#northleith — Public Fediverse posts

Which is it? The thread about the name of Wardie Bay; or the thread about the name of Granton Beach?

This thread was originally written and published in July 2023.

Wardie Bay; an increasingly popular little spot of accessible coastline in the north of Edinburgh, where you can dip your toes – or your whole body – in the “bracing” waters of the Forth, and watch the seals and seabirds. Or is it Granton Beach? Let’s see if we can’t find out.

“Beach at Wardie Bay and Granton Harbour”, cc-by-SA 2.0 Jim Barton via Geograph

First we must get something straight, whatever this bay and beach is called, it is not a natural bay, it is man made. The sandy beach itself extends all of 150m eastwards from the Granton Eastern Breakwater (construction of which was not completed until about 1860) and the wider bay itself is bookended to the east by the Western Breakwater of Leith Docks, some 1,350m distant (constructed between 1938 and 1942).

OS 1:10,000 sheet for Edinburgh, published 1955, with Granton Harbour to the left and Newhaven / Leith Docks to the right. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Surveying undertaken by the eminent engineers Robert and Alan (his son) Stevenson in the 1830s when planning Granton Harbour shows that at this time, there was no sandy beach at Wardie, it was only rock and gravel (there was, however, sand to the west of where the pier is marked below).

“Granton – Plan and section of a wharf on the Ox Craig” by Robert and Alan Stevenson, 1835. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Once we accept this, it means we don’t need to look for a name for this bay that is older than that, because it didn’t exist, it was just the shoreline of the Firth of Forth.

Robert Kirkwood’s 1817 Town Plan of Edinburgh and Leith, centred on Wardie. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Our two competing names for the bay come from the estates and big houses of Granton and Wardie.

• Granton as a placename goes back to 1478 and a “castle” or tower house existed here. The estate was later split into two farmsteads (Easter Granton (or Royston) and Wester Granton). Under the ownership of Andrew Logan, the castle was replaced by a mansion house, which was called Royston House. This was rebuilt at the end of the 17th centurty by George Mackenzie and in 1739 was purchased by John Campbell, Duke of Argyll, who renamed it Carolina Park after his daughter and had it extended by William Adam. At the end of the 18th century the house was inherited by the Duke of Buccleuch.
• Wardie as a placename is first recorded over 100 years earlier than Granton, in 1336, with various spellings over time such as Warda and Weirdie. The flat plane of land in this area above the shoreline of the Forth back to the Water of Leith was known as Wardie Muir (moor). A castle of this name was built in the 15th or 16th century, which over time evolved into Wardie House. At the end of the 18th century, Wardie House was in the possession of Alexander Boswell (or Boswall) of Blackadder, in Berwickshire. When he died in 1812, he left Wardie to a distant relative, Captain John Donaldson, RN, whose inheritance required he take up the Boswall name.

Granton and Wardie also gave (and still give) their name to the two most prominent intertidal rocks on their respective foreshores, Granton Bush and Wardie Bush.

“Chart of the Firth of Forth from Queensferry to Inchkeith” by Robert and Alan Stevenson, 1835. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The boundary between the estates of Granton and Wardie was the rivulet of the Wardie Burn; west of the burn lies Granton, east of it lies Wardie. This also formed the old parish boundary between St. Cuthberts and Cramond. To the east of Wardie, on a boundary defined by what is now Netherby Road, lay the ancient lands of Trinity – part of North Leith parish and so-called because they belonged to Trinity House in Leith. The land ownership plan below was drawn up by Robert Stevenson on behalf of the Duke of Buccleuch in 1836 as part of the harbour scheme, which included a significant new access road to and from Edinburgh (marked red below) that spanned the Wardie Burn and crossed the land of Captain Boswall of Wardie. Interestingly, Stevenson’s first plans for Granton had a much grander pier, wet docks and this roadway was proposed as a railway.

Robert & Alan Stevenson’s “Plan & Section of the road from Granton Pier”, 1836. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The below map overlays the boundaries of the old Granton, Wardie and Barnton estates on a modern aerial photo. We can see that the boundary between Granton and Wardie, the old line of the Wardie Burn, is approximately in the middle of the current beach, with probably the lion’s share in Granton.

Modern aerial mapping with the boundaries of Granton, Barnton and Wardie overlaid

From an administrative point of view, when the Great Reform Act passed in 1832, it defined new parliamentary constituencies. One was created for the Burgh of Leith, which cut through the middle of the Wardie estate, in a straight line between where the Wardie Burn entered the sea and Ferry Road, 400 yards west of Golden Acre. To the west of this, Granton was in Edinburghshire, and to the south of this was the constituency the Burgh of Edinburgh.

1832 Map of Edinburgh and Leith, to accompany the definition of the constituency boundaries as part of the Reform Act. To the left of the red line is Edinburghshire, to the east of it, the northern part is Leith Burgh and the southern part is Edinburgh Burgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The following year, Leith was made a municipal Burgh, and the boundary was pushed 100 feet further west from Granton Road than the parliamentary boundary. Although it still ran through the middle of the old Wardie estate (which was progressively being parcelled up and built on), this now meant that almost the entirety of the foreshore at what would later become Wardie Bay beach was then in Leith’s jurisdiction.

