In the early part of the nineteenth century there was dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of Leith as a port.
In 1834 the 5th Duke of Buccleuch, Walter Frances Montagu Douglas Scott, who owned the foreshore at Granton, was approached with a view to constructing a harbour at Granton.
The Duke was very enthusiastic about this proposal and in 1836 commissioned the development of Granton Harbour.
The eminent civil engineer, Robert Stevenson, oversaw the building of the harbour.
The construction of the Middle Pier at Granton commenced to Stevenson’s design in 1836 with the initial central pier being opened on 28 June, 1838, coinciding with the Coronation of Queen Victoria.
The opening ceremony was performed by the Duke of Buccleuch’s brother, Lord John Scott (MP for Roxburghshire), as the Duke was in London attending Queen Victoria’s Coronation.
The pier was named Victoria Jetty in her honour before lapsing into simply ‘the Middle Pier’.
At the time of building, it was one of the largest works ever accomplished in Britain from the unaided resources of a private fortune.
On 1 September, 1842 Queen Victoria landed at Victoria Jetty on the Royal Yacht, ‘Royal George’, on her first official visit to Edinburgh.
The Royal Couple were received by the Duke of Buccleuch at Granton and travelled by carriage through Edinburgh to Dalkeith House where they stayed as guests of the Duke.
The pier was extended to a total length of 1700 feet providing a further ten berths with the work being completed in 1844.
However, the pier had no protection from the winds blowing up and down the Firth of Forth so breakwaters were planned.
Construction of the Western Breakwater started after the Granton Harbour Act was obtained in 1842.
The Eastern Breakwater was built between 1852 and 1863.
Both breakwaters were constructed with locally quarried stone from Granton which has required little or no maintenance over the years.
By 1845 a steamboat service ran between Stirling and Granton.
Sailings to Stirling continued mainly from Leith until 1914 when the Firth of Forth became a restricted area.
Granton became a successful port at the beginning of the twentieth century, the principal imports consisting of butter, wood and esparto grass which was used in the manufacture of fine paper, while the main exports were coal, coke and patent fuel, the coke being produced at the new Granton Gas Works which had a rail link to the harbour.
In 1909 the Anglo Saxon Petroleum Co. Ltd built a storage depot at Granton and the import of petroleum products added to the volume of trade.
The esparto grass that came into Granton went either by road or rail to paper mills in Penicuik, Polton, Currie and Balerno.
A steam lighter (barge) was also used up until the middle of the 1950s to transfer the esparto grass from Granton to Inverkeithing.
The fishing fleet grew considerably and an ice house was built in the late nineteenth century to the west of the harbour.
Two railway companies served Granton, the Caledonian Railway which came in from the west in 1861 and the North British Railway, which, after acquiring the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway in 1862, came in from the east.
At the base of the Middle Pier a railway line was laid in 1862 under an agreement between the Duke of Buccleuch, the Caledonian Railway and the North British Railway.
This section of line was owned by the Duke of Buccleuch and connected with the CR’s Granton line coming in from the west from Slateford and the NBR line coming in from the east from Trinity Junction.
This new section of line ran across the north side of Granton Square, a site which had previously been occupied by various dock and weighing machine offices.
A single line, belonging to the Duke of Buccleuch (later Granton Harbour Company) was already in place connecting the Middle Pier and the Western Breakwater.
Although passenger and goods ferries between Granton and Burntisland had been established by Act of Parliament in 1844 one of the main disadvantages was the need to load and unload the rail wagons at either Granton or Burntisland causing much loss of time and also frequent breakage and damage of goods.
An agreement between the Edinburgh & Northern Railway (later NBR) and the Duke of Buccleuch in 1847 allowed the E&NR to build a jetty for the Granton to Burntisland ferry (goods) traffic.
On 22 December, 1847 the E&NR had drawings made by Hawthorns of Leith for the building of hydraulic cranes, at both Granton and Burntisland piers for loading wagons directly onto the ferries. The original drawings for the cranes at Burntisland still exist.
The hydraulic crane was invented by Mr William George Armstrong, a Newcastle solicitor, in 1845 who went on to build Newcastle’s Swing Bridge and the hydraulic mechanism that operates London’s Tower Bridge. He also founded Newcastle University
However, the proposal to use hydraulic cranes was superseded by the adoption of a ‘Floating Railway’ designed by Thomas Bouch, who went on to design and build the first Tay Bridge which collapsed during a storm on Sunday, 28 December, 1879 with the loss of seventy-five lives.
On 3 February, 1850 the world’s first sea going roll on roll off train ferry was introduced between Granton and Burntisland.
The design of the paddle-steamer ‘Leviathan’, built by Robert Napier & Co. of Govan on the Clyde in 1849, meant it could be loaded and unloaded at any state of the tide by means of a moveable platform on the inclined slips at Granton and Burntisland with a link span extending outwards to the vessel’s deck.
The wagons, which were transferred between pier and ship, were controlled by a small stationary steam engine.
The ferry made four or five return trips across the Forth daily with an average time for a single trip, including loading and unloading an average of 21 wagons, of 56 minutes.
During the the ferry's first ten years in service over 75,000 wagons were carried annually.
However, foot passengers continued to use separate ferries.
A second ferry, also built on Clydeside by Robert Napier & Co., of Govan commenced crossing the Tay estuary between Ferry-Port and Broughty Ferry on 28 March, 1851. Named 'Robert Napier', this single-ended ferry, with accommodation for eighteen wagons on two tracks, made up to seven round trips each day, carrying 56,000 wagons annually.
Its inaugural sailing coincided with the opening of a new harbour at Tayport, previously known as Ferry-Port, and was the only occasion when occupied passenger carriages are known to have been ferried by either of these vessels.
On the opening of the Forth Bridge on 4 March, 1890 the train ferry at Granton became redundant and was withdrawn but passenger ferries continued until March, 1940.
It would take the North British Railway a further ten years before the necessary infrastructure, which included rebuilding Waverley station, was in place before the company could make full use of the bridge
Various attempts have been made to reinstate a ferry service between Granton and Fife over the years but have met with little or no success.
Two hotels were built in Granton to accommodate ferry passengers. The Granton Hotel, which the Duke of Buccleuch commissioned William Burn to design, opened in 1838 for the use of railway travellers prior to the Forth Bridge being constructed.
The hotel was used as a staging post by ferry passengers as the journey north at this time was by train from Edinburgh Waverley to Granton station, situated on the Middle Pier, and then by ferry to Burntisland for further rail connections.
A second hotel of similar size, designed by John Henderson, was erected at Burntisland.
In 1939 the Granton Hotel was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and renamed HMS Claverhouse in 1940. In post war years it became a Naval Reserve Centre and today is an Army Reserve Centre.
On 3 December, 2021, a red wheel was placed on the wall of the former Granton Hotel by the National Transportation Trust.
The other hotel, in Lower Granton Road, was called the Wardie Hotel, which has since been converted to residential flats.
The small shipbreaking business of Malcolm Brechin, which specialised in dismantling small coasters and trawlers, was situated on reclaimed land in the Western harbour area and was in business from 1932 up until 1965.
Today most of the old industries in Granton are gone with modern buildings built in their place.
Today the Royal Yacht Club has taken over a large part of the Middle Pier.
To see pictures of Granton, please visit my Flickr site under the album, Edinburgh, Granton and Leith Railways.