueduct and the viaduct are magnificent works, the former 500 feet long and 65 high; and they and the bridge stand so near one another, and have such different heights, as to form a curious scene. Pop. (1841) 221, (1861) 514, (1871) 647, (1881) 621, of whom 519 were in Colinton parish.Ord. Sur., sh. 32, 1857.
Note: This text has been made available using a process of scanning and
optical character recognition. Despite manual checking, some typographical
errors may remain. Please remember this description dates from
the 1880s; names may have changed, administrative divisions will certainly be
different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original
text, which we have not corrected because we wish to maintain its integrity.
This information is provided subject to our standard disclaimer