Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland

BERVIE BROW
Bank, the North of Scotland Bank (Limited), and the
Stonehaven Savings Bank ; gas-works ; several inns
and hotels; a market cross; a town-house (1720) sur-
mounted by a belfry; a public hall (1874), with accom-
modation for over 400 persons, being 82 feet long, 33
wide, and 27 high; the parish church, a handsome
Gothic edifice (1837; 900 sittings), with a square tower
more than 100 feet high; a Free church; and a public
school. Wednesday is market-day, and cattle and grain
markets are held every "Wednesday of the seven winter
months — viz. October to April, and on the Thursday
before 19 May. A machine for spinning linen yarn —
the first in Scotland — was set up on the Haughs of Bervie
in 1788; and now along the river there are four flax and
tow mills, besides a woollen mill, a chemical work, and
wincey and sacking factories. Some little commerce is
carried on, but the harbour is at the fishing village of
Gourdon, 1 mile to the S, though the inner basin of
Bervie Bay might itself be easily rendered a safe and
commodious haven. A Carmelite friary stood upon
Friar's Dubb, near Bervie Bridge; and near the station
is Hallgreen Castle, a picturesque stronghold still in fair
preservation, which, founded in 1376 by the Dunnets,
passed to the Baits in the 15th century. Young David
II., with Johanna, his English queen, landed at Bervie
from France, 4 May 1341; and from him the town got
its first charter, renewed by James VI. in 1595. It is
governed by a provost, 3 bailies, a dean of guild, a trea-
surer, a town-clerk, and 9 councillors; and, with Mon-
trose, Brechin, Arbroath, and Forfar, sends one mem-
ber to parliament, the parliamentary constituency num-
bering 200 in 1891, when the annual value of real
property amounted to £3794, 5s. 6d., while the cor-
poration revenue was £241. The school, with accom-
modation for 209 children, had in 1891 an average
attendance of 177, and a grant of £157, 5s. 6d. Pop.
of parliamentary burgh* (1831) 757, (1851) 934, (1871)
1013, (1881) 1094, (1891) 1195.
Bounded NW by Arbuthnott, NE by Arbuthnott and
Kinneff, E by the German Ocean, and S by Benholm, the
parish has an extreme length from E to W of 3 miles, an
extreme width from N to S of 2 miles, and a land area of
2332 acres. The coast, about 2 miles long, is low but rocky ;
inland the surface rises southwards and south-westwards
from the Bervie, which traces 3J miles of the northern
boundary, to Gourdon HiU (436 feet),Enox Hill (523), and
Kenshot Hill (618), the two first culminating on, and the
last just within, the Benholm border. Peattie Burn runs
through the middle of the parish to the Bervie, opposite
Allardice Castle. The prevailing rock is Devonian sand-
stone and conglomerate, and has been extensively quar-
ried; the soil of the low grounds is a deep fertile loam,
incumbent upon gravel; and fully two-thirds of the whole
area are cultivated, besides some 100 acres under wood.
Two proprietors hold each an annual value of £500 and
upwards, 1 also holding between £100 and £500, 2 be-
tween £50 and £100, and 6 between £20 and £50. Ber-
vie, disjoined from Kinneff in 1618, is in the presbytery
of Fordoun and synod of Angus and Mearns; its minis-
ter's income is £225. Valuation (1891) £4009, 5s. 5d.,
including £612 tor the railway. Pop. (1801) 1068,
(1841) 1342, (1861) 1561, (1S71) 1843, (1881) 2106, (1891)
2387.— 0<2. Sur., shs. 66, 67, 1871.
Bervie Brow, a headland in Kinneff parish, Kincar-
dineshire, flanking the northern shore of Bervie Bay, and
culminating at 451 feet above sea-level, J mile NE of
Bervie town. It forms a conspicuous landmark, being
visible at sea for 15 leagues. Tradition records that
David II. was shipwrecked at its base, where are the
' King's Step' and 'Kinghornie' farm; and the headland
itself is sometimes called ' Craig David.'
Berwick, North, a watering-place of Haddingtonshire,
at the entrance of the Firth of Forth, llf miles S of
Anstruther, 10 SSE of Elie, 10g SW of the Isle of May,
and 3J WSW of the Bass by water. By road it is 8^
miles N by E of Haddington and llf "WNW of Dunbar";
and by a branch of the North British railway, formed
* The royal burgh includes the whole parish of Bervie and small
portions of Benholm and Kinneff.
