This thread was originally written and published in July 2019.

As part of his campaign to exert authority and pacify his hard-fought for kingdom, David did a couple of things. Firstly, he founded the Augustinian Holyrood Abbey in 1128. Secondly, he invited Anglo-Norman friends from the English court to take up Baronies in Scotland. One one of these was Peter, more on him later. To Holyrood Abbey he granted his lands (he was King, so everything was his to give away) of Inverleith (A Gaelic descriptive name for the area around the mouth of the Water of Leith, rather than the current neighbourhood of Inverleith somewhat upstream on the river), half of its fishing and fish taxes and its harbour to the monks.

At this time, the mouth of the water of Leith was a proper tidal river mouth, much wider than it is today and with no harbour structures. The harbour was a bit of the shore on the south bank (now where the Coalhill is) where boats could be hauled ashore and launched from. So by giving the harbour to Holyrood Abbey, whose lands would later become become the parish of North Leith, he creates an odd exclave of North Leith that sits on the “wrong” side of river i.e. South Leith. The administrative boundary can clearly be seen on the map below in yelow. This administrative distinction is something that will persist right up until the mid-19th century.

The King, having given away his principal harbour to the Abbey and North Leith, simply made himself a new one by taking a little bit of the shoreline downstream, round about where the Malt & Hops and King’s Wark pubs are.

Back to King David’s friend Peter from his days in the English court. To him he gave the lands of Lestalric (Restalrig) as a barony. David’s planting of Norman nobility as Barons brings order, control and taxation to Scotland, providing the crown with a secure footing and a power base. This has been described as the “Davidian Revolution“.

Peter thus becomes the Baron of Lestalric, a position that held the lands on behalf of the crown, had powers of law and taxation and that sort of thing so long as he supported the crown etc. The barony lands included most of Leith to the south and east of the river (i.e. South Leith) and all the lands we now think of as Craigentinny, Lochend, Restalrig etc. It also included Calton Hill. As this is at the opposite end of the Barony from the Lochend, an old alternative name for this area was the Craigend (from Scots Craig, Gaelic Creag: rock / cliff). The Calton would later be portioned off as a separate Burgh and for hundreds of years was not formally part of the city of Edinburgh.

The Lestalrics built a church near their seat at Lochend Castle, which is the site of where Restalrig parish church still is today. Restalrig was the parish church for South Leith, from which it was somewhat distant, but at least it was less so than for the parishioners in North Leith who had to go to Holyrood Abbey to worship. South Leith and North Leith would not get their own parish churches until quite a bit later.

The communities of both North and South Leith developed on the “toft” system, where the land was drawn up into a series of long farming strips, headed by a house. These were rented from the feudal superior. Surrounding lands were worked as common grazing or on behalf for the superior. There would have been no significant buildings at this time, just small, rubble, wood, daub and thatch houses.

By the mid-12th century, you therefore now have North Leith and the harbour (yellow in the diagram above) held by Holyrood Abbey; the King’s harbour ground (blue), the Lestalric’s Barony land in red and the tofts they granted in South Leith in paler red. The map is adapted from a sketch in Sue Mowat’s wonderful book “The Port Of Leith“, you won’t find a better reference on the subject. Life proceded in this vein for a few centuries. War, pestilence and famine kept things in check until in 1398 the Baron of Restalrig, one Robert Logan (the first Baron Logan, they were nearly all called Robert), did something silly and granted rights over a strip of shore in the harbour to the Burgh of Edinburgh. He followed this up in 1414 by selling what we now call the Shore to them.

The Logans hailed from Ayrshire way (Grougar) and this Robert had come into possession of Restalrig when his father (also Robert) married the daughter of the last de Lestalric. When he in turn died in 1439, he had no surviving son and his possessions were split amongst 4 grandsons.

• Logan’s eldest grandson, Sir John Logan, took the Barony of Restalrig and with it South Leith (except the bits held by Edinburgh). This is the Logan of Restalrig line.
• His 2nd Grandson took the estate of Coatfield, including Leith Links, starting the Logan of Coatfield line.
• Sir John Logan also held the title Sheriff of Edinburgh which had passed to him with the Barony. He in turn gave this title, and lands on the south bank of the river to the west of North Leith’s exclave to his son.

