New Streets and Bridges for Aberdeen

 “Before I proceed to explain this Plan, I believe it is hardly necessary to observe the great irregularity and inconvenience of your streets, especially towards the South…” – from the text of Charles Abercrombie’s Report, December 1794.

At the close of the Eighteenth Century, Aberdeen still looked much like a mediaeval Burgh. A maze of crooked streets, low bridges, hilly terrain, and bleak unsettled landscape dominated a town that was little changed from James Gordon’s 1661 Description of Bothe Touns of Aberdeene. The town was still perched between Gallowgate hill, Castle Hill, and St. Katherine’s Hill, a loose collection of narrow streets winding between three and four storey buildings with no clear gates or focal points beyond the Mercat Cross that stood, as it does today, at the Castlegate end of Broad Street.

The Magistrates had long lamented the odd boundaries and crooked roads of the burgh and met with the surveyor Charles Abercrombie in 1794. This meeting was intended to provide an estimate for the creation of several possible new streets and ways in which access to the harbour and markets of Aberdeen could be eased, and the town be opened up to convenient travel from the south and further north.

Abercrombie’s results, sent from Glasgow in December of 1794, laid out three options for the improvement of the town’s streets.

• The first option outlined was intended to cover level ground from the Bridge of Dee to Marischal Street and from there to the Castlegate, following the line of the river. Low property prices at the harbour as well meant that constructing a road through the first line would not burden the town financially.
  The advantage of level land to work on was weighted against the necessity of creating a high breastwork of stone and banking to raise the road above the level of the tide. Further, the prospective road’s position at the harbour side of town allowed little in terms of wider regulation and grid-patterning of the town’s roads, and entering the town by Marischal Street was seen as essentially circumventing Aberdeen in order to gain entrance.
  
  
• The second plan involved partially filling in the harbour, constructing a vast causeway carrying a road running from the wharf end of Marischal Street to the south shore of the Dee and beyond, raised ten feet above the level of high tide. The earth to construct this causeway was to be taken by wheelbarrow from the bottom of the harbour to save money.
  This road, as the first option, was mostly outwith the Aberdeen area, and offered no advantage to improving the town beyond creating a simple and demonstrable link to Stonehaven. In Abercrombie’s opinion, this would gain the town an excellent road at a high price, but leave the mediaeval, cramped, centre of the burgh untouched.
  
  
• The third option took the road from Bridge of Dee to Justice Mills and then onto the regular level ground lying between that point and the Den Burn, and then forming a three-arch bridge to cross the Den Burn and make a straight wide road leading directly to the Mercat Cross past St. Nicholas Kirk and through the heart of Aberdeen itself. Fifteen feet of height was to be cut from St. Katherine’s Hill, and the low Wynds were to be covered over with arched bridges to bring this new street level with Castle Street. The further advantage of this proposal was the option to expand West of the Den Burn, building the city outwards on a more regular plan in the vein of Edinburgh’s New Town or Glasgow’s grid pattern.
  Within this plan the option was put forth that, should developing the west end of Aberdeen prove to be undesirable, a road could be run down from Correction Wynd to the waterside, and the Harbour Road listed as the first option could be partially developed in order to keep Aberdeen as a city east of the Den Burn and north of the Dee.
  

Abercrombie’s proposals for the North entry were substantially more modest. The existing road to the Bridge of Don through Old Aberdeen was universally considered to be of very poor quality, though Abercrombie thought that little cutting or banking would be required to guide a level road from the Mealmarket to the Don. As with the future Union Street, Abercrombie’s future King Street was also intended to be built around, expanding new and regular streets on a grid around the initial incising lines from the Mercat Cross to the rivers that confined Aberdeen.

After some prompting on the part of the town’s Police Commissioners, the Council met and acted upon Abercrombie’s recommendations. Plans were drawn up for proposed north and south entrances to Aberdeen, and funds were raised for purchasing properties that lay in the path of the new streets through the cluttered roofs of the old town. Proposals to bridge the Den Burn and design the streets and houses were submitted, and crews, architects, and engineers were employed to rejuvenate Aberdeen.  This undertaking was put into motion without levying of any tax or other attempt to raise public funds, and construction proceeded slowly, and not without errors. Further, as Union Street grew, the town found that acquiring ground in the street’s path became an expensive necessity.

The town’s debts mounted as Union Street – expected to recoup its costs swiftly as with Edinburgh – remained something of a white elephant, and the town’s debts had reached a staggering £250,000 by 1817.

Though creditors were called in and trustees were appointed to safely keep the town’s ledgers, this situation did not last forever – within seven years, Aberdeen was solvent again, its debts were paid, and Union Street became a defining feature, if not the defining feature, of the Granite City.

“The Castlegate and Broad Street end of Union Street – the maze of narrow winding streets referred to by Abercrombie is visible beneath the green and red lines showing the future street’s layout. The red markings on each side of the street show ground marked for building on.”

“The future Union Street from Putachieside to the Denburn and Westward. The line of the Den is shown in blue, and the green line represents the course of the street.”

“Abercrombie’s original estimate for the construction of a road from the Justice Mills to the Castlegate fell somewhat short of the eventual cost of the project.”

“The opening sentences of the report that would result in the creation of Union Street and King Street.”

[Originally Document of the Month for November 2009]