Skulferatu #110 - Bastion 14, London City Wall, Barbican, London

Travelling down to Kent, I found I had an unexpected day out and overnight stay in central London due to a train strike. So, what to do? Well, I did what I always do and went for a walk. After a foray around the banks of the Thames I cut up past Saint Paul’s and towards the Barbican. There, amongst an array of buildings from Brutalist concrete to glass and steel I spotted a ruin, sitting in a little oasis of green, just by the entrance to an underground carpark.

 

The ruins of Bastion 14 sitting by the 1970s Bastion House

 

Bastion 14 with concrete and glass buildings towering above it

 

Making my way down to it, I found that it was the remains of a fort that formed part of the old City Wall of London. This Medieval wall was built on the foundations of the old Roman wall around the city, and the fort, or Bastion 14 to give it its official title, was one of the 21 bastions built along it. 

 

Bastion 14

 

The original city wall was built by the Romans around 200AD as a defensive wall around Londinium. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, it fell into decay. In medieval times the need for a defensive wall was once again called for, and large sections of the wall were repaired and rebuilt. Then, in the 17^th century London expanded rapidly and the wall was seen as no longer necessary, so much of it was demolished.

 

Tourist Info Map at site, showing the course of the City Wall

 

When the city wall fell out of use, many of the bastions were incorporated into other buildings, with Bastion 14 at one time being used as part of a warehouse.

 

During the Second World War the area around Bastion 14 was flattened by bombing and the buildings encasing it were destroyed. The Bastion was then identified as a historic structure and was saved from demolition. However, the 1970s office block towering above it, Bastion House, doesn’t appear to be so lucky, as it is now earmarked for demolition. Shame, as it’s so ugly that I quite like it.

 

The walls of Bastion 14 with Bastion House towering above

 

Bastion House

 

I had the whole garden area to myself as I wandered the old wall and Bastion 14. As the sun warmed my old bones, insects buzzed around me, and two crows kept an eye on me as they skipped and hopped around the grass lawn looking for insects.

 

The old City Wall and Bastion 14

 

Dried husks and seed heads

 

Bastion 14 with glass and concrete buildings all around

 

Bastion 14

 

While walking along a path through a small garden area of dried husks and seed heads, I saw a gap in the old brickwork by the wall beside the Bastion. There I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me.

 

Skulferatu #110

 

Old wall beside Bastion 14

 

Skulferatu #110 in a gap in the wall beside Bastion 14

 

Skulferatu #110 in a gap in the wall beside Bastion 14

 

Map showing location of Skulferatu #110

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 51.517828

Longitude -0.095148

 

what3words: bars.wider.teach

 

I used the following sources for information on Bastion 14 –

 

Tourist Information boards at the site

 

Museum of London Archaeology

A standing building survey of Bastion 14, City of London | MOLA

 

 

Skulferatu #109 - Site of the Battle of Roslin, Roslin, Midlothian

I don’t usually write about battle sites, or even tend to visit them, because they tend to be pretty f*cking boring places.  Yet, having said that, on a walk along the old railway path that runs from Roslin to Loanhead, I came across a memorial to the Battle of Roslin and found that lurking in the background of events leading up to the battle, there was a story of thwarted love, jealousy and one man’s desire for revenge.  How true the story is I don’t know, but hey, as they say, why let the truth get in the way of a good yarn!

 

Memorial to the Battle of Roslin

 

Way back in time, in 1303, when the world was a wild violent place with various factions and power-hungry men spilling blood everywhere in their fight for power (nothing changes much), Scotland was in political turmoil.  It had been occupied by the English since 1298, after the defeat of the Scots army at the battle of Falkirk, and was governed by Sir John de Segrave, a knight of the English king, Edward I.

 

While he was in Scotland, Sir John based himself in Edinburgh Castle, where he frequently held functions and official gatherings for the local aristocracy, warlords, people of influence and such like.  One of those who regularly attended at the castle was Lady Margaret Ramsey of Dalhousie.  Sir John was soon besotted with her and hoped to take her as his wife.  Unfortunately, for poor Sir John, his feelings were not reciprocated, and he was spurned by Lady Margaret who instead accepted a proposal of marriage from Henry St Clair, the Lord of Rosslyn.   

