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Edinburgh Live
Edinburgh Live
World
Kris Gourlay & Neil Pooran

Edinburgh Castle's 160ft tower plan that never came to be and how it would look

Edinburgh Castle is one of the city's many natural architectural sweet spots and is the centrepiece of the whole capital.

With Princes Street providing the perfect viewing spot for the castle, commuters walk or travel past it every single day, many without even looking up at the huge dormant volcano that the castle sits upon.

It could have looked incredibly different, however. That's if the mid-19th century plans as a tribute to Prince Albert, had gone ahead, culminating in a huge 160ft tower erected at the site of the castle.

READ MORE: 19 throwback Edinburgh activities and events that you can no longer experience

A new 3D rendering shows what the castle would have looked like, if Queen Victoria didn't disprove of the plans, even though they were designed as a tribute to her late husband.

He died in December 1861, and architect David Bryce created drawings for the Prince Albert Memorial Keep the following year.

The 164ft-high memorial to the Prince Consort would have towered over the rest of the castle and the city itself.

It would have been the most dramatic change to the castle in hundreds of years.

However Queen Victoria disapproved of the construction, and it seems the idea never left the drawing board.

Using modern 3D rendering techniques and access to Bryce's drawings, Quick Quid's Unbuilt Britain project were able to recreate what the tower would have looked like.

They also recreated planned structures in other cities which never went ahead, including a striking bridge in Bristol.

They said: "Our goal, as commissioned by QuickQuid, was to inspire people to rediscover the areas of Britain where they live and to get inspired to travel to those areas that perhaps they’ve not considered visiting before.

"When the idea was born, we were trying to find a way of showing a new side of the Britain they know so well, thinking of how we could surprise residents enough for them to see their cities in a new light.

"The concept grew from there.

"Our focus was to bring these awe-inspiring unbuilt structures to life so that readers could truly experience how different their cities could look like in a parallel universe where a different plan was picked for a famous landmark.

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"To create an accurate representation of each unbuilt structure, we worked with senior researcher David Cross and architect Keremcan Kirilmaz."

This article was originally posted on June 12, 2018.

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