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Molendinar Burn Culverts

City Centre, City of Glasgow (Lanarkshire).

The Molendinar Burn is a historic waterway that formerly flowed through Glasgow city centre before being almost-entirely culverted in the 1870s. The culverts have been constructed using a combination of stone walls, brick arches and modern steel pipes. Some older sections of the tunnel are liberally endowed with some impressive speleothem formations (see Image 1), presumably formed by dissolution of the brickwork cement.

A short (ca. 70m) section of the burn can be seen above ground immediately west of the former Great Eastern Hotel (between Duke St and Havannah St), where entrances into the northern and southern culverts are found. From here the southern section extends underground for approx. 1km via the length of Molendinar St and Turnbull St, eventually entering the River Clyde at a point just downstream of the tidal weir. The northern, upstream culvert extends past Glasgow Cathedral as far as a small park in Craighead Avenue (3.1km to the NE) where the burn first sinks underground into grated-off concrete pipes.

Alternative Names: None recorded.

Notes: Given coordinates are those for the southern end of the northern culvert. Total length is approximate. The northern culvert is at least 3.5km long, this being the straight-line distance between the Duke St resurgence & the sink by Craigend avenue.

Hydrographic Feeds: Molendinar Burn

Hydrographic Resurgences: River Clyde