Archaeology Notes

Event ID 712024

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/712024

NT27NE 12 2753 7583

See also NT27NE 11 and NT27NE 141.

(NT 2753 7583) Lady Fife's Brae (NAT)

Pelham's Battery (NR) (Remains of)

OS 6" map, (1966)

The mound, visible on Leith Links, and known as 'Lady Fife's Brae' is the remains of a gun position, Pelham's Battery, occupied by five cannon, set up in 1560 during the seige of Leith by English troops supporting the Congregation against the Queen Regent, Marie de Guise-Lorraine.

RCAHMS 1951; G Donaldson 1966.

A low grass-covered mound measuring 46.0 metres NE/SW by 27.0 metres.

Visited by OS (B S) 27 November 1975.

The tradition that Lady Fife's Brae and Giant's Brae were gunsites during the 1560 siege seems to go no further back than 1827 (A Campbell 1827). Lent authority by Robertson in 1851 and the Ordnance Survey of 1852, it led to them being spared when the rest of the numerous hillocks in the links were levelled in the 1880's. The Petworth map shows some features in the Links about 120 yards in front of the eastern ramparts. One reads as a long, straight ditch, perhaps the remains of an entrenchment by Somerset in 1547, while the others, irregular in shape and tinted in the same manner as Lochend Loch, appear to be ponds. Possibly they were noted on the map because they impeded a frontal attack on the ramparts.

See NT27NE 141.

D H Robertson 1851; S Harris 1992.

Scheduled (with NT27NE 11) as Leith Links, artillery mounds.

Information from Historic Scotland, scheduling document dated 11 December 2002.