The Legend of Loch Katrine

Piped water was first brought to the city with the creation of the Glasgow Water Company in 1806. Two years later, the Cranstonhill Water 

Company was formed. Both companies used water from the River Clyde, and located their intake and filtration systems just north of the city. By drawing water from upstream of the city, the companies avoided the pollution generated by city residents. The difficulty with this strategy was that the water had to be pumped from the river to the city and, as a consequence, the pressure was not always sufficient to fight fires. Moreover, because these companies were private enterprises, they installed mains only in those areas that promised the greatest return. The result was neither fair nor economically efficient. In densely populated areas of Glasgow there were two sets of mains when only one set was required, while at the same time, in less densely populated areas of the city there were no mains at all.  

Unfortunately, the consolidation of the Glasgow and Cranstonhill companies did nothing to address two enduring problems with the city s water supply. First, as noted above, because the water had to be pumped from the source to the city, water pressure was a constant problem for the city s higher elevations. Second, the water filter, which was a small tunnel filled with sand, had limited capacity. Floods and seasonal changes regularly overwhelmed the filter s capacity and resulted in unfiltered and turbid water entering the mains. As explained by one observer, at an ordinary state Clyde water was pretty free from objection and 

Faced with a rapidly expanding population and a static public health infrastructure, life in Glasgow became increasingly short and precarious. This can be seen in figures 8.2 and 8.3, which plot the city s crude death 

Life expectancy in Glasgow, 1820-1880. Sources Szreter and Mooney (1998), p. 96 Leser (1955), p. 71. 

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With regard to the lead question, the people who did the most to spread the legend of Loch Katrine were not the residents of Glasgow, the politicians and entrepreneurs who first promoted the Loch Katrine scheme, or even the bureaucrats who later ran the Loch Katrine waterworks. Rather, the people who perpetuated the myth the most were those who lived outside Scotland and had no connection with the Glasgow water system. 

The legend of Loch Katrine is part fact and part fiction. It is difficult to disentangle fact from fiction or even to judge their relative magnitudes, because there is a dearth of empirically verifiable information about the waterworks. For whatever reason, most authors and historians appear to prefer making interpretive statements about the loch s romance, symbolism, and singular greatness. 

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