The stuff from Guernsey's perfect, that from Mount Sorrel pretty similar. Penmaen Mawr is not so good as it tends to become slippery when smooth and the blue stuff from Aberdeen has a tendency to overwear. Of course there is the local stuff, supplies at one time coming from round about Edinburgh, particularly Bathgate, and there were also some available at one time from the West of Scotland, indeed rumour of a huge pile, apparently abandoned, near Loch Etive in Argyll. Nowadays though, the new ones tend to be imported from Portugal.
Cheese? No, something much harder; cobbles. Well, that's what I thought.
Amused to have read that the head of marriage counselling in Scotland was a Mr Love I rather hoped that my source of research into Edinburgh's historic cobbled streets might enjoy a similarly appropriate name; Mr Stone perhaps, Block even. It was neither, it was a Mr Harrison. 'And how many miles of cobbled street are there in Edinburgh?' I asked Mr Harrison , secure in the knowledge that I had walked at least two on my way to meet him at his office in the Highways Department of Lothian Region.
There was silence, and in place of the anticipated reply, Mr Harrison steepled his fingers and peered at me, the smile of knowledge hovering about his face. 'None. Well, certainly none that I'm aware of.' 'None?' I responded, surprised. 'But what about Frederick St? And North West Circus Place and.......? Edinburgh's covered in cobbles. Surely?' No'
Hearing an Edinburgh road engineer deny the presence of any cobbled streets in the city was like the Astronomer Royal denying the presence of the sun. Mr Harrison produced a piece of paper and slid it towards me. At it's top it bore the heading; 'Setting new standards in Edinburgh'. 'Setts Mr Stein. In Edinburgh we have setts. Cobbles are something else again'.And so it was I learnt that Edinburgh is not a city of cobbled streets, a delusion under which I have laboured for some thirty (30) years, but a city of setts. We are sett in our ways, we are not cobbled. Cobbles are not setts I was informed, nor setts cobbles, the two being quite different.
With the exact precision that is the mark of the engineer Mr Harrison informed me why cobbles are not setts. Cobblestones (cobble the abbreviation) are naturally rounded stones, usually sea washed and with a diameter between 64mm-256mm, so smaller than boulders but larger than pebbles. Of course you can cobble a road - excavations about the Tron revealed evidence of a cobbled street thought to date from the 18th century and possibly laid by Belgian 'paveurs' especially brought over to do the job - but it's unlikely you'd care to drive over it.Indeed, after a few ankle breaking yards it's unlikely you'd even care to walk over it. Today cobbles are laid to deter cars - not to encourage them, the same for pedestrians.
Now the sett is another matter. A sett is a sort of stone brick - usually granite, sometimes whinstone - and about the size of a small pan loaf. Those of whinstone are grey. Those of granite are a quite pleasing pinkish colour. And the British sett is set to a British standard. (BS 435 for those who are sticklers for detail).There is some debate as to when setted roads first became a feature of Edinburgh, though they would have been familiar to Walter Scott.Laying setts is a skilled business and save for machines to do the spade work the method is little changed since the 19th century. A gang of sett layers at work today would be little different from those that Sir Walter Scott might have seen. They might dress a bit different, heat their tea on a gas ring and possibly be discussing the latest episode of Eastenders, but that's about it. With no machine yet able to lay setts as well as by hand, it possibly beats banking as a profession with long term job prospects. What's more setts can last for a 100 years, and another hundred if the worn face is recycled with a 'bush' hammer. That's more than can be said for the surface of the M8. In London, around 1835, an engineer called Carey did experiment using wooden blocks of fir and birch. And laid as symmetrical hexagonal blocks they must have looked quite pretty.
In 1986, under some pressure from conservationists about the encroachment of smooth tarmac 'black-top', Edinburgh District Council and Lothian Region adopted a joint policy to 'list' some 27 miles of setted road within the capital. Though not exactly classified as 'monuments', they will remain setted for the foreseeable future. This though leaves another twelve miles of setted road that will, in time be covered or removed, the recovered setts recycled and used to repair and patch the
roads in the conservation areas. This of course raises the intriguing possibility that the stretch of setted road near you could be lifted and setted somewhere else. After all what happened to the old Princes St? What you see is not the original, that was covered in setts. Perhaps there's a bit of Princes Street in the High St though I was assured that the High Street now being re-laid in the High Street is the whole High Street and nothing but the High St. There are approximately 100 setts to a ton. Next time you're in the High Street why not have the children amuse themselves
by working out how much it weighs? (918)
Note Amongst the many closes and wynds destroyed during the building of South bridge was part of Marlin's Wynd. In Edinburgh Curiosities (p68) the author suggests that this wynd takes its name from the Frenchman Jean Merlion who came to Edinburgh to supervise the paving of the High St. He asked to be buried in Merlin's Wynd and it is said that his grave is
marked by six flat stones.
