Skulferatu #103 - Skateraw, East Lothian

Skateraw is a small hamlet, farm, and area of land by the coast in East Lothian.  It sits very close to Torness Nuclear Power Station, which dominates the skyline of the area.

 

Torness Nuclear Power Station

 

The coastline around here is very picturesque, despite what many may see as the carbuncle of the power station that sits over it.  However, I think that it actually adds to the area in a way.  This stark industrial building of blue grey melds into the changing light of the sky and almost compliments the more organic remains of the stone buildings of old industry that sit here.  For this is an area with an industrial past.

 

View from Skateraw to Torness

 

Skateraw is in an area rich with limestone deposits, and this was quarried and burnt to produce lime.  Lime was used in the manufacture of mortar and as an agricultural fertiliser.  In the Eighteenth Century a lime kiln was built on the shore of Skateraw, and the kilns produced lime on such a massive scale that a harbour was built so that it could be easily exported by ship to other areas of the country.  The harbour was destroyed by the sea in the late Nineteenth Century, though the remains of it can still be seen at low tide.

 

The limekilns at Skateraw

 

The destructive powers of the sea are something that have haunted this area over the centuries, from washing away buildings on the shore, to wrecking and sinking ships that were passing by. 

 

On a piece of land projecting out of the shore, there used to stand a small chapel that was dedicated to St. Dennis.  It is rumoured that the chapel was often used to store the bodies of those washed up from the numerous ships that were wrecked on the offshore rocks.  There, they would lay to either be claimed by their relatives, or to be buried in the nearby fields.   It appears that the chapel eventually fell into disrepair and the ruins of it were washed away and reclaimed by the sea, disappearing forever under the waves sometime in the 1830s.  Bones were later recovered in vicinity near to where the chapel had stood, leading to the belief that it must have been the burial ground for the chapel.

 

There are many stories of the ships that were wrecked on the rocks by Skateraw.  One of the most remarkable was that of two frigates, the Nymph, and the Pallas.  On the night of the 18^th of December 1810, these two ships were returning from a patrol of the North Sea when they mistook the lights burning from some of the limekilns for those of the Isle of May, and those on the Isle of May for the Bell Rock.  Changing course, they both struck the rocks at Skateraw.  The Nymph ended up right by the shore and tipped so that its masts almost touched the limekilns there.  This was a spot of luck for the sailors on board, as they all managed to scramble over the masts and get safely to land.  In the dark of the night no one could see what had happened to the other ship, the Pallas, and it was feared it had sunk.  Then at daylight it was found that it was stuck on the rocks with many of the sailors clinging to the wreck for dear life.  Boats were launched and most of the men were rescued and brought to shore, where they were provided with shelter and blankets to warm them.

 

Unfortunately, most were not as lucky, and there are various accounts of the shore being scattered with bodies and wreckage from ships that had floundered on the rocks.

 

Rocks at Skateraw

 

View over rocks at Skateraw to Barns Ness Lighthouse

 

Unlike many places in Scotland, Skateraw does not appear to have any connection with Mary, Queen of Scots, or to have been visited by her.  However, there was one rather famous visitor who stayed in the farmhouse there, that being Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns.  On a visit to Dunbar in 1787, he made the acquaintance of a Mr Lee, who owned the farm at Skateraw, and was invited to dine and also to spend the night there.  Burns described Mr Lee as ‘a farmer of great note…an excellent, hospitable, social fellow, rather oldish; warm-hearted and chatty – a most judicious, sensible farmer.’ Indeed, Burns must have taken to the old fellow, as in the morning, before he left, he took a volume of his poetry, owned by Lee, and especially for him, filled in the blank names of those he had mentioned in his poems.  This book was then kept in the Lee family for many years, before being sold for the princely sum of £50 at Sotheby’s, around 1892.

 

During the First World War there was an airfield as Skateraw.  Well, I say airfield, it was actually what was called a landing site and was really there to be used in emergencies, such as, if the planes couldn’t get back to their permanent base because of bad weather or engine failure.  It was used by the No. 77 Home Defence Squadron, and when they were out flying, the farmer who owned the land would be telephoned and asked to make sure that there was no livestock wandering on the landing strip.

 

Memorial to all personnel and units based at Skateraw Airfield

 

During the 1930s, the minister of the Canongate church in Edinburgh, Reverend Ronald Selby Wright, set up the Canongate Boys Club for the poor boys living in the parish. He frequently took them camping at Skateraw where they built a hut at Chapel Point.  Near to where the hut used to stand, there is now a memorial cross to six of the boys who were killed in the Second World War.

