Morning, Rebecca they're watching us quick, don't keeping them waiting
they're just they're just there they're watching us
hey this is this is our little we're staying in a like a it's not a big bit is it is it
it's kind of is self-accommodation this is so cool
1722 project very exciting um Edinburgh let's go okay
okay kenzie cockenzie all right at the harbour waiting for ed
it's a bit cold this year here's the car trying to explore around
so that little bit there is like a little natural harbor and they used to uh get salt from the
actual water heated by the coal and the coal they got from the um coal mine i guess up the road and
they didn't realize at that stage how important um coal was in the grand scheme of things until
the early 1700s fascinating stories around it went to go find ed rebecca who is filming
um mr wintoun's house which he built just there before the first jacobite failure of 1715.
all of a sudden you appear to be going around in circles rebecca
actually i went this way i haven't walked that side yet okay should we find dead yes we've been
aware now for some time that there was quite a groundbreaking project taking place just to the
east of edinburgh we wanted to learn a little bit more about what claimed to be scotland's
first railway so we ventured north to meet up with ed and his team to find out what it was all about
well when we must start like taking people's phone numbers that we're going to meet rather than just
like ringing it on twitter direct messages because if we lose service or something yeah
right so here we are inside the museum we're looking for ed i think ed's just through here
outside the door it disappeared outside the door you've gone back out there
right let's come out let's come back outside so we we are here um ed welcome
hi you've you've got an allen we've got now you've got a douglas douglas looking after
the place while we go for a quick walk up the road um so this is called the wagon way or is
it called 1722 project or 1722 wagon wave project there we go there you go you had it all there but
in the wrong order right so we're gonna we're gonna have a look down at the harbour
first of all then we're gonna bring then we're gonna walk up the original um tramway
um have a look at the museum and learn a bit more about the project absolutely yeah okay
so ed you are you're the founder of the the project yeah we're reading a little bit this
morning i can't remember what website wasn't your website actually historic scotland perhaps oh yeah
yeah yeah yep um alan has also been instrumental i understand an unearthing literally well it was
a joint effort really yeah that's local volunteers and things like that so quite a lot of people have
helped out okay brilliant which is always needed isn't it and to have the community involved very
much a case of there being an opportunity for a project and all the right people being in the
right place at the right time yeah that's very fortunate in that regard yeah and alan's the
archaeologist for our project so without him we wouldn't get to do half the archaeological things
we do we'll find bits of the railway so while we come to the harbour first what's the what's the
significance with the with the project well this this is believe it or not this is actually one of
the later parts of of this particular wagon way right there is another harbour about a mile along
the high street uh called harbour and the original wooden wagon we went there and this is the
terminus of the later replacement for here we're talking early 80s early 1800s 1815 thereabouts
and the original wooden one 1722 so we're literally walking on the route just now right
and as we hit these cobblestones the big keysight stones yep you are now on a turntable okay
so right here there was a turntable and that's one of the edging stones right there wow um and you're
where you've backed into there that's where a tipping device was yep so that the wagons get spun
round on the turntable filled with coal onto the tipping device it tips a wagon like that and the
coal shoots out into a big hopper waiting to go into the ships right underneath there is a massive
counterweight pit um for this huge device which is a good different device yeah okay makes sense yep
um around the rest of the harbour all the ball laughs are cast iron apart from this wooden post
here so it's possible that that's been part of the yeah the mechanism and they've just put it upright
I think we've got to work that out yet it's just a bit of a an anomaly in the side of the harbour
if you go back 300 years salt was the biggest industry yeah in the whole Scotland and this
little stretch of coastline here made 10% of all the salt in Scotland wow um which is a
phenomenal way so it's massive industry and this is actually circumstance is that just because i
mean you'd assume there's no difference in the the level of salt in the water no it's actually
the salt the the the salinity in this part of the sea is quite low it's only about three
three or three and a half percent so it is just circumstances they were here this is what they
did and they worked hard at it and it became a yeah so what you've got is you've got coal
seam near the surface yep and then you've got the right geology on the coast right for being
able to collect water in these rocks on the shore so this has all fuelled the need or the
the circumstance for for being able to make salt here yeah
so we're just coming up now to school lane and this is our first glimpse i say
glimpse we're not going to see anything at this stage of the wooden the original 1722
tramway which would have gone i'm assuming so it's coming down from that direction there yep all the
way down here hit the high street at the end yep and then it takes a bit of a dog leg to the right
and up along to fort seton harbour okay as far as we can make out from the various records we've got
as fortune would have it Alan lives in new street just there yep and he looked at his title deeds
from when the houses were built about 1860s yeah and what did you find basically it mentions that
when the land is viewed to build houses yeah it's on the east side of the old wagon way