 

Sir John was not a happy chap when he learnt of this and flew into a bit of a rage.  So, off he stormed to King Edward to ask permission to raise an army to eliminate the ‘threat’ that the marriage between Margaret and Henry would represent.  Edward, who was a bit of a bloodthirsty old sod and always liked an excuse for a bit of killing and maiming, granted Sir John his wish and he was soon on his way back to Scotland with an army of 30,000 troops.  I do have to point out here that the number of troops may actually have been grossly exaggerated in the tales told after the battle, but that’s the figure I’ll run with in my telling of this little bit of history.

 

On arriving in Scotland, Sir John split his army into three separate divisions.  Ten thousand troops marched off to attack Borthwick Castle near Gorebridge, another ten thousand marched off to seize Dalhousie Castle, the home of Lady Margaret, and the last ten thousand, led by Sir John himself, marched towards Roslin and the home of Henry St Clair.

 

On the evening of the 23 February 1303, Sir John and his troops set up camp near Roslin for the night, with the intention of giving Henry St Clair a good thrashing the next day. However, word of the movement of the English forces had reached the Scots and an army led by John Comyn and Sir Simon Fraser marched through the night from Biggar down towards Roslin, where they hid until just before dawn in the nearby woods at Bilston.  Then, early in the morning of the 24 February, as Sir John and his army still slept, the Scots attacked them.  The English troops were slaughtered, with no mercy being shown to anyone.  Well, that was unless you were of noble birth, in which case you could be held and ransomed for a tidy sum of cash which is what happened to Sir John and a group of his knights, who were captured and held prisoner. 

 

Over the next couple of days bloody skirmishes, slaughters and attacks took place between the Scots and the other two divisions of Sir John’s army.  During one of these, Sir John was freed by his troops, and deciding to cut his losses, marched the remains of his army back to England.  According to the legends that grew up around the Battle of Roslin, only two thousand of the thirty thousand English troops who marched into Scotland with Sir John survived.  The rest lay dead and buried in mass graves in the fields and woods around Roslin.  As the Ballad of the Battle of Roslin recounts, their bones would occasionally be dragged up when the fields they lay in were ploughed -

 

An farmers tae this very day,

When they’re at the ploo-in,

Still find shinbanes in the clay,

At the place they call ‘The Hewin…

 

Site of the Battle of Roslin

 

Memorial to the Battle of Roslin

 

Pylons at the site of the Battle of Roslin

 

So, what, you may ask, happened to all the main players after the battle.  Well, the hero of the hour, John Comyn, was murdered a few years later by Robert the Bruce when the two of them fell out.  Bruce stabbed him to death by the high altar at Greyfriars Church in Dumfries. 

 

Sir Simon Fraser also died a few years after the battle when he was captured and taken prisoner by the English army.  On King Edward’s orders, he was taken to London and there was hung, drawn, and quartered, with his head stuck on a spike on London Bridge.

 

Sir John de Segrave lived a long and eventful life, he took William Wallace prisoner and escorted him down to London to be executed, he was then himself a prisoner in Scotland for a couple of years after the Battle of Bannockburn, was freed after a ransom was paid, acquired various lands around England, was appointed as the Seneschal of Gascony, and died an old man while looking after the King’s interests there.

 

As for Lady Margaret Ramsey of Dalhousie, well her story is either lost in the mists of time, which given the lack of records relating to women’s lives in that era is quite possible, or she never existed and was purely made up as a love interest to add a bit of oomph to the tale of the Battle of Roslin.

 

While out on my walk through the once bloodstained lands where so many men died, I left a Skulferatu in a gap in the wall around the monument to this now almost forgotten battle.

