Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink

I've been through Penicuik any number of times, and I've been past this old stone structure countless times too, sometimes even visiting the shops here, but had also never paid it any attention.  'Here' is Penicuik's old High Street, which just about clings onto its old highstreetness in a way that Moffat and Biggar manage rather better.

As you can see from the text on the metal door, this is the 'new' drinking fountain, it having replaced an earlier one (1809) in 1864.  Interestingly, a design from 1862 was for a much grander affair, a main bowl eight or ten feet in diameter with the waters springing forth from an elegantly plain column perhaps five feet high, topped with a three foot bowl with its own small fountain.  The text on the door also refers to "the public cart weights", which was a weighing machine situated about 60 yards away.

The 'old spring' I presume was here – much as the Comiston springs wellheads were built where the water sprang out of the ground – while 'Sillerburn' is what we now call Silverburn, a hamlet two miles away as the crow flies, and the upgraded Penicuik Supply was taken from there.  A substantial circular cistern or collecting house was built on the hillside, and it still stands, although it's tucked behind a small hillock and is barely visible from the main road.

Alas, such civic niceties are but anachronisms now, their water turned off and their drinking cups removed.

Meanwhile:  Thank you to everyone who has visited and engaged with my somewhat eclectic series of blips over the last hundred and something days.  As I write, 2024 is but an hour and a bit away, and I hope you all have a great new year.