Bartholomew Post Office map, 1865, showing the municipal boundary (red) between Leith’s 5th Ward (green) and Edinburgh’s 2nd and 3rd Wards (pink and yellow). Granton at this time was in neither burgh, but was in the shire of Midlothian for administrative purposes. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The Edinburgh Municipal Act of 1900 incorporated Granton into Edinburgh (into the No. 8 St. Bernard’s Ward), with the boundary remaining 100 feet west of Granton Road. When the Edinburgh Extension Act of 1920 passed and Edinburgh consumed Leith, the ward boundaries remained the same in Leith, and the old No. 5 North Leith Ward became Edinburgh’s new No. 19 West Leith Ward. Wardie Bay may now have formally been within Edinburgh, but it was still in a Leith ward (as it remained until incorporated into a new shoreline ward called Forth in 2007 when the city moved to a smaller number of larger, multi-member wards).

In news print, Granton Beach appears over a decade before Wardie Bay, but it’s not easy to tell what part of the foreshore this was referring to. Granton Bay never has been used, and Wardie Beach is used earlier on (1837) but only as a one off, and not in a local publication. Wardie Bay is cetainly the name used by the author Joyce Wallace, who wrote a number of excellent books on Edinburgh and Leith local history in the 1990s, including Traditions of Leith and Trinity and Further Traditions of Leith and Trinity.

Place NameEarliest Newspaper MentionMentions 1900-1999Granton Beach1887, The Scotsman, with reference to Duck Shooting on the beach12Granton BayNo mention–Granton Shore1848, Caledonian Mercury, with reference to a storm19Wardie Beach1837, The Globe (London), with reference to the geology on the beach–Wardie Bay1901, Dundee Evening Telegraph, with reference to a storm136Wardie Shore1824, Caledonian Mercury, with reference to the feuing of building lots at Wardie1The first appearance of different place names for “Wardie Bay” in searches for the above terms on the British Newspaper Archive

In 1901 there was a great tragedy at Wardie Bay when the Revenue Cutter Active was driven against the Granton Breakwater in a storm with the loss of 20 of the 23 souls on board. This was widely reported in newspapers across Scotland and the UK, and Wardie Bay was the name used.

In 1987, there was a scheme put forward by Forth Ports, the harbour and navigation authority for the Firth of Forth, to infill the shoreline between the Granton and Leith harbour breakwaters, and the name Wardie Bay was used. You can read more about this ridiculous proposal over on its own thread.

This has all been a very long-winded way to say that I think, on the balance of probabilites, if I was asked to adjudicate on whether it is Wardie Bay or Granton Beach, I would say it is Wardie Bay.

• It is an accepted term in print by local authors, and the most commonly used term in local newspapers
• The most prominent intertidal feature on the beach is Wardie Bush – Granton Bush is a mile to the west
• While the older estate boundaries put much of what is now the beach on the Granton side, the beach and bay have only come into existence as we known them since 1860, by which time the estates were being broken up by feuing, and a new municipal boundary had been set which put almost all of the beach east of the breakwater on the Wardie side.

However, there is really no right or wrong answer here. No authority has ever decreed an official name. The bay itself is a local feature, it’s not defined or recognised on Ordnance Survey maps or marine charts. So you go ahead and call it what you think is best, and don’t let anyone (especially me) tell you otherwise.

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The thread about Spuds and Hippos: Leith and Newhaven’s key part in building the Mulberry Harbours for Operation Overlord in World War 2

This thread was originally written and published in June 2023.

Today (June 6th) is the 79th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings, the largest seaborne invasion in history. The huge assault was supported by a vast logistical operation, at the core of which were to be two Mulberry Harbours. This is the story of Leith and Newhavens significant part in making this military megaproject a reality.

Aerial view of “Mulberry B” at Arromanches-les-Bains (Gold Beach) in Normandy (October 27, 1944). This is photograph C 4626 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums.

Mulberries A & B – one each for the US-led Omaha British-led Gold beaches respectively – were temporary, prefabricated harbours to rapidly offload supplies onto land after the initial assault, until other ports could be captured. Each enclosed an area larger than the harbour of Gibraltar. and was made up of a range of prefabricated, interlocking parts, each with a codename; Hippos, Crocodiles, Phoenixes, Bombardons, Beetles, Swiss Rolls, Whales and Spuds. And it was the first and – most importantly – last of these where Leith came in

Mulberry Harbour : Arromanches (B, Gold Beach), by war artist Stephen Bone © IWM Art.IWM ART LD 4607

A Spud was the end of the Whale, the latter being the overall codename for the pier ends. It was the largest and technically most complex component of the whole Mulberry – the part where the actual ships tied up to offload, and of the 23 Spuds required over half would be built in Leith. And they would not be built in just any old way, they were built in record-breaking time, in a brand new shipyard, constructed “almost overnight” specifically for the purpose of producing Mulberry components, by a temporary workforce who were largely ignorant of what they were doing.