 

Skulferatu #109

 

Skulferatu #109 in a gap in the monument wall

 

Skulferatu #109 in a gap in the monument wall

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #109

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.862858

Longitude -3.154724

 

what3words: inferior.unheated.dolls

 

I used the following sources for information on the Battle of Roslin –

 

Canmore - Battle Site, Roslin

 

Historic Scotland

The Inventory of Historic Battlefields – Battle of Roslin

 

The Scotsman - Roslin 1303: Scotland's forgotten battle

24 February 2017

 

 

Skulferatu #108 - Spott Parish Church, Spott, Dunbar, East Lothian

In the tiny village of Spott, near Dunbar, there sits a small, picturesque church.  Though very little, if anything, of the original building remains, a church has stood on that spot in Spott since the early 14^th century. 

 

Spott Parish Church

 

I wandered up there on a warm and blustery day to have a look around.  It was a very peaceful place of old gravestones, trees and birds singing away merrily.  While inside the church a few members of the local community had met up for a bit of a get together.  Of course, I wasn’t there for socialising, I was there to leave a Skulferatu in a place with an unexpected dark history…especially if you were one of the early clergymen who preached there.

 

Gravestone at Spott

 

Detail of gravestone at Spott

 

Gravestone at Spott

 

Spott Church didn’t have a great deal of luck with several of its early clerics.  Around 1530, Robert Galbraith became the Rector of the church.  He was also a judge in the High Court and Court of Session at Edinburgh.  In 1544 he made a judgement on a case that did not go down well with the defendant.  So, unfortunately for Galbraith, while he was about his business in Edinburgh, the disgruntled defendant spotted him and murdered him.

 

View of Spott Parish Church and graveyard

 

In 1559, John Hamilton, the brother of the Earl of Arran, was appointed as the Parson of Spott.  He later went on to rise up the ranks of the church and became the Archbishop of St Andrews.   However, in 1571 he was tried and found guilty of aiding and abetting in the murders of the Earl of Moray and also Lord Darnley, the late husband of Mary, Queen of Scots.  He was hanged by the Mercat Cross in Stirling a few days after his trial. 

 

Gravestone at Spott

 

Gravestone at Spott

 

View from Spott Parish Church Graveyard

 

In 1567, John Kello became the first protestant Minister of Spott Church.  He is also the most notorious.  John Kello was born in Linlithgow and as a young man married a local girl, Margaret Thomson.  John, who was an ambitious and eloquent man, decided to enter the Presbyterian Church and was ordained as a Presbyterian Minister while attending the first General Assembly in Edinburgh in1560.  He soon required a reputation as a powerful and stirring preacher and in 1567 was appointed to the Parish of Spott.  So, there he moved with Margaret and their three children.

 

At Spott, John’s reputation grew as a preacher, preachers being the rock stars of those days.  However, unlike rock stars, preachers weren’t paid very well. John had soon come to realise this and looked for ways to better himself as he wanted the finer things in life, he wanted land, prestige, and wealth.  When he had married Margaret, she had brought a small dowry with her.  John thought he could maybe use her dowry to make some money and so he used it to buy and sell land.  Unfortunately, a couple of his land deals went wrong, and he ended up in debt.

 

While he fretted about his debts and ways to make more money, John’s sermons still attracted a good crowd to the church.  One of his congregation was a rich young woman who had recently been widowed.  Being a very pious type, she would often seek John out for spiritual advice.  John found that he enjoyed her company and soon his thoughts turned to how his life would be if he was married to her and had her fortune as his own.  She would make him a rich man of some social standing.  If he were married to her, he could achieve his ambitions.  The more he thought like this, the more he began to despise his own wife, Margaret.  He became bitter and began to blame her for his failings.    

 

Margaret, who by all accounts was a cheerful and likeable person, and a loving wife, soon bore the brunt of John’s anger at his thwarted ambitions. She, however carried on in her sunny and loyal way assuming that John’s moods would soon pass, and he would be her loving husband once again.  This annoyed John even more and he began to wish she would just die.  If she were dead, then he could marry again and marry well.  He then began to think about ways to kill her and decided that he could achieve his ambitions in life if he murdered her.

