Thursday 24 December 2020

Skulferatu #11 - Hangman's Crag, Holyrood Park, Edinburgh


I was out for a walk around Holyrood Park, and while there wandered past a spot known as Hangman's Crag.  Leaving the main path, I crossed over a small fence and took a narrow path up to the top of this rocky outcrop. I have walked up here a few times before, but always in the summer when it has been dry.  Though it was steep, it was a relatively easy walk.  Not so in winter.  Everything was slippery and wet and a worked up into a mass of mud from all the thousands of people who have been walking up this path in these Covid ridden times.  Thankfully, on the most treacherous part of the path, there were lots of tree branches to hold onto.  If there hadn’t been, I’d have ended up flat on my arse in the mud.


Hangman's Crag, Holyrood Park, Edinburgh
Hangman's Crag, with Duddingston Kirk in the background

Hangman’s Crag sounds like the name came from the place being a site of execution, but actually it comes rather from the sad tale of one of Edinburgh's much hated and loathed executioners.

 

In the late Seventeenth Century in Edinburgh, one of the city's hangmen was a young man who had come from a wealthy and well-to-do family from Melrose in the Scottish Borders.  On his father's death, he had inherited the estate and a great deal of money.  However, the young man had extravagant tastes and wasted the whole fortune on living the high life.  When not drinking, entertaining and visiting one of the city’s many whorehouses he was gambling away vast amounts of money.  Soon he was broke.  There was no money left.  To survive he had to move to lowly lodgings and sell off his belongings, though he did keep one set of fine clothes.  The young man then had to do what no gentleman should ever have to do, he had to work for a living. So, he took the job as the city hangman.  This was a particularly odious and unpopular job at that time, as many of those sentenced to die were innocent men fallen foul of higher powers or those whose religion was not in keeping with the main orthodoxy.  Even in normal times the city hangman was seen as someone on the fringes of society, on the same level as common criminals and prostitutes.

 

The young man took up this office and performed his duties of execution, flogging and all the other rather unpleasant sentences ordered by the courts.  Now, a man has to be of a certain mentality to carry out these sorts of duties and not be affected or destroyed by the torment he is inflicting.   This young man found escape from the guilt of his actions and from the lowly office he now occupied in life, by donning the one set of fine clothes he had kept and mixing with the gentlefolk of Edinburgh.   He would dress up and mingle with the groups of Edinburgh society who played golf in the evenings at Bruntsfield Links, and for a few hours he could feel he was back in his place in society.  He could switch off from the haunting screams of those whose lives he was paid to end.  Those he was paid to maim or torture or humiliate.

 

One day while out at Bruntsfield Links, the young man was recognised by a group playing golf.  One of their friends had recently been sentenced to death for some minor offence, and they realised that the young man playing golf alongside them was none other than the man who had hanged him.  They shouted at him and pointed out to the others there who he was.  They insulted him, spat at him, threw stones at him and chased him away.  They told him never to come back, that he was a disgrace and lower than even the most common and base criminal who had dangled from his rope.    The young man ran off humiliated and ashamed.  He made his way to the quiet solitude of one of the crags overlooking Duddingston Loch.  There he contemplated his life and what he had become.  Falling into a state of great despair he threw himself off the crag to his death.  His body was then found there the next day.  After this the crag he had thrown himself from was always referred to as the Hangman’s Crag.


Hangman's Crag, Holyrood Park, Edinburgh
View up path to top of Hangman's Crag - with Crow Hill in the background

View From Hangman's Crag, Holyrood Park, Edinburgh
View from Hangman's Crag over Duddingston Loch
 

Near the top of the crag, I found a hollow in a group of rocks near the cliff edge and there I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on my walk.


Skulferatu 11 at Hangman's Crag, Holyrood Park, Edinburgh
Skulferatu #11

Skulferatu 11 on Hangman's Crag, Holyrood Park, Edinburgh
Skulferatu #11 in a hollow between rocks at the crags edge

Google Map
Google map showing location of Skulferatu #11

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are:

Latitude 55.941027

Longitude -3.154901