Whale floating roadway leading to a Spud pier at Mulberry A off Omaha Beach

When it had become clear after the disastrous failure of the Dieppe Raid of 1942 that any cross-Channel invasion was going to require an unprecedented logistical exercise to support it, the best minds in the country – all the way up to Churchill himself – were focussed on how to move men and supplies quickly onto the land. Brigadier Bruce White, a leading civil engineer, was put in charge of the idea of creating floating assault harbours. Looking for inspiration, he recalled an unusual dredger he had seen in operation in the Bahamas almost 20 years before, and an idea formed in his head. That dredger, the Lucayan, had three special legs or “spuds”, which it could lower onto the sea bed to make it a stable platform while it went about its digging duties, at all states of the tide. It had been build on the Clyde in 1923 by Lobnitz & Co. in Renfrew, so White roped Henry Lobnitz in to his scheme.

The dredger “Lucayan”

White asked Lobnitz to design, based on the Lucayan, a pontoon with 4 spuds that could be lowered onto the sea bed to firmly anchor it and yet allow it to rise up and down on the tide. From this secure pier head, supplies could offload in deep water and find their way onto the land down a roadway of adjoining components. Lobnitz had the design completed by December 1942, but they were not a big yard and were busy with their own work, and had nowhere to build it. Enter stage left Alex. Findlay & Co., steel fabricators and bridge makers (such as the one at Russell Road in Edinburgh) of the Parkneuk Works in Motherwell. Findlay had been building landing craft at a temporary wartime shipyard at Old Kilpatrick and were the perfect company for the job. Findlays were up to the task of leading on construction of the Spuds, but they needed somewhere to build them. There was no capacity in any existing yard, so new facilities had to be found, and a new workforce. And that is where Leith comes in.

You see in 1942, Dutch engineers had completed the Western Breakwater at Leith Docks, adding 250 acres of dock space that formed the largest enclosed dock in Scotland and crucially, this had added 30 acres of reclaimed – and as yet undeveloped – land along the North Leith shore.

Still from the film “Leith Breakwater” of 1942, showing construction, from the collection of the BFI

This land, adjacent to docks and rails, was absolutely perfect for the construction of the large Mulberry sections, launching them into the basin,and fitting them out and storing them until they were needed. But a yard was needed, so a call went out to Hartlepool. That call was answered by two engineers, Robert William Newson and Mr E. Parkinson, who were specialists in the construction of airfields. They came up to Leith with some foremen and set about building a shipyard from scratch. Within months it was complete, with 4 berths, offices, workshops, stores, cranes and 3 miles of internal railways. You can see the remains of the yard in the centre of this 1951 aerial photo. Newhaven is at the top, North Leith on the left. The (then) new Caledonia Mill foundations are being built at the bottom.

SAW036161 SCOTLAND (1951). An oblique aerial photograph taken facing West. From Britain from Above. © Historic Environment Scotland.

Findlays oversaw the operation, but various tasks were further subcontracted. The steel sections were provided by Leith steelyard Redpath Brown & Co., who also worked out the production drawings. The Lanarkshire Welding Co. employed much of the workforce. Welding was used as it used less steel than riveting and while a riveter took years of training, a welder could be trained in days. Men and women from unskilled trades were signed up, 200 in all, to be welders. The foremen were fabricators and shipyard men, many from the northeast of England. A large contingent of skilled labour was seconded in from Henry Robb & Co., the main shipyard in Leith, who were just next door. The Robbs workers could concentrate on the more demanding and specialised tasks, leaving fabrication to the new recruits.

Construction began in November 1943 as soon as the yard was ready. Prefabricated components for the Spuds arrived in Leith by rail – from the St. Andrews steel yard of Redpaths (just up the road) from Lanarkshire and from the Clyde – where they were welded together, launched sideways into the dock basin, and floated up to Newhaven for fitting out.

Mulberry construction at North Leith in 1944. © Edinburgh City Libraries

Fitting out was done on the Fishmarket Quay at Newhaven, including all the plumbing, carpentry and electrics, and fitting the diesel-electric winches that hauled the pier section up and down on its legs to match the tides.

“Whales” : constructing pierheads for Mulberry Harbour, 1944 by war artist James Miller © IWM ART LD 4137

By the end of January 1944 the first Spud was ready and was launched sideways into the basin in full view of the residents of the tenements of Lindsay Road and Annfield, who were oblivious to what they watching enter the water.

Mulberry at Leith Yard – No 1 pierhead takes the water. © Edinburgh City Libraries

But they weren’t moving fast enough, not nearly fast enough. Operation Overlord was merely 4 months away (not that the workers knew it), so a herculean effort was commenced with round-the-clock working at breakneck speed. Four Spuds could be under construction on the stocks at once, with two more fitting out at Newhaven. The workforce rose to the task and before long they were up to speed and were launching a Spud with a loud splash of the waters of the Forth every 5 days.

