By Diane Morgan, author of books such as Lost Aberdeen and Granite Mile – The Story of Aberdeen’s Union Street
“Gentlemen, In obedience to your orders, I have examined and made a general survey of your Town and have the honour to lay a Plan before you…”
Such were the historic words addressed to the magistrates (town councillors) of Aberdeen, by the renowned Glasgow surveyor Charles Abercrombie in December 1794.
He was working on a new turnpike road system for Aberdeenshire and the magistrates had invited him to inspect the town while in the area, and suggest ways of improving access.
Aberdeen was enjoying a period of affluence. Shipping, commerce, and manufacture had increased “far beyond expectation” and the population was increasing steadily.
But the roads, “crooked, narrow, tortuous and hilly”, leading to the town centre at the Castlegate from the south via the Hardgate, and from the north via the Gallowgate, were said to be the worst in the country.
“It is with great difficulty that a stranger can find his way in or out of Aberdeen,” Mr Abercrombie commented. Hence the commissioning of the plan, which suggested three new approaches.
His favourite was the most innovative, difficult and audacious. It was by “a direct elevated street” (the future Union Street) linking the Castlegate with “the extensive plain to the west” – the area beyond the present Diamond Street – and ending at the Summer Roadie (Summer Street).
To maintain the correct level of the new street, the ground between the Castlegate and the great natural chasm of the ‘Den’, the future Union Terrace Gardens, would be built as a viaduct, with retaining walls or arches of brick, most of which would be ’blind’, that is covered in earth. (Some are still visible).
The Town Council were initially reluctant to accept Abercrombie’s plan but Thomas Leys, the visionary chief magistrate and his colleague, the unscrupulous James Hadden, builders of the original Grandholm mill, were behind it, as were county interests.
Indeed Mr Hadden was later credited with the surreptitious moving of the marker pegs by night to increase the width of Union Street from sixty to a more impressive seventy feet.
The plan, in spite of its difficulties, was adopted for unlike the others, it would open up a vast area for settlement and development and transform Aberdeen from a cramped medieval burgh, bursting at the seams, to a gleaming modern metropolis.
These difficulties were many. There was not even a primitive east to west track through the proposed area.
The Castlegate itself was closed off at its west end by a “big block of common-looking houses” which had to come down.
Immediately beyond them loomed the bulk of St Catherine’s Hill, heavily populated on its lower slopes, round which the Shiprow wound. People, houses and much of the hill itself had to go.
The Adelphi covers this site. Beyond lay the important Back Wynd which ascended from the Green to Schoolhill. It had to be sliced through, though the upper part survives intact, while the lower part was remodelled as the Back Wynd stairs.
A short distance further west, a new road, Belmont Street, had to stop short where we find it today, the wee brae at its south end built up to link it to the new “elevated street”, which forever barred its projected route to the Green.
On to the “Den” where a raft of problems plagued the future Union Bridge.
The competition to design it was won by a Glasgow architect, David Hamilton. His plans were an elaboration on Mr Abercrombie’s original three-arched structure and there were murmurs that the two Glasgow men were in cahoots.
But financial miscalculations were made by the original masons who were consequently sacked with only the piers and foundations laid.
Then Thomas Fletcher, engineer and overseer of the recently completed Aberdeenshire Canal, discovered major flaws in Mr Hamilton’s design.
The Glasgow mafia was now replaced an Aberdeenshire Canal coterie.
Mr Fletcher submitted designs for a graceful yet economical single span bridge of 130ft, and the work was carried out by William Ross, the Canal’s contractor.
Mr Ross, maternal grandfather of the architect–lord provost James Matthews, creator of Union Terrace Gardens, took just two years completing the bridge by the beginning of 1805. It quickly became the Aberdonians’ pride and joy.
The completion of the western half of Union Street, which later incorporated Union Place, at the future Holburn Junction end, presented no difficulties.
Abercrombie must have been well pleased with his new turnpike system.
At the east end Union Street linked with its contemporary, King Street, home stretch of the North Turnpike, and at George Street/St Nicholas Street, with the home stretch of the Inverurie Turnpike.
At the west end, Union Street was planned to link with Holburn Street, which was the start of South Turnpike and the road to London, and via Great Western Road, with the Deeside Turnpike. At Alford Place, it would link with the Skene Turnpike.
Union Street would develop as a magnificent boulevard, but was also initially intended as a vital thoroughfare, allowing the easy flow of vehicles through town, county and beyond.
Though there were other factors, miscalculations and under-estimates in the cost of building Union Street are blamed for the city’s bankruptcy in 1817.
For example, compensation paid for buying houses for demolition amounted to £73,163 4s 5d as opposed to an estimated £30,000, while expensive and stringent conditions led to a slow take up of feus. Only one row of buildings and three houses had gone up by that year.
The accumulated interest on loans now stood at £57,000. 14s 4d and the Treasurer had no option but to suspend payment of interest. The city was bankrupt.
The burgh’s property was conveyed to 21 trustees appointed to represent the creditors. Even in this difficult time the trustees were not prepared to accept a lowering of standards which would have resulted in a quick take-up of feus.
By 1824 the civic offers were filling again and the city was back in the black.