Category: East Lothian

Amisfield Walled Garden

On By Carol HenshawIn East Lothian, Flowers. plants & treesLeave a comment

Amisfield Walled Garden lies on the outskirts of Haddington. It is part of an estate that was acquired by Francis Charteris in 1713. It had previously been New Mills Cloth Manufactory which had been acquired by Colonel James Stanfield in 1681 who built a mansion called Newmills House near where Haddington Golf Club is situated today. Francis Charteris renamed the estate to Amisfield in memory of his ancestral home near Dumfries. His grandson who became the 7th Earl of Wemyss, built a new mansion house of red Garvald stone which was started around 1755. Later it was extended, the park constructed and in 1783, the walled garden was built over eight acres of land and with walls up to 16 feet in height. When the family later moved out, the park was rented out from 1881. In the First World War the house was used as an officers’ mess and the grounds for training soldiers. The house developed dry rot and was derelict until a local builder, Richard Baillie who had built Herdmanflat hospital bought it, demolished it in 1928 and used the stone to build a hospital in Haddington and Preston Lodge School in Prestonpans. The park was sold to East Lothian Council in 1969 and it is now leased to the Amisfield Preservation Trust who have turned it into a working community garden, run by volunteers and allows visitors free of charge. There are circular buildings at each corner

and diagonal avenues with apples and other trees.

Around the edge are borders with flowers. In September it is mostly the late flowering ones

including Japanese Anemones

and Amaranthus caudatus also known as Love lies Bleeding.

There were pumpkins almost ready to harvest.

The volunteers have a greenhouse and polytunnel which they use to grow fruit and vegetables to sell.

Some old gates gave a view to other derelict buildings in the park.

We wandered around, enjoying the flowers and had a chat with some of the volunteers who were juicing apples. There is a cafe supplying drinks and cakes but we continued to enjoy the flowers before it was time to leave.

On the way out was a tree laden with berries. It will certainly be worth returning in different seasons.

A voyage around three islands in the Forth

On By Carol HenshawIn East Lothian, Scotland2 Comments

The Scottish Seabird centre in North Berwick run a number of boat trips from the harbour. We joined them for their voyage round three of the offshore islands; the Lamb, Craigleith and the Bass Rock which takes 90 minutes. Waterproofs and life jackets are provided. Fortunately, the day we went was very still and quiet in the East Beach.

We met our boat in the harbour.

The first island we visited was the Lamb. The small uninhabited island is home to cormorants, guillemots, puffins, kittiwakes, fulmars and herring gulls.

Ownership of the island traditionally lay with the feudal barony of Dirleton. In 2000, Brazilian businessman Camilo Agasim-Pereira bought the title and with it the island. Then, in 2009 it was bought by Uri Geller, who claimed it was the hiding place for a hoard of ancient Egyptian treasure. This theory was based on the fact that the layout of the islands of Lamb, Fidra and Craigleith seems to mirror the layout of the pyramids of Giza. From the Lamb you can see Fidra.

We then headed over to Craigleith which is visible from our house and is also is home to many sea birds.

In the 1990s it was home to 10,000 pairs of breeding puffins. But numbers reduced dramatically due the invasion of a non-native plant: Tree Mallow (Lavatera arborea) which grows up to nine feet high. It choked the puffin burrows and preventing the birds from nesting and rearing their chicks. To tackle this problem, the Scottish Seabird Centre set up a project called SOS Puffin in 2007. Work parties of volunteers make regular trips to Craigleith and the neighbouring islands of Fidra and the Lamb to cut down tree mallow. So far over 320 work parties have made regular trips to the islands to keep the tree mallow under control. This has largely been achieved. The northern half of the Island is now largely free of tree mallow, having been replaced with grasses, allowing puffins to breed again and numbers to recover. We saw some in the water as well as on the island.

The Isle of May which we visited in 2019;

https://carolhenshaw.com/2019/07/21/the-isle-of-may/  was visible in the distance.

The last island was the Bass Rock. I have photographed it several times from various points on the shore:

The Bass Rock

 but this was the first approach by sea. It has the world’s largest colony of northern gannets although numbers dropped last year due to avian flu. At this time of year, they are getting their nests ready for laying and we saw a few bringing sea weed back for them.

We sailed round the island

past the caves and the lighthouse.

The ruins of the fortress and the old chapel are on the rock. We then left the Bass Rock and returned to North Berwick harbour via Seacliff

Tantallon Castle

and Gin Head.

A new mural in North Berwick

On By Carol HenshawIn Art & Architecture, Beaches, East Lothian, Scotland2 Comments

The new mural sits on the wall of the old pier in North Berwick Harbour.

It began when Elizabeth Vischer, a local from East Lothian, set herself the challenge of carrying out 100 beach cleans during lockdown. She collected 26,513 pieces of plastic from Longniddry Bents. Plastic waste is a huge threat to wildlife and the environment. Currently, only 20% of plastic waste is recycled. Julie Barnes, a local artist was commissioned to build a mural with the plastic waste. 33,000 pieces were used. After being washed, the pieces were laid out on a sheet of 1m squared paper then photographed and sorted according to type and place found. As this progressed, they decided to take studio photographs of all the items found once sorted which took three weeks. Some things had to be discarded either because they were too dirty or too bulky to form part of the mural. This included sanitary items, bags of dog poo, wet wipes, ropes, netting and stoma bags. Julie Barnes then sorted the kept items by colour and size before completing the eight  pictures that comprise the mural.

The Scottish Seabird Centre is very close to the harbour and has a free exhibition of the studio photographs of the sorted plastic.

It is on from 25 March to 25th June 2023. I was there shortly after it opened at 10am and it was very quiet. One thing the Seabird Centre is asking everyone to do is to remove five pieces of rubbish every time you visit a beach and dispose of it properly. Apparently, there are more than 5,000 bits of plastic on every miles of the UK beaches.

The Bass Rock

On By Carol HenshawIn East Lothian, Scotland3 Comments

The Bass Rock is one of several volcanic remnants locally. It sits in the Firth of Forth near North Berwick and is just over 106 metres high. It is visible from the East Beach in Milsey Bay

the West Strand

from Drift Café above Canty Bay

and from Seacliff Beach.

The Bass has the remains of St Baldred’s ancient chapel on it. He used it as a retreat until he died in 606AD. The chapel was consecrated in his honour in 1542 and used as an occasional place of worship until the Reformation.  From the 15th to the 18th century, it was used as a prison; not for ordinary prisoners but those held for religious or political reasons. The Scottish kings used it. In 1406 Robert III put his son, the future King James for safekeeping from his enemies. James later imprisoned one of his enemies, Walter Stewart Earl of Atholl for treason before his execution in 1424. In 1428 14 year old Neil Bhass Mackay was held there as a hostage before he escaped in 1437 and became Mackay clan chief.

The Stuart Monarchy Restoration in 1660 was more popular in Scotland than the reign of Cromwell. However, when the Act of Supremacy had been passed which made the King supreme judge in all manners civil and ecclesiastical, installing bishops and another act annulled the laws in favour of the Presbyterians, things changed. Nonconformist held what were called conventicles: meetings in private houses, churches or fields, sometimes at night. In 1670 an act was passed prohibiting house conventicles and making it a capital crime to preach at field canticles. It was thought that the Bass Rock would be an ideal place for the confinement of nonconformists so in 1671 the Crown bought the Rock and refortified it to be used as a prison. Between 1672 and 1688 several Presbyterian Covenanters were imprisoned there and from 1688 to 1692 supporters of the deposed Jacobite Kings James II and VII.

The government abandoned the Rock in 1701 and Sir Hew Dalrymple bought it in 1707. His descendants still own it. The lighthouse was constructed in 1902 on the site of the castle keep by David Stevenson who demolished some of the older buildings. It was automated in 1988. In normal times 30-40,000 pairs of  gannets nest there in summer making it the largest northern gannet colony. There are also razorbills, puffins, guillemots, cormorants, eider ducks and other gulls. Appropriately the Latin name of the gannet is Sula bassanis.

We moved to North Berwick in late 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. No boat trips out to the Bass Rock were running. When they commenced in 2021, they were all booked up. This year, most were cancelled due to avian flu which has had a major impact on the gannet population.

A wander around Dunbar

On By Carol HenshawIn Beaches, East Lothian, Scotland2 Comments

Having to leave the campervan to be cleaned meant that we had three hours to kill in Dunbar. Following Spott Road in towards the town centre we first had a short walk on the East Beach although the tide was in. There were a few dog walkers out but otherwise it was very quiet.

Cromwell harbour had a few people working on boats. The first harbour was constructed in 1100 at what is now known as Belhaven. The next was stone-built nearer to the castle in the 16th century. After storm damage in the 1650s, Cromwell repaired it to enable English ships to supply his army. Herring fishing was important; In 1819, 280 boats with 2000 men and in bumper years some 700-800 boats would arrive. In the 18th century merchants traded with Europe and in 1828, 203,276 gallons of whisky were exported from Dunbar. The heyday for oyster fishing was from 1770 to 1790 and whaling was undertaken from 1751 to 1802.

The Castle ruins stand beside the harbour. It was built on the site of a Pictish fortress, the first stone castle being constructed in 1071. There were numerous attacks and rebuilding over the centuries and Mary Queen of Scots visited on several occasions. The ruins now provide a cliff-like place for gulls to nest on.

In 1844 a new harbour entrance was blasted through the remaining castle ruins and Victoria Harbour was built by the engineer David Stevenson. We walked around the walls watched by a pair of gulls.

In the 19th century potatoes were taken to London by sea. This continued until 1914 when Lincolnshire began to grow large crops of potatoes. In the 20th century lobster and crab catching increased to supply the demand from local, Edinburgh and London hotels. More recent work on the harbour in 1988 revealed the Harbour Vaults. From the items found in the underground passages, it is assumed they were related to the whaling industry.

In the High Street we found a coffee shop with comfortable sofas and had our first coffee in a cafe for several months. Opposite was the town house museum – the first home of John Muir.

The west end and Belhaven Bay will need to be explored on another day as our three hours had gone and it was time to collect the van.