Spud production line at North Leith. © Edinburgh City Libraries

The Spuds were built in record time at Leith but even that wasn’t enough, so four more were built at Conwy in Wales and five at the Cairnryan Military Port. At the latter location, civilian workers from Leith were sent across to Galloway to construct the first before the Army’s own engineers – trained in welding on break times – took over. Each unit was 200ft long, 60ft wide, 27ft high (not including its legs) and weighed 1,000 tons. Appropriately, they would be towed to England and then to the beaches by the large salvage tugs built next door by Henry Robbs in Leith during the war for the Admiralty.

Completed Spuds awaiting the Normandy beaches in Leith Docks. © Edinburgh City Libraries

When the Spuds were complete, Leith turned its attention to other Mulberry parts, floating concrete intermediate sections known as Hippos, which were sunk to the sea bed and supported road sections above them on their way to the beaches. They were 75ft long. displaced 220 tons and were produced at the rate of one every three and a half days. In just 195 days, thirteen Spuds and sixteen Hippos were built at Leith – all on schedule – and totalling over 16,000 tons, at a brand new yard by a workforce many of whom had never so much as picked up a hammer, never mind a welding torch, in their lives.

On the afternoon of June 6th 1944, 400 Mulberry components totalling 1.5 million tons, set off from the south coat of England for the invasion beaches. In the lead were Robb’s powerful salvage tugs like Bustler, Samsonia, Growler and Hesperia.

HMRT Bustler. IWM A28784

The Mulberries were put together from the 8th June onwards and were almost complete on the 19th when disaster struck and a 3 day storm, the worst to hit the Normandy coast in summer in 40 years, struck. Mulberry B – at Gold beach – was damaged and the American A was largely wrecked.

Wrecked pontoon causeway of one of the Mulberry” harbours, following the storm of 19–22 June 1944. US Navy Photo #: 80-G-359462

Mulberry B, the British one, was christened “Port Winston” and was repaired and expanded with components from the wrecked American Mulberry A. Designed to last 3 months, it ended up serving for 10. On it would be landed 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles and 4 million tons of supplies.

The workers at Leith had little idea what they had been building – although many could have hazarded a guess – but were soon rewarded with newsreel and newspaper coverage of the Mulberries once they were no longer a secret.

Newspaper article on Mulberry Harbours from 1944. Western Morning News – Monday 23 October 1944

An interesting side part of the Mulberry story was that the model railway company Bassett-Lowke had been commissioned to build scale models of them to help train the military in how they went together and were used.

‘Mulberry Harbour Models, Scale 1/4″ – 1 [foot]’ by Bassett-Lowke

The models were sent on a touring exhibition of the country in 1945 to show them off to the public. They were show in in Scotland at J. D. Cuthbertson & Co. on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, but sadly never came to Leith to show the workers the vast scale of what they had achieved.

Some of the Mulberry Harbour models by Bassett-Lowke, exhibited in London in 1945. Illustrated London News – Saturday 06 January 1945

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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The Pennybap Stane; the thread about Shellycoat and an enchanted Seafield rock

You’re probably wondering how The Boy got here, on a pleasant late spring evening, on top of a random boulder at the sewage works. Well, for you to understand, I need to go back to the start.

The Boy on a big stone outside Seafield Sewage Works. Photo © Self

You see this isn’t just any old random boulder, in fact this is a very particular boulder and it is not random, it was placed here intentionally on reclaimed land on the Seafield foreshore as an ornamental feature in the mid 1970s as part of the landscaping of the car park when Seafield Sewage Works was established in the mid 1970s.

The stone in the car park of Seafield Sewage Works, 1981. Photo taken by Bill Collin © Edinburgh City Libraries

The boulder is named the Pennybap Stane after its apparent resemblance to the sort of bread roll which was once sold for 1d (a “penny bap”). This stone is a large glacial erratic left behind by a retreating ice sheet and, although it would have been easier to simply leave it with the infill behind the sea wall during the land reclamation, the authorities went to the effort of relocating it for a particular reason. You see, this is an enchanted rock; the Pennybap Stane is the home of a bogle. Bogle or bogill is a Scots word meaning variously a scarecrow (hence, Tattiebogle), the childrens’ hiding game bogle-keek (hide-and-seek); or as bogle-bo, bogill-bae or boggart, a hobgoblin, ghost, or spectre. This last form is the oldest, going back to the 16th century. Related terms include the Middle English bugge or the Old Welsh bwg and these cognate with the modern terms bugbear, bogeyman and bugaboo.

“Th’ boggarts taen houd o’ my Dad!” Victorian illustration.

The bogle that calls the Pennybap Stane home is Shellycoat, a name going back to at least the 17th century and which is mentioned in the writings of Alan Ramsay the elder in The Good Shepherd. Such bogles are mysterious creature of Lowland Scots mythology, said to haunt the rivers of Liddesdale and Eskdale, particularly the Hermitage Water and the lands of Goranberry. A Perthshire Gaelic equivalent is Peallaidh, or in Lewis, Seonaidh. Shellycoat’s form is a large, man-like creature “clothed in a coat covered with shells, the rattling of which was so unnatural and unexpected, that it appalled the hearts of all who heard it“. The riparian Shellycoat haunts upland streams, leading country travellers astray with its cries of “Lost! Lost!” and a splashing sound akin to the noise of somebody drowning. No matter how far you follow it, you will never get closer. When it tires it will finally leap past its pursuers and can be heard loudly laughing and clapping, amused with itself. In this form it is a trickster, it likes to tease but does no real harm.

The coastal Shellycoat however, the sort that inhabits the seashore of Leith, is altogether different. Its coat of shells renders it a powerful, malignant and terrifying force. During the day it will keep the coat safe beneath the Pennybap Stane rendering it mortal and harmless, but this rock is also how you summon the creature to appear; running around it three times, chanting three times the following verse:

Shellycoat, Shellycoat, Gang awa hame, I cry nae yer mercy, I fear nae yer name!

“Shellycoat, Shellycoat, Gang Awa Hame, I Cry Nae Yer Mercy, I Fear Nae Yer Name”

The summoning darkens the skies and the bogle will appear howling through the skies, accompanied by a cacophony of rattling shells from the heavens, from the direction of Inchkeith island where it is said to reside. Whomever is so bold, or foolish, as to summon the beast will be carried off to their fate beneath the coat of shells. If they are virtuous and promise never to repeat their offence, they will be spared. If they break that promise, the next victim will be dropped into the Forth.

John Gabriel Stedman, “Inchkeith on the Forth in a Fresh Gale”. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland.

You may think me foolish to encourage a child to try summoning Shellycoat, but moving the Pennybap Stane from its original home on the foreshore appears to have broken the charm. Perhaps they can no longer get their coat beneath. Perhaps cutting it off from the sea and surrounding it with tens of thousands of tons of the demolition rubble of the old city has lessened its powers. Perhaps…

“Shellycoat, Shellycoat, Gang awa hame, I cry nae yer mercy, I fear nae yer name.” Photo © Self

This isn’t even the first, or only, Pennybap Stane, and there are at least two other erratics recorded on the Leith and Granton foreshore of this name and the smaller Ha’pennybap Stane too. The Seafield stone is preceded by one on the North Leith foreshore which stood in front of James Craig’s battery of Leith Fort. Shellycoat is also associated with this rock, a “monster fiend, gigantic but undefinable, who possessed powers almost infinite, who never undertook anything, no matter how great, which he failed to accomplish; his swiftness that of a spirit and he delighted in deeds of blood and devastation“.

In Tales, Traditions and Antiquities of Leith of 1865, William Hutchison relates a story of the North Leith Shellycoat. The 18th century legend features English Dick, a man said to descend from Cromwell’s garrison in the Leith Citadel. English Dick refused scornfully to believe in Shellycoat and wagered a gallon of wine that he would go to the Pennybap Stane, perform the summoning ceremony and that nothing would come of it. The wager accepted, the party set off for the North Leith sands that very night. When his drinking companions would go no further English Dick shook their hands and proceeded alone, promising to return within the half hour. His friends thought better of waiting around and retreated to a tavern – the Foul Anchor – to await him in more convivial surroundings. It was hours – and many drinks – later when they noticed that English Dick had not yet returned. Come midnight, they could not summon the courage to search the shore for him, so agreed to remain safely within the pub until first light before venturing out.

Leith From the West”, engraving by John Clerk of Eldin, showing the North Leith foreshore at the turn of the 19th century, before the wet docks came. National Galleries of Scotland collection.

Hours passed and with the first light of a cold dawn those who were still able to stand finally crept down to the shore where they found the body of English Dick, insensible at the base of the Pennybap Stane. He was cut, battered and bruised but still hung on to life. His recovery was a long, drawn out process and he refused to tell his friends what had become of him that night. It was many months before he was fit enough to make it down to the Foul Anchor and to relate his story of meeting with Shellycoat.

Three times he had run around the stone that night and three times he had chanted the rhyme. Nothing happened. Thinking he was triumphant, he turned to leave and to collect his gallon of wine, when from the direction of Newhaven “without any premonition I was startled by the most appalling noise“. It was as if “all the shells in the universe had been collected together and then carried up into the air by a fierce tempest and dashed against each other with uncontrollable fury“. Looking fearfully around, English Dick then saw the presence of a giant figure emerging from the sea, towering over him with a single stride to the accompaniment of “the infernal clatter and clash of shells“. Then, in a terrifying voice of “singular softness“, Shellycoat demanded to know why he had been summoned, before enveloping English Dick beneath his coat and carrying him off in the sky towards Inchkeith, where he was dropped on the highest promontory of that island. To the booming laughter of Shellycoat, echoing off the rocks and cliffs of the Fife foreshore, English Dick was now repeatedly hit with blows of earth and rock hurled by his foe. Each time he was thrown down, and each time he was lifted up again to be assaulted once more. The repeated blows and the demonic laugh of Shellycoat caused him to eventually pass out and as the day broke he found himself coming to, floating in the sea. No sooner had he begun to gather his senses than he was picked up again and carried off once more into the skies under the coat of shells. When he was finally released from the grip of the beast he was dropped him from a great height. The next English Dick knew, he was being roused by his friends in the “Foul Anchor”, having been carried there after they found him by the Pennybap Stane.

(An alternative story was put forward by a barfly in a different tavern in Leith: Dick had taken fear from his dare and instead of going straight to the rock, had proceeded to a different establishment to “take courage”. In doing so, he got blind drunk and finally going back to the rock to complete his challenge had climbed atop and fallen off, dashing himself on the rocks and being thrown around by the tide).

When it was demolished in 1819 to make way for the new wet docks its legend appears to have been transferred to the Seafield rock. This was probably because bathers and – more importantly – children were displaced down the coast to the latter location by the removal of the natural sea shore for docks and industry.

The Pennybap Stane, beneath which Shellycoat keeps its coat of shells. Photo © Self

You can choose which version of events you believe… But stories like this kept the folk mythology around the Pennybap Stane and Shellycoat alive. The newspapers helped too. The rock is mentioned in the Shetland Times in 1888. In 1899, the Leith Burgh Pilot relates that children would climb atop the stone and jump into the sea from it (they would also climb up the sewer pipes that discharged onto the beach in a different game of dare). In June that year, the body of a “well dressed man” washed up near the Pennybap Stane. It was that of the Rev. William Boe, long time minister of the Scotch Church in Longtown, Cumberland, and then residing in Portobello, who had fallen from a boat at Portobello weeks previously. Children of course came up with a different explanation of how the body came to be in a state of decomposition at the foot of the stone. In 1906, the Scotsman went as far to publish adverts asking its readers “Have You Ever Heard of SHELLYCOAT?” to advertise a new “True Tales of Leith” section in their weekly edition.

But it was long the allure of Shellycoat that drew youngsters beyond the edge of town to run thrice around the stone chanting those lines, “Shellycoat, Shellycoat, Gang awa hame, I cry nae yer mercy, I fear nae yer name“. When the Lothian Regional Council came to build their grand new sewage works at Seafield in the early 1970s, they intended to simply bury the stone within the infill behind the new sea wall. A local outcry however caused a change of heart and it was decided to relocate the stone. Alas! The crane carrying the stone dropped it, causing some of it to break off. As a result, the stone in the car park is only part of the former Pennybap stone (a comparison of the photo of the girls and The Boy on the stone confirms that although it’s the same stone undoubtedly it seems smaller now than then). Phyllis Cleary said of this state of affairs:

What a specimen it looks now – I feel so sorry for it. It no longer shows any link with the past, but stands at the gates of the sewage farm like some imposter professing a history which it cannot substantiate. So are the mighty fallen. It would probably have been better to have left it in its natural resting place.

I will end with further wise words of Phyllis Cleary:

We have curbed the sea, we have reduced a king of boulders to a scrap of indeterminate stone. What shall we do next?

“Shellycoat, Shellycoat, Gang Awa Hame, I Cry Nae Yer Mercy, I Fear Nae Yer Name”. © Edinburgh City Libraries

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

The thread about Leith Fort and why it was soon abandoned as a defensive position

Historic Environment Scotland released a very nice 3D model of a 19th century gun from Fort George mounted on a “traversing frame“.

Screengrab of the 3D model, follow this link to see it for yourself.

In case you didn’t know, there was also once an artillery fort in Leith – Leith Battery or Redoubt (but for simplicity’s sake we shall call it the Fort) – and most of its guns were mounted in this manner. The animation shows a 32pdr weapon and Leith originally had smaller 24pdrs (pdr, or pounder, was the weight of the shot in pounds, the method by which such artillery was classified).

The Fort had been built in something of a panic commencing in 1780, after Leith and Edinburgh had been threatened by the squadron of the American John Paul Jones in 1779 during the War of Independence. A temporary battery of cannon was placed in North Leith to cover the entrance to the Port of Leith from seaborne assault; the tidal nature of the harbour meant any ship intent on entry had to navigate a relatively narrow and defined channel. When the dust from the John Paul Jones panic had settled it was decided to formalise this battery into a permanent defensive fortification. It was somewhat unusual in origin in that it was largely paid for and constructed by not the military but by the City of Edinburgh and the town of Leith. It was further unusual in that its architect was the mason James Craig – better known for his plan of Edinburgh’s New Town – who was not a military engineer. Captain Andrew Frazer, the Army’s Chief Engineer for Scotland who had designed and superintended the construction of Fort George, therefore oversaw the practical details. The Board of Ordnance completed the construction and fitting out of the Fort after it was handed over to them by the Town Council only completed up to the level of the first storey. It took until 1793 until everything was finalised and it was formally occupied by the Royal Artillery.

