View of lamp standard

Description View of lamp standard

Date 18/9/2001

Collection Records of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Edinbu

Catalogue Number SC 1935628

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of E 15003 CN

Scope and Content Lamp standard, Bowling Lock-keepers' Cottages, Forth & Clyde Canal, West Dunbartonshire This shows a cast-iron lamp standard near the lock-keepers' cottages which were built around 1896. This lamp standard, probably put in at this time, would have been powered by gas. It has a white-painted base and top with a black-painted middle section. The black-painted knobs near the top of the pole suggest that it may have been used as a telegraph pole. This gas lamp standard would have provided light around Lock 38. A 'leerie' (lamplighter), probably from Bowling, would have lit this lamp every night and switched it off every morning. He would have placed a ladder against the two extending bars at the top of the standard lamp and used a wooden rod with a metal 'U' to turn the gas on. He would have then lit a taper which he would have used to light the lamp once the gas was flowing. The Forth & Clyde Canal was built between 1768 and 1790. It could have been completed sooner but funds ran out in 1777 and more money was not found by the government until 1784. John Smeaton (1724-92) was the designer and first chief engineer for the project. He was replaced in 1777 by Robert Mackell (d.1779), and in 1785 Robert Whitworth (1734-99) took over the building of the final section of the canal from Glasgow. When the canal was completed in 1790 it ran from the River Forth at Grangemouth, in the east, to Bowling on the River Clyde in the west of Scotland. The canal was linked to Edinburgh when the Union Canal was opened in 1822. The Forth & Clyde Canal was closed in 1963 and the Union Canal in 1965 and the construction of new roads meant that it was impossible for boats to travel along the full length of these watercourses. However, the £84.5m Millennium Link project enabled the canals to reopen in 2002. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/1935628

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap