St Bernard's Well

St Bernard’s Well sits on the banks of the Water of Leith, appearing as a circular Greek temple topped with a lead dome and a golden pineapple finial. Designed by the Scottish landscape artist Alexander Nasmyth and completed in seventeen eighty-nine, the structure features ten tall Doric columns that surround a statue of Hygieia, the goddess of health. The temple was commissioned by Lord Gardenstone, a prominent anti-slavery campaigner, who intended to protect a mineral spring discovered by local schoolboys decades earlier.