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Above the south side of the canal we pass Ratho Primary School, a rather ugly building built in the late 1980s to replace the old village school of 1895. The old school was on the corner of Baird Road and Main Street near the sign for the Seagull Trust boats. Flats were built on the site but the bell tower from the old school was incorporated into the end wall. It can just be seen above the Bridge Inn from some viewpoints.
Ratho children are bussed for secondary school, mostly to Balerno.
Ratho village has a population of about 2500 and is within the City of Edinburgh surrounded by green belt. Its centre is a conservation area.
The village has expanded with recent housing developments following a previous population decline from the days when families were bigger and dwellings smaller.
There is now one public house, a post office/general store, a cafe, a bowling club, a pharmacy and a medical practice. When the canal was built in 1822 there were a dozen pubs in the village with a variety of shops. As recently as 1980 there were 5 general stores in the village and 3 pubs.
Next to the school we pass the Hallcroft Park 1970s housing development and then the 2019 Craigpark development built round the rim of the former Craigpark quarry.
Craigpark Hotel was next to Hallcroft Park to our left until destroyed by fire in the 1980’s. In 1914 the owner bred very successful racehorses. At the outbreak of the 1st World War the War Office requisitioned his horses. Rather than send his prize horses to the trenches to be maimed or killed, he shot them and buried them in the grounds with a number of trophies. The destroyed building was subsumed into Craigpark quarry.
Craigpark quarry is being developed into a water park where the lake at the bottom of the quarry will have wave making machinery installed for surfing. There will be parkland and holiday lodges. A footbridge will cross the canal connecting to the Climbing arena on the north side of the canal. This picture was September 2019 and is looking north towards Fife. Broxburn is in the centre with shale bings, the canal is behind the trees on the right and the new Queensferry Crossing bridge is on the extreme right. The water park is expected to open by 2021.
There were whinstone quarries all around this area. The canal facilitated getting the stone to Edinburgh.
This is also a fertile farming area helped in the past by the "night soil" shipped from Edinburgh by barge and used to fertilise the land.
The original motivation behind the canal was for transporting coal to Edinburgh from the coal fields further west so opening coal supplies to competition and keeping prices down.
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