 

Once he had made the decision to murder Margaret, John acquired some poison and used that in an attempt to kill her.  It didn’t work.  She was a fit, healthy woman with a strong constitution and the poison had no noticeable effect on her.   On the Sunday morning after his first attempt at killing his wife, John tried again.  Knowing that she would pray in their bedroom in the morning, he sneaked in behind her with a length of rope in his hands.  As she prayed, he pounced, pulled the rope around her neck, and strangled her.  He then hung her lifeless body from a beam in the room, locked the door from inside, leaving the key in the lock and then slipped out of the bedroom window, shutting it behind him.  As the church bells rang, he walked through the graveyard greeting members of his congregation as they arrived. In the church he stood in the pulpit and gave a passionate sermon.

 

After the sermon was over, John invited several members of the congregation to come over to his house to eat there.  He told them that lately his wife had been very depressed, and it would cheer her up to have some company.  Off they went to the house where John called out to his wife, but there was no answer.  He then went to their bedroom and called out to his guests that the door was locked.  Then in front of them, he kicked the door open, and all saw poor Margaret hanging dead from the beam.  John collapsed to the ground sobbing as they cut Margaret down.  His tears of anguish seemed so real to those guests he’d invited in, that no one suspected anything other than Margaret had taken her own life.

 

For the first few days after Margaret’s death, John was a happy man.  He was free to marry again, maybe in a few months’ time he could propose to his widowed parishioner and then settle down to the life he deserved.  A life with money and property and status.  But then the gnarly issue came up of Margaret’s burial, as a suicide she could not be buried on consecrated ground and so she was instead buried in an unmarked grave in a nearby field.  Her reputation ruined and her soul damned forever, people no longer spoke of her, and her and John’s children were told to forget her.  The guilt of it all began to weigh heavy on John’s mind.  What had he done?  He began to remember the Margaret who he had loved and had loved him.  He remembered her terrified and disbelieving eyes looking up at him as he had killed her.  She had always trusted him, looked after him, believed in him and he had betrayed it all.  He had betrayed her, and he had betrayed his God.  After a few weeks John could take the guilt no more and so he set off to Edinburgh where he called on a judge and made a full confession to him.  John was then taken to the Tolbooth in Edinburgh to await trial.

 

John’s trial was a quick affair where he again made a full confession, was found guilty of the murder of his wife, and was sentenced to death.  On the 4^th of October 1570, John was taken to Gallow Lee on the outskirts of old Edinburgh.  There he preached his final sermon where he basically blamed Satan for making him do it, and then he was hanged.  Once dead, his body was cut down and burnt to ash.

 

After John Kello, Spott Church had many more Ministers, though no more who were murderers, murdered or executed.

 

I left the Skulferatu that accompanied me on my walk in a gap in a wall outside the church.

 

Skulferatu #108

 

Skulferatu #108 in a gap in the wall outside the church

 

Skulferatu #108 in a gap in the wall outside the church

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #108

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.9722

Longitude -2.524426

 

what3words: masses.flags.settle

 

I used the following sources for information on Spott Parish Church –

 

The Examiner

No.843, Sunday, March 28, 1894

 

Twelve Scots Trials

by William Roughead

1913

 

Spott Church Website

https://spottchurch.org.uk/

 

 

 

 

 

Skulferatu #107 - Lady Fyfe’s Brae and Giant’s Brae, Leith Links, Leith, Edinburgh

 

I have wandered around Leith Links many times.  I’ve gone to many fairs and events there, and up until recently had paid very little attention to the two mounds that jut out of the flat land of the park.  I’ve sort of noticed them in winter when kids would sledge down them, and also in summer when they are a hot spot for sunbathers, but other than that they have not really entered my consciousness much.  Probably because I’d always assumed, given Leith Links connection to the awful game that is golf, that they had something to do with that.  Then a few days ago I noticed that by each of them was a Brutalist lump of concrete with a chipped metal plaque on it.  These gave both the mounds a name, one as Lady Fyfe’s Brae and the other as Giant’s Brae, and stated that the former was the remains of Pelham’s Battery and the latter of Somerset’s Battery.  A quick bit of research later and it turned out that these two mounds were actually part of an important bit of local history back in 1560, the Siege of Leith. 

