Thread by @cocteautriplets

The "things I'd like to write a thread about" in traycan get pretty overcrowded so it brings me more than a little bit pleasure to say that it's only taken me 7 months to get around to my promise of following up on the Quarryholes (which at least 2 of you are keen to hear!) 🧵👇

https://twitter.com/cocteautriplets/status/1493005529479884802

The Quarryholes is not one but two distinct places, the Upper or Over Quarryholes (blue) and the Nether or Lower Quarryholes (red), as shown by Roy on his 1750s Lowland Map (🗺️NLS). You can see the tailburn of Lochend cutting between the two.

As the name suggests, the Quarryholes were areas where quarrying had once taken place and left behind pits and cliffs on the ground. A settlement grew up at each location.

In 1554 the Querrell Hollis feature in David Lindsay's "Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits" as a location where a horse is drowned; the quarry pits had long been flooded and were dangerous ponds.

The distinct Ovir Querrelholis is recorded in 1588. "Quarrel" was the Scots for to "quarry", but obviously in modern use means a squabble or disagreement and that is quite apt given the subsequent history.

In the early 17th century, the charter of both Quarryholes was in the possession of William Rutherford of Quarryholes, the son of a city Burgess and merchant, Baillie William Rutherford.

William of Quarryholes was a merchant and shipowner in Leith who in 1612 was in trouble for cutting off a man's finger and in 1617 was back before the Privy Council for illegally exporting tallow and cheese.

A son of William, also William, sold the Quarryholes to the City of Edinburgh in 1634, and they in turn passed them on to Heriot's Hospital (Upper Quarryholes) and the Trinity College & Hospital (Lower Quarryholes)

Another son, Andrew Rutherford, was born at Quarryholes in the early 17th century and would rise to become the Lieutenant-General of the Garde Écossaise, bodyguards to the French Crown, and favoured by King Louis XIV of France.(📷 CC-by-SA 4.0 Count of Zielin)

On his return to Scotland he was made the Lord of Teviot by Charles II and given a regiment. Later he was Governor of Dunkirk and arranged its sale to the French on behalf of Charles. He died on active service in 1664 as Governor of Tangier, a year after becoming Earl of Teviot.

But links with military violence and the Quarryholes were not just in far off Morocco. In July 1559 the Lords of the Congregation, the Scottish protestant nobility fired up by John Knox, had been energetically "reforming" Churches in Stirling, Linlithgow and now Edinburgh...

...but Parleyed at the Quarryholes with supporters of Queen Regent Mary of Guise to agree a temporary mutual toleration, avert further conflict and avoid the potential for full blown urban warfare in the city.

Mary of Guise died the following year but things didn't get much more peaceful as a result in Scotland - or at the Quarryholes. On 16th June 1571, during the ensuing Marian Civil War, "Drury's Peace" took place at the Quarryholes - which proved to be anything but peaceful.

"Black Saturday" as it was also known occurred when pro-Mary Queen of Scots forces under the Earl of Huntly rode out from Edinburgh Castle to confront pro-King James VI forces from Leith under the Earl of Morton and his enormous hat.

There was ample bad blood between Morton and Huntly and their heavily armed parties were spoiling for a fight. To try and negotiate between them, emissaries were sent to meet at the Quarryholes under the mediation of Sir William Drury, the English Ambassador

Drury (of Drury Lane, the Strand) proposed terms which both parties seemed to accept, but neither side could agree which would turn and leave the field first. Eventually Drury got them to agree that they would leave at the same time when he threw up his hat.

The emissaries returned to their own lines and Drury duly threw up his hat. The Queen's men under Huntly duly turned and left, but the King's men under Morton treacherously did not and charged at their opponents retreating towards the Canongate and ran them down.

They were "pursued with cruel and rancorous slaughter to the very gates of the city. The whole road was covered with dead and wounded". Lord Home, several other "gentlemen", 72 soldiers, colours, horses and 2 cannon were marched into Leith by a triumphant but treacherous Morton

Back in Edinburgh, the citizenry suspected that Drury had betrayed the Queen's forces and he had to be protected from the city's notorious mob.

The Quarryholes were the scene of a second military conflict 80 years later when English forces under Oliver Cromwell arrived in Musselburgh in 1650 to try and take Edinburgh and Leith, fortified and held by the Covenanters under Generals Alexander and David Leslie (no relations)

The Leslies were more than a match for Cromwell and the New Model Army, but it turned out not for the interfering Covenanter ministers. However their initial plan worked very well; throwing up fortifications between the Calton Hill and Leith and sitting behind them

The Covenanter army was reasonably well armed and equipped and had burnt the lands before it, it could afford to sit behind its strong defences and let the elements, disease, hunger and dissent take care of Cromwell.

Cromwell however, with his usual divine guidance, charged straight at the Leslies' fortifications on the 24th July 1650. He chose the area of the Quarryholes for the assault as being a weak point and made a "furious attack" "at the head of his whole army" from the east

The New Model Army approached from Restalrig and Jock's Lodge, around Lochend Loch, while twelve English warships fired on Leith from the Forth. The Covenanters however were waiting and their artillery opened fire from positions on the Calton Hill and around Lower Quarryholes.

Along the rampart constructed on the line of the Leith Walk the Scottish foot unleashed "a rolling fire of musketry" towards the English, supported by the cannon mounted on the old Marian walls of Leith. The feared New Model Army was beat, and rapidly "retired in confusion"

Cromwell's men left their dead and wounded and two cannon behind in their haste. Unperturbed, Cromwell circled around Arthur's Seat and tried to attack the city from that direction. He was met by the regiment of Campbell of Lawers, one of the best in the Scottish Army.

On seeing Cromwell's intent, Campbell had marched double-time up the glen of Holyrood Park and taken up position around the ruins of St. Leonard's chapel and the numerous old walls there, ambushing Cromwell's men with an enfilade. Again the New Model Army broke and ran.

"They threw aside their muskets, pikes and collars of bandoleers and fled, abandoning their cannon, which were brought off by the [Scottish] horse brigade". Crowmell - not used to being trounced - retired to his HQ at Musselburgh to lick his wounds.

He would rue the day he visited the Quarryholes, but ultimately had his revenge at the Battle of Dunbar - which went catastrophically badly for the Scots forces under the meddlesome interference of the Kirk men.

While this was the last time the Quarryholes was troubled by military matters, its dark and dangerous reputation persisted. Drownings in its dank and lonley pools were commonplace.

As early as 1677 the Trinty Hospital had been ordered to fill up their holes on account of the danger. They did not, however, and in 1691 an English soldier, Lt. Byron, drowned there. The holes were ordered to be filled in again. Again they were not.

In 1717, a chaplain by the name of Robert Irvine was found guilty of the murder of two boys in his charge by cutting their throats with a pen knife when out walking with them near the Quarryholes. Irvine was found lurking with the bodies that he had dragged into the place.

Justice was swift and merciless; Irvine was sentenced to have his hands cut off and then hung until dead at the Gallow Lee at Shrubill. His hands were placed on spikes on the Broughton Tolbooth and his body cast into the Quarryholes where he had committed his vile crimes.

In 1753 a butcher in the Grassmarket by the name of Nicol Brown was executed for the murder of his wife. He had gained noteriety for apparently eating, for a drunken bet, a pound of flesh from the rotting corpse of wife murderer Nicol Muschet.

Nicol Brown killed his wife by setting her on fire, was found guilty, executed by hanging and hung in chains on the gibbet at the Gallowlee. The body disappeared two days later, having been taken down by the Incorporation of Butchers and tossed into the Gallowlee

It was fetched back to the gibbet, but again 2 days later was back in the Quarryholes. It was said that the butchers felt mutual disgrace "thrown upon their fraternity by his ignominious exhibition there".

In 1598 a court messenger named Thomas Dobie was found guilty of committing suicide by "drownit himself maist violentlie" in the Quarryholes. For such a slight on the legal profession for which he worked, his corpse felt the full wrath of the forces of justice.

Dobie's body was taken to the Tolbooth and imprisoned before trial. Found guilty, he was sentenced to be dragged through the town backwards and hung (despite being dead) before being displayed on the gibbet.

For good measure he was also handed down a fine of £1,340 Scots - the largest ever in Scotland recorded for a suicide.

"the Quarryholes had traditionally been used for ducking moral offenders or for executing women by drowning". There are records of a woman being drowned in the Quarryholes over a case of infanticide.

In 1585, Marion Clark was condemned “to be drounitt in the Quarrell hollis” for going about“ the pestylens and seiknes beand apone her” i.e. she had caught the plague and had not stayed at home; concealing sickness and breaking quarantine was dealt with severely in the 16th c.

The Quarryholes gruesome history goes on. In 1649 a woman named Magie Bell from Corstorphine was executed for witchcraft. It was said that she had cursed a neighbour's son to die, that he had fallen sick, and that she had then restoed him by an appeal to god.

Bell was further charged with making a girl sick who had refused to lend her thread, and then making worms come out of her mouth before she recovered.

Under torture, Bell confessed that 18 years previously when living in the West Port of Edinburgh she had "met the Devil at the back of the town wall at the Quarrell Hollis" and was the only surviving witch of that coven, the others dying in the plague of 1646.

On moving to Corstorphine she met with the devil "in the Broome" i.e. around modern Broomhall. She recanted her confession but was burned as a witch. Some of her accusers including the girl with worms in her mouth were also tried, convicted and burned.

By the middle part of the 18th century, the reputation of the Quarryholes finally began to improve. After a disastrous farming season as a result of the relentless thieving of crops and cattle, the occupiers petitioned for the formation of the Leith Burlaw Court

Burlaw Courts were the lowest form of rural law enforcement, where disputes could be settled without going on to law courts. The farms of both Upper and Lower Quarryholes were entered into the books of the Burlaw Court (🗺️Adair 1682 - note the Gallowlee gibbet)

Quarrying was restarted at the Lower Quarryholes in the 1730s to provide local building stone, and by 1766 those holes are recorded as having been filled in.

From that point on, the Lower Quarryholes was only a farm, and the 1849 and 1893 OS town plans shows it clearly (🗺️NLS).

The Lower Quarryholes farm survived until the late 1920s, and an 1887 photograph of it exists in "The Story of Leith" by John Russell.

The Lower Quarryholes farm survived as long as it did due to stunted development of the tenements between Dalmeny Street and Lorne Street, as seen in this 1918 Bartholomew PO plan (🗺️NLS).

The late 1920s Corporation housing infill on Dickson Street, Dalmeny Street and Easter Road marks the site of the Lower Quarryholes farm. Funny to think that as late as 1920 there was a farm on Easter Road.

At the Upper Quarryholes, quarrying commenced again in 1761. The holes and the buildings can be seen in the corner of a panoramic sketch by Thomas Sandby from Arthur's Seat looking towards Leith, c. 1751 looking over the roof of Holyroodhouse Palace and Abbey church (🖼️NGS)

An 1801 feuing plan (🗺️NLS) clearly showes the Quarry Holes farm buildings and at least one hole behind. The pencil lines give an idea of what was about to become of them.

The Quarryholes were in the way of Heriot's Hospital's feuing plan for the Calton Hill and of Robert Stevenson's Regent Road and its connection to the Easter Road and Abbeyhill, so they had to go. (🗺️Kirkwood 1821, NLS)

Some of the "garden features" of mounds and depessions in the London Road Gardens are said to be the remains of some of the quarry pits from the Upper Quarryholes (📷CC-BY-SA Kim Traynor)

The Quarryholes, their quarry holes and their farms are long gone now, but the name does oddly linger on. If you walk to the bottom of Easter Road and look at a street sign outside the Persevere pub, you'll see it pointing to "Quarryholes".

It's not actually to the site of the Quarryholes themselves but for some reason the name persisted - both locally and officially - for the lands later occupied by the enormous Eastern Saw Mill, now the Leith Academy and its playing fields.

A curiously low key end of days for a placename that has both surprising (but brief) prominence in some key moments of Scottish history and a thoroughly long and gruesome past.🔚

Unrolled thread. threadreaderapp.com/thread/1567637…