 

Memorial cross at Skateraw

 

While out on my walk around Skateraw I clambered over some of the rocks that were exposed during the low tide.  On them were lots of limpets that had created patterns that almost looked like the symbols of some strange and alien language.

 

Limpet symbols on the rocks

 

I then headed round to the remains of an old cottage.  The cottage, rather than becoming a ruin due to abandonment and decay, was demolished in 1981, during the construction of the nuclear power station.  This was so that those protesting against the power station couldn’t occupy it.  Bit of a waste of a cottage if you ask me, but no one did.

 

Cottage wall almost hidden by the sea grass

 

Flowers by the cottage ruins

 

Ruins of the cottage

 

In the warm and lovely afternoon sunshine of my wander around Skateraw, I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me in the wall of the ruined cottage.

 

Skulferatu #103

 

Spot the Skulferatu

 

Skulferatu #102 in a gap in the walls of the cottage ruins

 

Map showing location of Skulferatu #103

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.973844

Longitude -2.421947

 

what3words: harshest.cherub.retract

 

I used the following sources for information on Skateraw –

 

The New Statistical Account of Scotland

Vol II, Linlithgow-Haddington-Berwick

By the Ministers of Respective Parishes, etc.

1845

 

The History of Dunbar

By James Miller

1859

 

The complete works of Robert Burns

by Robert Burns & Alexander Smith, Alexander

1887

 

The Athenaeum Journal of Literature, Science, The Fine Arts, Music and the Drama

January to June 1887

 

Canmore

Skateraw Harbour

Skateraw Landing Ground

 

Scram, No 24 – June/July 1991

 

Our Club

By Ronald Selby Wright

1969

Skulferatu #102 - Duddingston Kirkyard, Duddingston, Edinburgh

 

One of my favourite walks around Edinburgh is down the Innocent Railway path, round to Duddingston and then back up Duddingston Low Road and into Holyrood Park.  When I do that walk, I usually have a rest and a sit down in the Kirkyard of Duddingston Kirk.  It is a place oozing with history and usually a quiet place to sit and contemplate whatever one feels like contemplating.

 

At the entrance to the Kirkyard is the tower like structure of the gatehouse, which was built in the age of the body snatchers for the guards who protected the corpses of the newly buried from being stolen.

 

The Gatehouse

 

On the opposite wall from the gatehouse is a rather insidious instrument used by the church to control and punish its flock, the jougs.  The jougs are an iron collar that could be padlocked and are fixed to a chain on the wall.  These were used for minor offences; you know the type of thing, drinking, dancing, enjoying yourself, wearing clothes that were a bit revealing, as in showing a bit of ankle, gossiping, farting on a Sunday, and the like.  The offender would be chained up during the hour before the morning service so that they would face the humiliation of the congregation passing them on their way into the church.

 

The Jougs

 

In the kirkyard itself, there are many interesting looking and rather gothic gravestones, and those buried beneath no doubt had many interesting stories to tell of their lives and adventures, all of which are now in the main forgotten. 

 

Duddingston Kirk

 

Gravestone in Duddingston Kirkyard

 

Detail of gravestone

 

Memorial to David Scot and Margaret Gourlay

 

Memorial on church wall

 

Detail of memorial on church wall

 

Moss covered gravestone

 

Detail of moss covered gravestone

 

Gravestones in Duddingston Kirkyard

 

There is though, one that discreetly commemorates a scandalous tragedy that was reported widely in the newspapers of the time.  This memorial stone was originally commissioned by Captain John Haldane in honour of his grandfather Patrick Haldane, the 16^th Laird of Gleneagles, who served as the Solicitor General for Scotland and as the MP for Perth. He had died in Duddingston in 1769.  On the stone there is also the depiction of a ship going down in a stormy sea.  This was added later by the executors of Captain John Haldane’s estate to commemorate the events surrounding his death.

 

Memorial to Patrick Haldane

 

Memorial for Captain John Haldane

 

John Haldane was born in 1748 and was one of the two illegitimate sons of George Haldane.  John worked his way up through the East India Company and was eventually promoted to Captain on several of their ships.  He was not very successful in his role as Captain and suffered a series of misfortunes.  The first ship he captained was seized shortly after leaving port, by French and Spanish forces.  John Haldane and his crew were taken as prisoners and they and the ship were taken to the port of Cadiz.  There they languished for several months before being released.  On his return, the Company gave him a second ship to captain, which caught fire on its arrival in Bombay and was completely destroyed.  After this disaster Haldane no doubt felt quite low, but things in India soon picked up for him, as he met and became the lover of the glamorous and beautiful actress and singer, Ann Cargill.

 

Ann Cargill, born Ann Brown, was known as much for her love affairs as she was for her acting and was a pretty big celebrity in her day.  In 1771, when she was around twelve years old, she had made her debut at Covent Garden, and such was her popularity that she was soon commanding high fees for her appearances.  Later she gained much fame for her roles as Clara in The Duenna by Sheridan and Polly Peachum in The Beggars Opera by John Gay.  She also played MacHeath in The Beggars Opera, in a version in which all the male characters were played by women and all the female characters by men. 

 

When details of Ann’s many love affairs began to appear in the press, her father saw this as an embarrassment to him and her family, and having never approved of her career in the theatre, decided to end it and take control over her and her life.  In order to do this, he obtained a court order to detain her, but on learning of what he had done, she hid from him.  He made various attempts to get hold of her and take her into his custody, but she always managed to avoid him or escape from him.  On one occasion he took hold of her as she left her carriage to go into the theatre she was performing in.  However, she and her companion raised such a fuss that onlookers and eventually the other performers in the theatre crowded around, took her from her father and carried her into the theatre.

 

Detail of portrait of Ann Brown (Cargill) in the role of Miranda. 

Painted by Johann Zoffany

 

In 1780, Ann eloped with a Mr R Cargill and married him in Edinburgh before returning to London and then touring England in various theatre productions.  The marriage to Cargill did not last long and in 1782 Ann took up with a Mr Rumbold and left for India with him. In India she found great success and another new lover, one dashing young captain from an aristocratic family, yup you guessed it, John Haldane. Things were lovely and rosy for both of them, and it seems that Ann became pregnant with, and gave birth to, their child.  The proud parents’ happiness in India was not to last long though.  In December 1783, the directors of the East India Company, being a bunch of old fuddy duddies, decided that they didn’t want the scandalous Ann Cargill around, and at a meeting agreed that ‘the pure shores of India should not be invaded by an actress.’  Ann was then ordered to leave the country. This she did, aboard the ship that Haldane was now captain of, the Nancy. 

 

The voyage home on the Nancy was quite uneventful until the ship was just off the coast from the Scilly Isles, where it hit a terrible storm.  The ship was forced into some rocks and began to sink.  Captain Haldane, along with Ann Cargill and a few passengers and crew, managed to get into one of the lifeboats on the ship and tried to row to safety.  The storm was too strong for them though and their boat was thrown against rocks at the small island of Rosevear and smashed.  Those on board were cast into the raging sea, where they all drowned. 

 

A few days later many of the bodies were recovered when they washed up on the shore at Rosevear.  These included the bodies of John Haldane and Ann Cargill.  Held tightly in Ann’s arms was the body of her and Haldane’s young child.  Ann, John Haldane, and their child were all buried at the Old Town Church on St Mary's, in the Scilly Isles.

 

In the early nineteenth century, during construction of the lighthouse that now stands on Bishop Rock the workmen were stationed on Rosevear.  It is said that while there, they were haunted by the ghostly voices of those who had died when their ships were sunk on the nearby rocks.  One of the voices they often heard was that of Ann Cargill gently singing lullabies, as if holding a sleeping child in her arms.

 

I left the Skulferatu that accompanied me on my walk, in a hole in the monument that commemorates Patrick Haldane, John Haldane and Ann Cargill.

 

Skulferatu #102

 

Skulferatu #102 in a hole in the monument

 

Skulferatu #102 in a hole in the monument

 

Google Map showing location of Skulferatu #102

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.94126

Longitude -3.149253

 

what3words: regime.limit.inform

 

I used the following sources for information on Duddingston Kirkyard, John Haldane and Ann Cargill

 

Bygone Church Life in Scotland 

William Andrews

1899

 

Patrick Haldane

Patrick Haldane - Wikipedia

 

A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800 

by Philip H. Highfill, Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, Edward A. Langhans

1975

 

Oxford Journal - Saturday 13 March 1784

 

Reading Mercury - Monday 15 March 1784

 

Wreck of the East India Company Packet NANCY Isles of Scilly in 1784

Ed Cumming

2019