Bridgend

(Bridge End)

A location and almost-forgotten settlement of S Edinburgh, Bridgend (or Bridge End) lies just beyond where the Old Dalkeith Road (A7) crosses the Braid Burn, a quarter-mile (0.4 km) southeast of Cameron Toll and 2 miles (3 km) southeast of the city centre. A Mediaeval chapel was built here by Sir Simon Preston of Craigmillar around 1518, and parts of its walls remain. A carved plaque said to have come from this chapel in now set into the entrance hall of Inch House. Bridgend Cottages belonged to the Gilmours who ran their Craigmillar and Liberton Estate from Inch House, and also let Bridgend Farm. In 1848, the Ordnance Survey described thatched cottages which housed ten families. Dickson's substantial Caledonian Nursery was established here in 1889. Both the cottages and farmhouse remain extant, with Bridgend Allotments opened by the City of Edinburgh Council in 2006 on part of the former farmland. The farmhouse was restored as a community hub in 2018. The Royal Mail South East Delivery Office is also now located here, hidden behind the cottages, together with Craigmillar Castle Park Cemetery. Just to the east is a Council Community Recycling Centre, situated in an old quarry in what is now Craigmillar Castle Jubilee Park. From c.1880 until the 1950s, this quarry was the site of Thomas Hammond's Fireworks Factory, which also made signal flares and Very pistols during the Second World War. When the site was cleared, residual chemicals were unwisely buried in the quarry which spectacularly exploded on 21st March 1982, luckily without injury but certainly to the shock of people living nearby and the embarrassment of the local authority.


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