BERWICK, NORTH
in 1848, it is 4J miles NNE of Drem Junction, and 22^
ENE of Edinburgh. Mainly consisting of the long
High Street, running E and W parallel to a modern
seaward row, and crossed at right angles to the E by
Quality Street, this latter planted with plane-trees,
North Berwick fronts a little greenstone promontory,
which forms a small natural harbour, and right and left
of which are Milsey and North Berwick Bays. Along
their splendid sands stretch the East and West Links,
the former small, the latter with a 5-mile golf-course;
and behind the town conical North Berwick Law rises
612 feet above the level of the sea. Its charming situa-
tion, noble views, and healthy climate, its bathing,
boating, golfing, and pleasant excursions alike by sea
and by land, have made and are making North Berwick
a more and more popular summer resort, such popu-
larity being attested by the uprising of villas and hotels
— the Royal, Marine, Commercial, andDalrymple Arms,
besides several private establishments. It has a post
office, with money order, savings bank, and telegraph
departments, branches of the British Linen Co. and the
Clydesdale Bank, a town-house, gas-works, waterworks
(with a storage since 1881 of 179,298 galls.), a library
and reading-room, a lifeboat, a volunteer corps, a bowling-
green (1865), a curling club, 3 golf clubs — the North
Berwick (1832), Bass Rock, and Tantallon (1874), for
the first of which a club-house was erected on the West
Links in 18S0 at a cost of £1800 — and Freemasons',
Foresters', Oddfellows', and Good Templars' lodges.
North Berwick is also a coastguard station, and has a
Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Society, and a
Fishermen's Hall. A small debt court sits on the third
Wednesday of January and the second Wednesday of
May, July, and October. The harbour is dry at low
water, and never too easy of access, but possesses a toler-
able pier, and carries on a fairish trade in the import of
guano and coal, and the export of potatoes for the Lon-
don market. A steamer, too, plies between it and Leith
once a week during summer; and the deep-sea and in-
shore fisheries received a great impulse from the railway,
though herrings since 1S62 have forsaken the Craigleith
Waters. To the SW, near the station, stand the scanty
fragments of St Mary's Benedictine nunnery — an en-
trance archway, with traces of refectory, kitchen, cellar-
age, and the E wall of the chapel. Founded by Duncan,
fifth Earl of Fife (d. 1154), this nunnery was destroyed
in 1565, its revenues, then valued at £557 plus rent in
kind, being erected into a lordship for Sir Alexander
Home by James VI. (Grose's Antiq. Scot., i. 74-76). The
'Auld Kirk,' by the harbour, on the sandy eminence
that once was an islet joined to the shore by arches, is
another interesting but equally dilapidated ruin, with
only its arched main doorway and font entire. It was
dedicated to St Andrew ; and, in the famous witch-
trials of 1591, it figures as the place where, in the
presence of 94 witches and 6 wizards, who had danced
in the kirkyard to Geilie Duncan's playing on the Jew's
harp, ' the devil startit up himself in the pulpit, like
ane meikle black man, and callit every man by name,
and every ane answerit, "Here, Master. " On his
command they openit up the graves, twa within, and
ane without the kirk, and took off the joints of their
fingers, taes, and knees, and partit them amang them ;
and the said Agnes Sampson gat for her part ane wind-
ing-sheet and twa joints, whilk she tint negligently'
(Chambers's Bom. Ann., i. 211-219). The present parish
church, erected in 1882 at a cost of over £3500, is a cruci-
form Early English structure, with 1024 sittings. It
retains an hour-glass and metal baptismal ewer, an iron
alms-box, and 4 silver chalices, two of them older than
1670, the date inscribed upon the other two; in its
churchyard is the tomb, with quaint epitaph, of John
Blackadder (1615-85), the eminent Covenanting minister,
who died in captivity on the Bass. Other places of
worship are a plain Free church (1844; 400 sittings);
a handsome TJ.P. church, rebuilt in 1872 at a cost of
£3000; St Baldred's Episcopal church, a Norman struc-
ture, after Dalmeny, erected in 1859 and enlarged in
1862, when it was consecrated by Samuel Wilberforce,
153