wow in 1863 so that's how we knew wow and so when well with that in mind then when did they
when did the this this wagon we stopped being used there's a there's a period of transition
where um ownership changes hands at the end of the 18th century yeah and then the
new owners the caddo family who have got the house they've got the wagon they've got the
salt pans they've got the culprits um they they undergo a period of upgrading
and it takes them a good couple of decades but by the early 19th century then they then upgrade the
railway to iron rail half a century on they're still very aware of what it was yes absolutely
one of the things that we learn when we're out about and we've got actual
proper historians with us little things like this so i would never imagine that that wall
would have a great significance but so both of the wagon ways including the original wooden
took that alignment there now if i spin the camera around this way where the wall break is here so
the original again the original wooden wagon way carried on going in that line here now ed was just
saying that there where the wall has sort of a break in it and goes off that way is where the um
the 1815 onwards so the metal rails went that way so it splits here so this could hold some great
significance into the to the to the the design and the change over time that these lines had
and again we read the horses would have pulled a good few of the wagons back at a time so four
or five wagons at a time yeah hauling the empties back up maybe one or two horses
you know there's a good there's a good regular incline coming down here so you can imagine yeah
two ton wagons four or five of them coupled together yeah it would have built up a reasonable
amount of speed coming yeah yeah absolutely but when you hit the flat section at the bottom you
probably need to carry that speed into that so you're not having to put horses on yes
every five minutes but yeah just uh one or two brakeman operating the brakes on the on the train
and they would literally just sit on top of the wagon and sit on sit on the wagon and sit on the
brake if they needed to control the speed yeah the last thing they're trying to do is stop the
actual wagon yeah just yeah to carry all the way down wow so i guess that became quite an art form
and something that i um i was very used to and a lot better than working down the culprit yeah
known locally and and wide as as the battlefield because that's where the battle of preston hands
was fought in 1745 right and the wagon way what was there during the battle yes um albeit from
where we're standing now the ground level is about a meter lower okay so it's much less of
a kind of raised feature which we'll see when we come out through the through the trees at the end
pretty much right here is the trench the important trench
yes a very important change yes june 2019 we
did a bit of research and figured out that this is the least spoiled part of the of the whole route
and spoke to the council archaeologists and got permission to put a small trench in across here
yeah just to test the level of preservation we're very lucky to find a meter below the level where
we're standing now the cobbled horse track and the imprints of the wooden rails either side yeah and
on the corresponding side we dug another trench across here um the following day just to test
um we needed to have a look at the whole width yeah um and found lovely wheel ruts filled
with coal deposits and things um which we can only assume is from the earlier track way yep
the evidence we did get um we had as ed saying we had the evidence for the calp track down this side
you've got to imagine that these walls aren't here yeah ignore them
which is that it's a flat field yeah um the wooden 1722 wagon way is there
there's a car track here on the outside there's a bank and ditch we've got evidence for that
there may be one on the other side as well we didn't get evidence for that but there's no
reason why there's no one we would assume there's a demarcation here through the fields either side
all right that was the first one i've ever found oh wow so when i stood just above the um
east coast main line um and ed has pointed out in this little bridge here
right down there is a sleeper block um a couple of pinholes and that was one of the
earliest ones you found is that yeah i mean right at the start when i when i first moved
to this area and i was doing a bit of poking around yeah this was the first one that i found
question mark that kind of got the fuel there must be more stuff to find you know absolutely
um just beyond here if you look down and on to the east coast mainland formerly north british railway
you can see the feelings of the other the other bridge that carried the wagon way across
the main line so that that was a bridge that was put in uh in 1846 when this line was built
yeah um in order to allow the wagon maker to continue in operation despite this
major bit of engineering coming through we'd come to the end of our walk with ed and alan and headed
back down towards the museum there's a huge amount to be learnt here far more that can be conveyed in
just a 15 minute video um and that's the end of our day isn't it really yeah um wonderful
thank you so much gents it's been a real pleasure walking up there with you pleasure um anything you
wanted did there anything people can do because they can obviously come and visit you for a start
yeah so they can come here and visit the museum there's actually the route we've just been walking
yeah and there's actually a mobile app which um there's there's the qr code up on the door
right we'll do that so you can download that and if you're in the area you can download that and it
will guide the app will guide you up the route and they'll give you points of interest along the way
that's brilliant the history that we've just been talking about yeah you can get that via the app
okay yeah right we'll do that come visit um come say hello to these guys
and um we'll follow us on facebook yes of course yeah we'll call your social medias
yes excellent do all of those things and we'll see you next time thank you very much
you