South Queensferry, Edinburgh Road, Sealscraig Lane, Landing Place

South Queensferry, 9 Edinburgh Road, Adjacent and rear (also known as Sealscraig Lane), ferry landing place (NT17NW 313)

This site is situated in the town of South Queensferry on the south bank if the Firth of Forth upon a small rocky promontory known as the ‘The Craigs’. A landing stage or ramp is depicted on 1st edition ordnance survey 25-inch map (Linlithgowshire, 1856, sheet III.13). It is noted that in 1811, the Ferry Passage from North Queensferry pier ferried out 18,057 cows, as well as 25,151 sheep, over 1500 carriages and over 5,000 barrels containing other goods. Much would be taken to the Hanseatic ports in the Baltic and to the ‘Low Countries’ but a proportion would have been ferried to piers and landing places in South Queensferry and other local markets and for onward dispatch to population centres such as Edinburgh. Due to the volume of goods moving south, it was decided that a general improvement of the landing places and piers in the Firth of Forth should be undertaken. John Rennie (1761-1821) carried out a survey and produced the ‘Plan of the Frith of Forth with the Improvements at the Queensferry Piers and Landing Places forming the Great Line of Communication between the North and South of Scotland’. On the map resulting from this survey The Craigs is shown as an improved Landing Place, but is named ‘Seol Hope’ as it was known at this time (see RCAHMS MS6342). Further improvements to Firth of Forth piers and landing places continued under the engineers Telford and Jardine in the first half of the nineteenth century.

An RCAHMS survey was carried out in April 2011 (DC 51359; DP 099793-819) which identified features relating to the landing place such as the post-holes into which the landing ramp structure was anchored (see DC 51359). The ferry boats serving the landing places would have been low-sided vessels, so the landing ramp would have been a low, solid, wooden-planked structure without foundations, pinned into the rock by means of post holes gouged out of the solid bedrock. Such a structure would have replaced earlier even more makeshift gangplanks to land passengers and livestock. There are also driven channels into the outcrop leading from the landing stage up the vennel or lane (Sealcraigs Lane; see DC51359) exiting onto Edinburgh Road between no. 9 and no. 15 Edinburgh Road. These carved channels or grooves are some 0.25m apart and measure 1.0m in width. These are presumably footing grips for livestock, pedestrians and small-wheeled vehicles travelling to, and from, the landing place.

Visited by RCAHMS (MMD), April 2011; Information (letter) from Dr John Shaw, 16 February 2011.