I have read more than once than the Fort was something of a folly, incapable of fulfilling its intended purpose of defending the Port of Leith. But if you plot the fields of fire of its artillery you get a good idea of how advantageously sited it actually was; the intensity of the red shading shows how many guns can be trained to fire at that particular point. The effective range of the 24pdr weapons was just shy of 1,000 metres; any ship making an attack on the port therefore had to transit a considerable distance under the overlapping fire of the Fort‘s guns. A newspaper report of artillery practice in 1840 confirmed the guns were capable of firing on practice targets located at 200 to 1,200 yards distant with some degree of accuracy.

A map for the Inspector General of Fortifications showing Edinburgh and Leith, made c. 1780-90 by an unknown cartographer. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

A contemporary account notes;

The Battery will effectually command the range from one mile to one mile and a half of the road for shipping and the entry to the harbour

John Smith’s Houses and Streets of Edinburgh

An original survey of the fort made by the Board of Ordnance in 1785 gives details of its planned artillery. The principal battery, annotated at a and b were the eight 24pdr cannons; those at b were on traversing frames, those at a on wheeled carriages. The traversing frame offered the advantage that the gun could be rapidly trained to aim at the target, the wheel carriage was quite cumbersome and required block and tackle to shift its aim. If you follow the link to this Youtube video, it shows such a 24pdr cannon on a traversing frame being loaded, aimed and fired by re-enactors at Old Fort Henry in Ontario, Canada. Notice it takes the best part of 3.5 minutes to complete the loading and firing drill although regular gunners in the 18th and 19th century would have probably had this down nearer to a minute.

Plan of Leith Fort, Board of Ordnance, 1785. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

At c was a colossal 13 inch mortar: that distance being the diameter of the bore, not the length of the weapon! The mortar was a terrifying weapon, more suited to siege work and with a very slow rate of fire thanks to its huge 195lb (90kg) explosive bombs. But even a near miss from one of these would have made it very difficult for any small boats caught in the blast, or for ships trying to anchor outside the port or come alongside its piers. In addition it could fire a special “ball light” shot to help illuminating the scene for night actions. You can read a full information leaflet about the 13 inch mortar here.

In addition to all this firepower there was a trainable 18pdr weapon to protect the seaward entrance and a single 68pdr Carronade mounted at the lower level. The Carronade was for point-blank use against ships trying to force their way into the Port of Leith. It was a compact but very powerful weapon intended to cause extreme damage at shorter ranges. It took its name from its inventors, the Carron Company, a pioneering Scottish ironworks which was further up the River Forth, near Falkirk. Coincidentally they had a foundry in Leith at this time.

A 68 pounder Carronade on the ship HMS Victory. CC-by-SA 3.0 Bjenks

To protect the Fort from naval gunfire it had two broad parapet walls, faced and backed with masonry. The inner parapet, of the battery itself (at B on the diagram) was further protected with a ditch, through which ran a fence.

Section of Leith Fort, Board of Ordnance, 1785. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Protection from the ravages of the waters and storms of the Firth of Forth – which had reduced the seaward walls and bastions of Cromwell’s nearby 1655 Citadel to rubble in a matter of years – came from a sea wall was constructed in front in 1785. To reinforce this and to secure it against direct assault by small boats, 3 rows of large wooden posts were driven into it.

The road to Newhaven, infront of the fort, the sea wall and the rows of posts on the shore. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The rest of the Fort‘s defences all pointed landward, with loopholes along the walls and corner bastions to provide enfilading fire (i.e. they can shoot lengthways along the face of a wall, to prevent any attackers from taking refuge up against it from the defenders above). As well as its 100 gunners, there was accommodation for a squad of 12 defending soldiers and their sergeant. It was not designed or intended to resist a siege, this was purely self defence to prevent it being overwhelmed before regular forces from Edinburgh could come to its relief.

Landward defences of Leith Fort. Note the characteristic “arrowhead” shape of the defensive corner bastions. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

There is a single contemporary image of the Fort that I am aware of, a sketch made in 1784 looking from the west towards Leith. In it we can see the grass-covered battery wall, with the notches cut in it for firing the guns through, the flag pole, and some of the accommodation buildings to the right.

Leith Fort, 1784, from the Hutton Drawings. CC-by-4.0 National Library of Scotland

Helpfully, it confirms that the Fort was actually armed, one of the 24 pounders can be seen poking through its loophole.

