The Mill House, Gorgie Road, Edinburgh

Client: Dunedin Canmore Housing Association
Cost: £10.0m
Date: 2010

396 Gorgie Road is a £15.0m new build development for a 5 storey student residence with 256 en-suite student bedrooms arranged over a number of cluster flats and associated accommodation. The ground floor area is occupied by retail units.

The site is located on an existing Victorian mill and glue factory in Edinburgh’s historic Gorgie area. The J&G Cox mills and glue factory operated on the site from the late 18th through to mid-20th century. The areas identified as archeologically sensitive could not be excavated in some locations. This dictated the footprint of the main student building and the foundation solution for ancillary buildings for the substation, bike shed and bin store.

Drainage proved a challenge on this development due to a number of constraints posed by depth of archaeology and the condensed space to implement SUDs and attenuation within an enclosed site. This was overcome by installing a surface water storage system within an historic redundant brick culvert which ran through the site. A 600mm diameter asbestos sewer also ran through the centre of the site. This required to be diverted along the boundary of the site out with the footprint of the building. Due to the density of the proposed site, this posed a challenge where careful coordination with mechanical & electrical disciplines was required as gas, electricity and telecoms also follows this diversion route.