This thread was originally written and published in June 2019. It has been lightly edited and corrected as applicable for this post.

Apropos the fortifications of Leith, here is my estimate of the outline of the walls put up by the French who occupied Leith for Mary of Guise from 1548-1560. On the picture below, the main ramparts are in bright red, the ditch at the foot of the glacis* in pale red, the palings (fences made from poles driven into the ground) in brown and defensive trenches in blue.

* = in military terms, a glacis is a gently sloped bank of earth, carefully angled to protect a wall beyond it by obscuring it from direct artillery fire and absorbing or deflecting incoming shots.

Nothing remains of these fortifications but some of the modern street alignments are still faithful to them. John Street Lane, for instance, curiously almost exactly follows the line of the eastern bastion.

And the gushet* of Baltic Street too .

(* = a gushet is a Scottish term to describe a triangular portion of land)

Given 1560 was the age of artillery, we can imagine the fortifications were not the sort of tall stone walls of the medieval period, but broad, earth and rubble breastworks to absorb and deflect shot and give an advantageous firing position. Fortunately we have a very good record of the town and its fortifications at the time courtesy of the “Petworth Map”, a contemporary birds-eye view of the town, probably by the English military engineer and surveyor Richard Lees. You can take my word for having plotted out a lot of the details of the map that he got much of it spot on.

The walls would have been probably topped with a walkway protected by a paling and reinforced with gabions – that is a big wooden fence behind earth-filled wicker cages – and protected from assault by ditches ( the dark lines in the above map, which also were the source of the spoil for the walls) .

These were fortifications thrown up by military engineers in a relative hurry to protect whatever lay behind. “English Civil War” star fort remains give you an idea of what they may have looked like .

There’s an article in the journal “Fort” specifically about the Leith fortifications and the NLS hold a copy, so I’ll try and get up there to see what that has to offer on the subject*.

(* = I did get a view of a copy, and can I find my notes on the subject?!)

What I hadn’t appreciated was that these fortifications are apparently amongst the oldest instances (by some 10 years) of “modern” (gunpowder age) fortifications in the British isles. They were engineered by an eminent Italian, Piero di Strozzi in a style called Trace Italienne.

di Strozzi was in the pay of the French army, hence him finding his way to Scotland with their troops. He engineered fortifications at Haddington during which time he was shot by a musket. He had to be carried round the works at Leith held aloft on a chair carried by 4 women. The French occupiers are reputed to have “displayed their usual gallantry to a goodly number of ladies, and entertained them royally in their quarters.” So much so, that during the siege, “these ladies did take to the ramparts to assist the soldiers in loading their muskets and hurling missiles at the besieging English“. This incensed the religious leader of the Scottish protestants, John Knox (this was one of those rare occasions in Anglo-Scottish history where Scotland – or a significant proportion of it – made peace with England and welcomed in her armies to assist them). Knox said of the women of Leith:

The Frenchmen’s Harlots of whom the maist part were Scotch strumpets, did no less cruelties than did the soldiers, for besides that they charged their pieces and minstrate unto them ither weapons some continually cast stones, some carried chimneys of burning fyre, some brocht timber and other impediments of weight, quhlik with great violence they threw over the wall upon our men, but especially when they began to turn their backs.

That is, in modern English

The women followers of the French army, of whom the most part were Scottish women of ill repute, did no less cruelty than did the soldiers, for besides that they loaded their muskets and handed them other weapons, some continually threw stones, some carried burning braziers, some brought timber and other heavy items, which with great violence they threw over the walls upon the English soldiers, especially when they had turned their backs.

To read about what life might have been like under occupation in Leith, you may enjoy the thread on that subject. The French occupiers were war hardened soldiers and there are many nice old illustrations that show what the occupying French forces may have looked like. Don’t be fooled by their bright and gaudy costumes, these were some of Europe’s most efficient and feared warriors. Below is a selection of arquebusiers and musketeers (or a hackbutters as foot soldiers equipped with firearms were known in Scotland, from the Dutch word for “hook gun”).

