Sewage is released into Scottish rivers more than 30 times a day, being once every 48 minutes or nearly 11,000 times a year. It is a hideous poisonous stink annoying ecologists, swimmers, anglers, rowers and everyone wishing to enjoy the mindfulness afforded by glorious free flowing water tumbling towards the sea. Pollution can also come from other sources: agricultural fertilisers, chicken farm excrement and industrial waste. Demands for pollution to cease are common, as are calls for better regulation and enforcement. Affording such protection to nature is not, of course, a new issue. As far back as August 1866, the court of session heard one especially significant environmental protection case, focused on the River North Esk. The pursuers, landowners with deep historic antecedents, insisted on the right to enjoy pure water and the beauty of the river. The defenders were successful entrepreneurs owning paper mills along the course of the waterway.
The growth of paper manufacturing
The earliest evidence for Scottish paper-making is at Edinburgh; on 6 July 1659, the town council ordered a report on John Patersone’s ‘paper milne’ at ‘Canonmylnes’. In the 18th century, the rivers of the Lothians became populated by small paper mills. Manufacture was rural, needing a good water supply for washing and treating fibres and a good head of water for milling power. Paper mills were sited in the valleys of the Water of Leith and the North Esk.
Around these mills developed small paper-making villages, including Penicuik, Auchendinny, Polton and Lasswade. By 1790, while each piece of paper was hand-made, mills produced over 100,000 reams; much was sent to London.
Innovation brought mechanisation. In the 1820s and 1830s, paper mills got larger, made more paper, employed additional people and became a staple industry. The growth brought river pollution, or so claimed the landowners behind the civil case of 1866, and through whose land the North Esk flowed. The river rises south of Edinburgh in the Pentland Hills. It passes Penicuik, Auchendinny, Roslin Glen, Hawthornden
