Skulferatu #106 - Innerwick Castle, Dunbar, East Lothian

The ruins of Innerwick Castle sit on a sandstone outcrop, above a steep, rocky ravine that drops down through Thornton Glen, to the shallow waters of Thornton burn.  On the other side of the glen once stood Thornton Castle, of which nothing now remains. Whether there was some strategic importance to the castles being so close together I don’t know, though they were near to the Great North Road that ran from London to Edinburgh, so maybe they were some sort of strongholds against the English army, that occasionally marched up that way to carry out an invasion or get up to some mischief making. 

 

Built in the 14^th Century, Innerwick Castle was once the stronghold of the Hamilton family, and the history of the castle, like that of many castles, is bloody and violent.  It fell into the hands of the English after their success at the battle of Homildon Hill in 1402.  Then, in 1406, it was besieged by the army of the Scottish nobleman, Robert Stewart, and was recaptured and destroyed.  A few years later it was rebuilt and appears to have enjoyed a period of prosperity when it was extended several times.

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

Sketch of Innerwick Castle from ‘The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland’

 

This period of peace and prosperity ended in the mid-16^th Century when Scotland and England became involved in a series of vicious and violent confrontations, known as the ‘Rough Wooing’.  During this time the English forces carried out a series of attacks and invasions into Scotland, in an attempt to compel the Scottish Parliament to confirm the terms of the Treaty of Greenwich.  This treaty, which had been agreed by Henry VIII of England and James Hamilton, the Regent of Scotland, included a proposal that Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry’s son Edward should wed when they were of age.  However, the Scottish Parliament had rejected the treaty, much to Henry’s displeasure.    In 1547, Henry was dead, and his young son was King, though the real power lay with his Protector, Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset.  And Seymour, being an ambitious sort, decided it was time to get the treaty sorted, so he led an army into Scotland.   

 

On the 6th of September 1547, a unit of English hakbutters (men armed with an early form of musket) besieged Innerwick Castle. The castle was defended by the Master of Hamilton and eight other men.  They barricaded the doors, blocked up the stairs and defended from the castle battlements. However, the hakbutters blasted away at them with their guns, and managed to force their way into the vaults below. There they piled up straw and wood and set the castle ablaze.  Blinded and suffocated by the smoke, those defending the castle cried out for mercy, but the hakbutters burst through the doors onto the battlements and shot dead eight of them on the spot.  The ninth, who saw what fate had befallen his comrades, jumped from the castle battlements in a desperate effort to save himself, falling 70 feet down the ravine and into the river below.  Miraculously, he survived and on seeing this, the hakbutters above in the castle, allowed him to escape.  Unfortunately for the poor man, he ran towards nearby Thornton Castle, unaware that it too was being attacked by English troops.  On being spotted by them he was ‘slain’.  Shortly after his death, Thornton Castle also fell into the hands of the English troops who blew it up with gunpowder.

 

Innerwick Castle from ‘The Antiquities of Scotland’

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

Vaults at Innerwick Castle

 

Vaults at Innerwick Castle

 

Tree over entrance into the vaults

 

Vaults at Innerwick Castle

 

Hole in the wall

Stones in the wall

 

Graffiti on the vault walls

 

Vaults at Innerwick Castle

 

Though much of Innerwick Castle was badly damaged by the attack in 1547, parts of it must have been habitable, as in the 1650s the Covenanters used it as one of their bases from which they harassed and attacked Oliver Cromwell’s troops.  Later, in the 1820s, the castle was home to a local man called Sandy Cowe.  Living there on his own, he grew garden plants in parts of the castle and on its grounds, which he sold around the county.

 

The ruins of Innerwick Castle have been an inspiration for many artists from the amateur to the well-known.  In 1831, J.M.W. Turner was invited up to Edinburgh to meet up with Sir Walter Scott and his publisher, to discuss his illustrating of Scott’s Poetical Works.  On his way up, after a stop off at Berwick upon Tweed, he spent a couple of days in East Lothian sketching some of the ruined castles there.  One of these castles being Innerwick.  The series of sketches he drew are now held by the Tate.

