Great to get some answers to some of these questions, just by thinking about it from a different angle.
Edward, I have to agree with you that the construction of St Vincent Street Church and commercial buildings like Egyptian Halls and the Bucks Head Building would have required considerable structural engineering skills. I reckon I was isolating this civil engineering job from other branches of engineering used in construction at the time.
Thomson must have had himself, or access to, some very specialised expertise.
I’ll take that line of questions as answered!
As to whether it is reasonable to credit Thomson personally, I’m still not convinced.
Crusty, I certainly agree with you that a few of the features on the wall appear to be in the style of Thomson, but that is superficial.
I take it that you would agree with me that there is no direct hard evidence from the Historic Scotland Listed Buildings Report that Thomson had anything to do with it?
With no source of verification, does it not seem too convenient for the report to pin the date of construction down to 1870, while Thomson was still alive?
Is a not a little too neat for the wall and stairs to suddenly spontaneously appear at the exact same time as the Queen Margaret Bridge?
Crusty, I don’t agree that the wall and steps “bear all the hallmarks and finesse of his hand”, but everyone sees things differently.
My initial problem was the opposite. I thought it was totally atypical of anything Thomson had been credited with before.
I don’t see much finesse, or the Thomson touch in this. I find it rather banal.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the stonework in all Thomson’s architectural works was of coursed regular smooth ashlar blocks. Here the massive wall is of hammer dressed random rubble. Why make one exception?
The only part of the whole structure that I can find a resemblance to any of the other known works of Thomson are the two small pillars on the upper approaches to the stairway which have the general appearance of the squat columns sometimes used by Alexander Thomson, but in rough stone and without the usual embellishments you would see in his city centre commercial works. I’ve drawn many of them for my web page and think that here we have the right shape, wrong décor.
Walls start from the ground upwards, not the other way. The alleged Thomson pillars at the top of the stairway would have been added at the end of the project, before the houses in Kelvinside Terrace were built in 1878/1879. They are in Thomson’s familiar squat style, but show none of the usual exotic decoration and motifs associated with him.
I've moved on from being a total unbeliever to a bit of an agnostic about the Sixty Steps.
I guess that there can be no final proof, so I'll leave it to the faithful.