Geograph - photograph every grid square

Sections of wooden water pipes used to conduct water down the High Street and the Canongate in the 18th century. While these supplied the Old Town residents with fresh drinking water, sewage disposal remained a chronic problem well into the Victorian period.

"How long shall the capital city of Scotland, yea and the chief street of it, stink worse than a common sewer? Will no lover of his country, or of decency and common sense, find a remedy for this?"
-- John Wesley, 11 May 1761

"The violent gusts of wind, continually to be felt in the streets of Edinburgh are, I imagine, owing to its situation, and must be the cause of health to its inhabitants (they are very healthy); for had not the atmosphere of that city some powerful refiner, such as a constant high wind, it would, by its nauseous scents, poison the race of beings living in it." -- Sarah Murray, The Beauties of Scotland, 1799

"We devoutly believe that no smell in Europe or Asia — not in Aleppo or Damascus in the present day — can equal in depth and intensity, in concentration and power, the diabolical combination of sulphurated hydrogen we came upon one evening about ten o'clock in a place called Toddrick's Wynd."
-- English magazine, The Builder, 1861

NT2573 : Wardrop's Court, Lawnmarket