 

J. M. W. Turner - Innerwick Castle, East Lothian, 1831, Photo © Tate

 

The land in which the castle sits in is now a nature reserve owned by the Scottish Wildlife Trust.  A steep, narrow, earth trodden path leads up to it, and it was up this path that I trudged on a fine, still day.  Ignoring the sign warning of the dangers of loose masonry, I made my way inside the castle and wandered through what remained of the vaults and once grand rooms.  I took in the views over Thornton Glen and then after my wanderings, left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me, in a gap in the wall of a swirling tower where a stairwell to the upper levels had once stood.

 

Skulferatu #106

Skulferatu #106 in the swirling stairwell tower

 

Skulferatu #106 in the swirling stairwell tower

 

Skulferatu #106 in a gap in the wall

 

Map showing location of Skulferatu #106

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.955625

Longitude -2.425939

 

what3words: aimlessly.stealthier.superhero

 

I used the following sources for information on Innerwick Castle –

 

Canmore

Innerwick Castle

 

The Antiquities of Scotland

by Francis Grose

1797

 

The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century

Volume Three

by David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross

1889

 

Tudor Tracts 1532 - 1588

Of the Expedition into Scotland by William Patten

1903

 

The Autobiography of a Working Man

1848 

by Alexander Somerville

 

Tate

Innerwick Castle, East Lothian (d25977)

 

Landscapes of Memory 

Turner as Illustrator to Scott

by Gerald Finley

1980

  

Skulferatu #105 - Shell Grotto, Newhailes, Musselburgh

 

On a stroll through the Newhailes estate, I took shelter in the woods from the ominous dark clouds gathering in the sky.  There I came across a small and rather sorry looking building, this being the remains of the Shell Grotto.  It was once a rather grand, little structure that stood as a central feature in the water gardens.  These were a series of pools that were fed by a burn that runs through the estate.  The pools are now long gone and are just a series of dips in the ground.

 

The Shell Grotto

 

In the Eighteenth Century, Shell Grottos were the must haves for fashionable, rich British landowners, and the owners of Newhailes, the Dalrymples, were rich enough and fashionable enough to have one built.  The Shell Grotto in Newhailes was one of the first built in Scotland and was probably built in the 1770s. 

 

The Shell Grotto

 

Entrance to the Shell Grotto

 

The Shell Grotto was constructed of large boulders and rubble, with the façade at the entrance being decorated with furnace slag and sponge-stone to give it a mysterious and eerie look, like the entrance to a volcanic cavern.  It was originally roofed in slate and had a floor of black marble.  The walls inside were at one time lined with wood covered in plaster, in which were embedded thousands upon thousands of seashells, precious stones and fragments of coloured glass all arranged into various patterns. 

 

The shells in the walls not only came from the local beaches, but also as far away as China.  In 1774, Jenny Dalrymple wrote to her brother William, who was in Canton, and asked him to find her shells from there for the grotto.

 

As well as being designed as a place for quiet contemplation, reading or just retreating from life for an hour or two, the Shell Grotto was also meant to be a place of mood and mystery.  Excavations there a few years ago, found that there had at one time been a chimney and a ‘stoke hole’ behind the grotto as well as flues in the walls of the building.  Rather than being constructed for heating the grotto, they appeared to have been designed to produce and emit smoke, to add a mysterious atmosphere to the building.

 

Though abandoned for many years, the interior of the Shell Grotto was intact up until the 1950s, when it was vandalised and set on fire.  Now the roof and the interior decoration are all gone.  Today, there are thousands of shells lying on the floor of the Grotto, but I don’t think any of them are the original shells from the walls, but rather are a recent addition in an attempt to put some shells back into the Shell Grotto.

 

Shells in the Shell Grotto

 

I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on my stroll to the Shell Grotto, in a dimple on a rock in the entrance façade.

