Regent Bridge

In the early nineteenth century, the inconvenient access to Edinburgh by the great London road had long been a subject of general regret.

To enter the city from the south, the route ran through narrow and inconvenient streets, an approach that was considered unsuited to the general elegance of the place.

[2] In 1813, Sir John Marjoribanks, the then Lord Provost of Edinburgh, revived a plan to build a jail on the slopes of Calton Hill.

[3] In order to access this, open up the slopes of Calton Hill to development and shorten the road to East Lothian and England, he presented the plan to build Regent Bridge to the City magistrates on 1 March 1814 with a projected cost of about £20,000[3] and backed up by a feasibility study by the engineer Robert Stevenson.

The whole property purchased to open the communication to the city by this bridge cost £52,000, and the building areas sold for the then immense sum of £35,000.