Leith Fort, 1784, from the Hutton Drawings. CC-by-4.0 National Library of Scotland

In 1805 and 1806, it is recorded that Leith had five 24pdrs and four, later siz, 18pdrs. The 24pdrs were still there, on more modern carriages, around 1843 when David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson took some calotype photographs of some of the weapons and men of the Fort. A newspaper report in the Caledonian Mercury of April 1847 noted the strength at Leith Fort was seven 24pdrs, four 18pdrs and a 10 inch mortar.

Major Crawford, Major Wright, Captain St. George and Captain Bortringham of the Leith Fort Artillery. Hill & Adamson, CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

An 1860s newspaper illustration shows the City of Edinburgh Artillery Volunteers practising at the Fort, but their weapons look to be rather larger than the 24pdrs and on more substantial carriages than the iron ones shown in Hill and Adamson’s photos. It was reported that in February 1860 that three 32pdr and three 64pdr cannon were delivered to Leith from Woolwich; judging by the scale the weapons below are the 64pdrs. The Volunteers were raised in 1859 on the back of an invasion scare, and there was much enthusiasm to join; 9 batteries were formed in Edinburgh and Leith alone. Their role was to man the home defences in times of invasion and to provide mobile support to the regulars, using agricultural horses to haul their weaponry to where it was required.

The Artillery Volunteers drilling at Leith Fort

A side-effect of the invasion scare was that the military stockpiled immense quantities of gunpowder and ammunition in both Leith Fort and Edinburgh Castle. Leith found itself being used as the main ordnance store for all of “North Britain”. The Town Councils of Edinburgh and Leith were alarmed to discover in 1865 that there were one hundred and thirty barrels at Leith, each containing 100lbs of black powder. This 130,000lbs amounts to 59 metric tonnes, “sufficient to blow the whole town into the Firth of Forth” as Mr Wishart, a Leith Town Councillor, put it. Official remonstrations to the government resulted in Blackness Castle, further up the Forth, being converted into a central gunpowder store for Scotland and by 1870 the stockpiles had a much safer new home, away from the centres of population and industry.

Hill & Adamson’s pictures also show a number of small, horse-drawn field artillery pieces. These would have been suitable for rapid deployment to firing positions outwith the Fort in the event of action.

Unknown Offcer and three mounted soldiers of the Leith Fort Artillery, 1843. Hill & Adamson. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland.

Between 1795 and 1815, there are thirteen recorded substantial repair and improvement works at Leith, including making provision for it to hold French prisoners during the Napoleonic wars. However the Fort‘s life as an artillery battery was cut short. When the new wet docks began to be constructed in Leith along Commercial Street in 1801 by John Rennie they blocked the field of fire of the Fort and rendered it “useless as a work of defence“. These docks would take some 16 years to complete and ended in a government bail-out of the near-bankrupt Edinburgh Town Council, requiring that the latter cede land to the Naval Board who moved the Leith Naval Yard from Constitution Street to a more advantageous position directly below the Fort.

John Thomson’s Plan of Leith, 1827, showing the wet docks and Naval Yard built in front of it. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

New defensive bastions were constructed on the sea wall of the wet docks, where cannons could be mounted in times of threat. The outer approaches of the harbour were to be defended by a Martello Tower, work on which commenced in 1809. Left also to the City of Edinburgh to finance and construct, it took them a whole 29 years before they handed it over to the military; unfinished! The Fort was ultimately re-purposed as an artillery depot, as a barracks and as a muster and training depot for artillery volunteers. By the end of the 19th century, the weaponry allocated to the Fort was a mixed bag of older weapons for drill purposes. It continued to serve as an artillery depot right up until the 1950s and its final occupants, the Royal Army Pay Corps, paraded out in 1956 and the location was locked up and abandoned.

The gates locked and Leith Fort abandoned in 1957. Notice the “bollards” at the gate which appear to be a pair of old cannon set in the road surface, and the decorative piles of cannonballs on the gate piers. Most of the structures within are Victorian or later, the pair of guardhouses are Georgian. Contemporary newspaper photograph from the Sphere

It was afterwards re-purchased by the City of Edinburgh and it formed a core part of the Leith Fort Comprehensive Redevelopment Area, its inner buildings apart from a pair of guard houses were demolished and an infamous housing scheme was constructed within it’s tall, oppressive walls.

Leith Fort housing scheme in 2008, CC-by-SA 3.0 Jonathan Oldenbuck

This scheme, which had all the ambience and aesthetic of a prison (and in later life, most of the social ills of one), was demolished in 2013 and a much more pleasant housing development replaced it, with the Fort’s oppressive walls much reduced in height. Somewhat appropriately, the new streets within are called Guardhouse Parade, Cannon Wynd and John Paul Jones View.

Leith Fort in 2022, looking through the old entrance way on North Fort Street, past the guardhouse to the new council housing.

For a comprehensive paper with detailed research on the Fort and the Napoleonic defences of the Forth, you can download The Fixed Defences of the Forth in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1779-1815 by Gordon Barclay and Ron Morris from the Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal. This has proved an invaluable source for me on some of the details of how Leith Fort was actually used and equipped.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

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These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret