Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 1

BERVIE BROW
Bank, the North of Scotland Banking Company, and
the Stonehaven Savings' Bank ; gas-works ; three princi-
pal inns; a market cross; a town-house (1720) sur-
mounted by a belfry ; a public hall (1874), with aecom.
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 on the second Wednesday of the six
winter months, October to March, 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 works, and
wincey and sacking factories. Some little commerce is
carried on, but the harbour is at the fishing village of
Gotodon, 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 Raits 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, it sends one mem-
ber to parliament, the parliamentary and municipal
constituency numbering 169 in 1881, when the annual
value of real property amounted to £2877, 3s. 10d.,
while the corporation revenue for 1880 was £191. The
school, in the latter year, with accommodation for 124
children, had an average attendance of 94, and a grant
of £56, 4s. Pop. of parliamentary burgh* (1831) 757,
(1851) 934, (1871) 1013, (1881) 1094.
Bounded NW by Arbutlmott, 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 34 miles of the northern
boundary, to Gourdon Hill (436 feet), Knox Hill (523), and
Kenshot Hill (618), the two first culminating on, and the
last just within, the Benholm border. Peat'tie 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 £285. Valuation of landward portion
(1881) £3745, 15s., including £2S2 for the railway.
Pop. (1801) 1068,(1841) 1342, (1S61) 1561, (1871) 1843,
(1881) 2106.— Oral. 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, £ 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
J 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, 11§ miles S of
Anstruther, 10 SSE of Elie, 10| SW of the Isle of May,
and 3J WSW of the Bass by water. By road it is 8i
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, and Dalrymple Arms,
besides 4 private establishments and over two-score
lodging-houses. It has a post office, with money order
and savings' bank departments, a railway telegraph office,
a branch bank of the British Linen Co. , 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 1880 at a cost of
£1800 — and Free Masons', Foresters', Odd Fellows', and
Good Templars' lodges. A small debt court sits on the
third Wednesday of January and July, and the second
Wednesday of April and November ; and fairs are held
on the Thursday of May after Dunbar and the last
Thursday of November. 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 1862 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 Ants. Scott., 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 IT. 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
1863, when it was consecrated by Samuel Wilberforce,
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