This son built a large house on the site which became known as the Shirrabrae; Sheriff Brae.

In rough terms, by the 16th century we now have the lands of North Leith held by the Abbey (yellow in the diagram below) and in South Leith by the crown (blue), the strip of land sold to the Burgesses of Edinburgh (green) and three distinct lines of Logans; the of Restalrig (red); the of Coatfield (purple) and of Shirrabrae (orange).

Skipping quickly back one hundred or so years to the lands of the Crown, in 1434 Kings James I constructed a defensive work (or wark in Scots); hence the King’s Wark. Basically a defensive 3-storey blockhouse to hold an arsenal and the Crown’s personal stores brought ashore here. In 1604, James VI grants part of the lands of the King’s Wark to one Bernard Lindsay, who is also given the hereditary office of Bailie. Edinburgh purchased this from the Lindsays in 1623 and the street later formed there became Bernard Street.

During the Siege of Leith (1548 to 1560), Queen Regent Mary of Guise purchased the Superiority of South Leith from the current Sir Robert Logan of Restalrig in 1555. There was an intent that this was the first step in raising Leith to a Royal Burgh and on a legal footing with Edinburgh, but Mary died in 1560 before any of this could take place. When her daughter, Mary Queen of Scots, landed in Leith in 1561 there were hopes amongst Leithers that this would see the plan reinvigorated. Mary made tentative steps in this direction and wrote a letter in 1563 granting Leith the authority to raise a Tolbooth, one of the civic buildings that were the feature of the Burgh. Older variants of the civic arms and seal of Leith therefore have the date of 1563 on them. But Mary was ever playing an intense balancing act between rival competing parties and in the end granted the superiority of South Leith to Edinburgh in 1567. When South Leith was formally raised by Royal Charter to a Burgh of Barony in 1636, it found that it was now owned and run by Edinburgh.

In 1636, Edinburgh followed up its acquisition of South Leith by acquiring the superiority of North Leith off of the Robert Ker, 1st Earl of Roxburgh. Ker had aquired it in 1630 from the Bothwell family. They in turn had bought it from the Crown in 1559, it having been removed from the control of the Abbots of Holyrood during the Scottish Reformation. North Leith was held in trust for Heriot’s Hospital and so although Edinburgh now owned both Leiths, they were distinct parishes and holdings and not unified.

It was the peculiarity of North Leith being split across the north and south banks of the river that resulted in it first being bridged. Holyrood Abbey found that its lands were largely on the north side, but access to them from the south was by way of an unreliable ford – or going the long way round by the Stock Bridge, the lowest bridge across the river at this time. So it was Holyrood, under Abbot Bellenden (no giggling at the back, Bellenden is the old Scots spelling of Ballantyne!), who built a bridge across the river to connect their lands on each side and give better access to and from the Abbey. The bridge brought in useful incomes in tolls and in renting out tenements built into it on the south side.

Part of the lands held by Edinburgh are known as the Coal Hill (and are to this day). It’s not much of a hill, but if you consider that this was along a tidal river, with a shore line much further back (and lower) than it is these days then relatively speaking the slope that is now the Coal Hill was indeed a bit of a hillock, in the same sense that the Shirrabrae was a brae. Edinburgh controlled all the trade in and out of Leith, and coal was no exception. The black stuff was vital and much of it came by sea from East Lothian, Fife or the northeast of England. Given how terrible the roads were, carting prices were prohibitive for all but the most local coal in the Lothian coalfield. Even then, better quality coal coming by sea remained competitive. In 1797, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh ordered that any ship bringing in coal was immediately to be given a berth at the Coal Hill, any other vessels making way for it, and no shore duties were to be charged to the collier.

And what do we find next to the Coal Hill? the Peat Neuk! A neuk being the Scots word for a corner and the peat neuk was therefore a place for the storage of peat fuel. Apparently the tollhouse of the old Abbot’s Bridge here was converted for the purpose. The Peat Neuk was somewhat ruinous and allegedly the hangout of “those reckless and abandoned characters who abound in every seaport” and even the “haunt of disembodied spirits, whose crimes or suffering in life compelled them to wander“!

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

---

_{These threads © 2017-2024, Andy Arthur}