 

Skulferatu #105

 

Skulferatu #105 in a dimple on a rock in the entrance façade

 

Skulferatu #105 in a dimple on a rock in the entrance façade

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #105

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.942634

Longitude -3.081671

 

what3words: crops.impose.park

 

For an idea of what parts of the decoration inside the Grotto may have looked like when it was complete, visit the website for the Shell Grotto in Margate.

 

I used the following sources for information on the Shell Grotto –

 

 

Tourist Information sign at site

Newhailes
By Hilary Horrocks
2004

 

Canmore
Shell Grotto, Newhailes

 

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 #100 - The Lost Village of Gleghornie, North Berwick, East Lothian

I know, from the photographs it looks like nothing more than a grass covered hill and some rocks, but back in the 15^th Century there was a small village nestling here.  A survey of the area in 1962 found some remnants of the village, a few traces of walls and the outlines of a building, but nothing much else. When the village was abandoned, and why, no-one knows. Maybe the inhabitants were wiped out in one of the plagues that swept through the country several hundred years ago, or maybe the village just died a natural death.  People moved out and away, the last of the old inhabitants died and the few remaining houses were abandoned to time and the elements.

 

The land where the village of Gleghornie once stood

 

The land where the village of Gleghornie once stood

 

The remains of a wall

 

Dandelion in a wall

 

The village was once home to the philosopher, theologian, historian and scholar, John Major (also known as John Mair or John Mayr), 1469 – 1550. He was born in the village and spent his childhood and early youth there.

 

Major left the village, and Scotland, during the 1490s to study at Cambridge and then Paris. He later taught at both the Sorbonne and Montaigu College. While in Paris he wrote Historia Majoris Brittaniae, a history of both England and Scotland, which unlike previous histories written about Scotland, cut out much of the myth and magic, and saw the country as being an integral part of Britain. In 1518 he returned to Scotland as Professor of Philosophy and Divinity at Glasgow University. There his pupils included both John Knox (theologian, preacher, and misogynist nutter) and Patrick Hamilton (Protestant reformer burnt at the stake in 1521 for heresy). In 1522, Major moved to the University of St. Andrews, and taught there for a while before briefly returning to Paris. He then returned once more to Scotland and St Andrews, where he was made Provost of St Salvator's College. He remained there until his death in 1550.

 

A contemporary drawing of John Major, taken from his work

In Petri Hyspani Summulas Commentaria, published in 1505

 

Now largely forgotten, much like his namesake, you know the one – the Grey Man of politics, Major was seen as an important figure during his lifetime and beyond. Some of his teachings seem quite enlightened for the time, in that after the Spanish ‘discovery’ of America, Major argued that the native peoples there had political and property rights and that at the very least they should be compensated for any land taken from them.

 

Despite having travelled and lived in some of the fabulous cities of that age, Major never forgot his roots and he styled himself as ‘Glegornesis’ in the titles of several of his works. He was also known to often reminisce about the oatcakes his mother cooked on the gridle over the ashes in the fireplace hearth, of catching lobster and crabs at North Berwick, and of how the Solent Geese nested on the Bass Rock each year.

 

Rocky area near where the village once stood

 

Tree and boundary wall

 

I walked out from North Berwick to Halflandbarns, and then down a dirt farm track to Gleghornie farm. Just past the farm I made my way down another dirt track which led me out to the open and rocky area where the village once stood. There, in a gap in the old stone wall running around the boundary of the land, I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on my walk.

 

Skulferatu #100

 

Skulferatu #100 in a gap in the boundary wall

 

Skulferatu #100 in a gap in the boundary wall

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #100

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 56.036317

Longitude -2.654008

 

what3words: bandstand.passwords.prowess

 

I used the following sources for information on Gleghornie and John Major –

 

Canmore - Gleghornie

Canmore - Gleghornie

 

Pre-reformation Scholars in Scotland in the XVIth Century

by William Forbes-Leith

1915

 

The Catholic Encyclopedia

Catholic Encyclopedia: John Mayor

 

 

John Major of Haddington

E. J. G. Mackay

1892