 

Lady Fyfe’s Brae (Pelham’s Battery)

 

Lady Fyfe’s Brae (Pelham’s Battery)

 

Lady Fyfe’s Brae (Pelham’s Battery)

 

View from Lady Fyfe’s Brae (Pelham’s Battery)

 

The events leading up to the Siege of Leith began almost a decade before.  In 1547, English troops arrived in Scotland, as part of the ‘Rough Wooing’ in an attempt to force the Treaty of Greenwich on the Scots, which would see Edward VI marry Mary, Queen of Scots in a union of the crowns.  Many of the English soldiers ended up camped near Edinburgh, at Leith Links.  Mary’s mother, Mary of Guise, worried by this development, asked the French Crown for assistance, and in 1548 French troops began to arrive in Leith.

 

In 1554, Mary of Guise became the Queen Regent of Scotland, her young daughter now being in France.  She then began to have fortifications built and improved around Leith.  While all this was going on the relationship between Mary, who was Catholic, and the Protestant Scots began to deteriorate.  By 1559, things had got so bad between them, that Mary felt she was in imminent danger and for a while she lived in Leith, where she felt she could be protected by the French troops, who were also Catholic and loyal to her.  Mary was later persuaded to move back to Edinburgh.  However, a group of Protestant noblemen who were unhappy with the French troops being in Leith, amassed an army, which led to Mary asking for more French troops to be sent over, and having the fortifications at Leith extended further with a large earthen rampart.  This in turn led to the Scots Protestants petitioning the English for their help in removing the French troops.

 

In April of 1560, English troops arrived at Leith and pounded the town with artillery fire.  This, however had little effect due to the rather formidable earthen wall that had been put up as a defence.  So, to give the guns a bit more elevation three mounds were built, two of these being the ones that still stand on Leith Links.  The guns then pounded Leith, and there were various attacks on the town by the English troops that were repelled by the French.   The siege then carried on with food becoming scarce for those in Leith with reports that the troops themselves were eating horse flesh and ‘the grass and weeds that grew on the ramparts.’  While the townsfolk trapped there were living off cockles picked from the shore and roasted cats and rats.

 

Giant’s Brae (Somerset’s Battery)

 

Daisy in the grass Giant’s Brae (Somerset’s Battery)

 

Giant’s Brae (Somerset’s Battery)

 

The attacks against Leith continued with heavy losses on both sides.  After one attack, when the English army had again failed to break through and take the town, the French troops gathered up the bodies of those English soldiers who had been killed, stripped them naked and lined them up on the ramparts.  On seeing this, it was said that Mary ‘hopped with mirth’, and exclaimed, ‘Yonder is the fairest tapestrie that ever I saw. I wald that the haill feyldis that is betwix this place and yon war strewit with the same stuiffe.’  (Over there is the fairest tapestry I’ve ever seen.  I wish that all the fields between this place and over there were strewn with the same stuff.)

 

Mary’s joy was short lived though, as on the 11^th of June 1560 she died, probably from heart failure.  After her death an armistice was agreed, and peace was then brokered, with the French and English troops leaving Scotland.  So yet again, like much of history, it appears that lots of people died for nothing much.

 

I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on my wander around Leith Links, in the bark of a rather nice tree that stands between the two mounds.

 

A rather nice tree that stands between the two mounds

 

Skulferatu #107

 

Skulferatu #107 in the bark of a tree on Leith Links

 

Skulferatu #107 in the bark of a tree on Leith Links

 

Google Map showing location of Skulferatu #107

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.970178

Longitude -3.164135

 

what3words: dome.poem.lanes

 

I used the following sources for information on Lady Fyfe’s Brae, Giant’s Brae and the Siege of Leith –

 

Historical Notes Concerning Leith and its Antiquities, Vol 1 

by James Campbell Irons

1897

The Story of Leith

By John Russell

1922

 

Canmore

Lady Fife's Brae, Leith Links, Edinburgh

Giant's Brae, Leith Links, Edinburgh