Cranston, a parish on the NE border of Edinburghshire, containing the villages of Cousland, Edgehead, and Ford, the last being ½ mile W by N of Pathhead, and 4¼ miles ESE of Dalkeith, under which it has a post office, with money order, savings' bank, and telegraph departments. Irregular in outline, Cranston is bounded NW by Inveresk; N by Tranent, and E by Ormiston and Humbie, in Haddingtonshire; SW by Crichton and Borthwick; and W by Newbattle and Dalkeith. Its greatest length, from NNW to SSE, is 47/8 miles; its breadth, from E to W, varies between 3½ furlongs and 31/8 miles; and its area is 5102¾ acres, of which 2¾ are water, and 677½ belong to the Cakemuir section, lying 13/8 mile S of the SE angle of the main body. Tyne Water, here a very small stream, bisects the parish north-north-eastward, running chiefly within the beautiful parks of Oxenford and Prestonhall. Where, below Whitehouse mill, it passes into Ormiston, the surface sinks to 300 feet above sea-level, thence rising north - westward to 500 feet near Airfield and 637 near Mutton Hole, whilst in the Cakemuir section it attains an altitude of over 1000 feet. The formation belongs to the Carboniferous Limestone series; and sandstone, limestone, and coal are largely worked, the last in Edgehead and Prestonhall collieries. About 250 acres are under wood; and nearly all the remaining area, with the exception of rather less than a third of the Cakemuir division, is in a state of high cultivation. Cranston Dean Bridge, over the Tyne, on the southern border, with three semicircular arches, each 17 feet in span and 46 high, is a modern structure; as likewise is Lothian Bridge, also over the Tyne, which, 82 feet high, has five semicircular arches, each 50 feet in span, surmounted by ten segment arches of 54 feet in span and 8 feet of rise. Cakemuir Castle is the chief and almost sole antiquity; the quaint old manse, near Prestonhall, having been demolished forty or fifty years since. A hospice formerly, connected with that of Soutra, it bore the monkish inscription-` Diversorium infra, Habitaculum supra.' To the Cranston family this parish gave the title of Baron in the peerage of Scotland from 1609 till the death of the last and eleventh Lord in 1869. The mansions are Oxenford and Prestonhall, 4 proprietors holding each an annual value of more, and 1 of less, than £500. Cranston is in the presbytery of Dalkeith and synod of Lothian and Tweeddale; the living is worth £372. The parish church, near Ford, the second built within this century, is a good Gothic edifice, with a tower; and at Ford itself is a U.P. church. Two public schools, Cousland and Cranston, with respective accommodation for 93 and 116 children, had (1880) an average attendance of 83 and 113, and grants of £63,6s. and £99,4s. Valuation (1882) £9048, including £19 for a short reach of the Macmerry branch of the North British. Pop. (1801) 895, (1831) 1030, (1861) 1035, (1871) 1036, (1881) 998.—Ord. Sur., shs. 32,33,185763.
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