Their opponents were largely an English force, again professional soldiers, with limited support given by their Scottish protestant allies. Despite bringing sufficient money to hire a significant local force, the English commanders struggled to recruit.

The walls were faced in stone or timber, which was quickly liberated as building materials after the French left in 1560. The core of rubble and earth took some 250 years to finally be flattened and indeed defines many features of modern Leith such as Great Junction Street. Maps of 1682, 1693 and 1709 all clearly show the fortifications as being substantially present (if ruinous).

Until September 2022, I would have sworn blind that there were no first hand images of any of the Marian Walls of Leith in situ. Fortunately I was very wrong and was delighted to find that in 1788 a precocious Edinburgh schoolboy by the name of George Sandy made a high quality sketch of the last remaining part of the “West Bastion at Leith”, which he definitely identified as being from the 1548-1560 period.

It is my best guess that Sandy’s ruin was in the vicinity of Leith Mills, where the housing development known as “The Quilts” now stands. Maps of this time definitely show that the clear remains of a bastion were still present at this spot, best seen in Alexander Wood’s Town Plan of Leith of 1777. You can read Sandy’s diary in full courtesy of its keeper, the Signet Society, who digitised it in February 2022 as part of their 200th anniversary celebrations.

Even more extensive than the French fortifications was the siege system of redoubts and trenches surrounding Leith that the besieging English forces (and their Scottish protestant allies) constructed. These formed a ring from Madeira Street to the Links colonies via Pilrig Park. Here’s an estimation, based on a number of previous archaeological and desktop evidence papers, of the scale and position of the English / Protestant siege works in red. The thicker lines are the redoubts (“mounts”), the thinner are the siege trenches.

You can see from this that the two distinct mounds on Leith Links are nothing whatsoever to do with the siege positions – in my opinion it is most likely these were features made in the early 19th century when the raised beach of the Links was levelled and flattened to improve its utility as a public park. The boundaries of Leith Mount, a former villa house and grounds, was also defined by one of the bastions with their distinctive arrowhead form. The ground is now occupied by Leith Library / Theatre and the care home in grounds of former David Kilpatrick (“DK”) High School .

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The more you look again at the street plan of Leith (before modern redevelopments), the more the pentagonal outline of Cromwell’s Citadel is just blindingly obvious. And bear in mind that the Citadel re-used alignments and portions of the surviving Marian walls. Admiralty Street is on a direct alignment with both sets of fortifications.

We can be fairly sure where the key features of the outside of the Citadel were from documentary descriptions, and handily a little bit of it remains! The east-facing entrance port and wall fragments remain to this day.

And the early 19th c. maps record the outline of the southern ramparts and bastions, as well as reference to “Cromwell’s Dyke” (one of the inner wall faces perhaps?) and also the surviving inner garrison buildings, which had been reused in the late 17th and early 18th century as fashionable quarters in Leith and survived at this time.

William Roy’s maps (1750s) of Leith clearly define the Citadel in black lines and show 3 definite bastions and the hint of a 4th in the Lowland map, and suggest it more of a diamond shape than a pentagon. However, I think that’s probably because the northern face was on the shoreline and therefore didn’t require such significant fortification and thus there were only 3 corner bastions to the west, south and east.

I have undertaken a lot of research into the Citadel, and extensive map and written evidence is fairly conclusive that the citadel was built as a pentagon, with 5 corner bastions, but the north wall line and its corner bastions quickly succumbed to the ravages of the Firth of Forth in winter, but the remainder survived in the form recorded by mapmakers for a long time after. Many who showed clear, 4-cornered “star forts” were not making a surveyed observation but I think must just have been putting down a recognisable symbol for a civil war-era fort.

The below animated map transition is a good way to visualise the Citadel, its outline and how it fits into place in 19th and 21st century Leith.

If you liked this post you will also enjoy “The thread about the first proper town plan of Leith and what it tells us about the town in the early 18th century“.

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