Edinburghs Lost Village Replaced By Shopping Centre and Roundabout

Everyone in Edinburgh knows Cameron Toll. However, nobody remembers its original tollhouse. It gave the shopping center its name. Before “Savacentre,” this area was a toll collection point.

The tollhouse was built in the early 1800s and sat where Dalkeith, Lady, and Peffermill Roads meet. It was part of Sharpdale, which included two-story worker cottages shown on old maps.

Sharpdale was sometimes called Cameron Bridge. It was a rest stop on the south road to Edinburgh where a small stone crossing allowed people to cross Pow Burn.

Besides the tollhouse, a local inn and an infant school existed there. A drinking trough sat in the road for thirsty horses and other animals.

By the late 1800s, two railway bridges enclosed it. The settlement lasted until after World War II, when road improvements cleared the houses and residents moved to the new Inch estate.

The village vanished for a new roundabout, and “Sharpdale” was gone from Edinburgh. The Cameron Toll Shopping Centre opened in the 1980s south of Lady Road.

The Sharpdale cottages appear on an 1890s map, and driving into Cameron Toll from the northeast reminds you of the area’s past. Sharpdale Loan stands as a village memory.

Hugh Mckay saw an old Sharpdale photo. He said his wife’s family lived there once; her grandparents lived in one of the houses and later moved to cottages at Bridgend.