Eyemouth, St Ella's Court, Old Quay, Coach House

Instructions were received from the Scottish Development Agency on 5th July 1988 to carry out a dimensional survey of property at Marina Parade, Eyemouth. The S.D.A. were funding this survey to allow a structural assessment to be made of the various buildings adjacent to the Harbour Master's Office and the Contentented Sole public house. This study was required to allow Berwickshire District Council to promote housing redevelopment in this area. Our findings are outlined in detail on pages 2-17 but in our opinion the buildings have deteriorated to such an extent that they should be demolished and the site cleared for future redevelopment.

Crouch and Hogg Consulting Civil and structural Engineers

The following text has been prepared as part of the HES Urban Survey of Eyemouth, 2023-24.

The Eyemouth Historic Burgh and Harbour Area of Townscape Character sits at the northern edge of Eyemouth, on the east and west banks of the River Eye where it flows into the North Sea. The town lies 8 miles north of Berwick upon Tweed, 13 miles north-east of Duns, and 24 miles south-east of Dunbar, on the east coast of the Scottish Borders area. It was first documented in the 12th century when it was established as a port and fishing village serving Coldingham Priory, 5 miles to the north. As well as forming the southernmost fishing port in Scotland, the establishment of a port here allowed the export of agricultural produce such as wool and animal hides, while also importing building materials like lead and timber from elsewhere in the UK and Europe.

The historic burgh stretches north-west from the mouth of the River Eye along the coastline towards the headland known as King’s Mount, where Eyemouth Fort (NT96SW 1) was established as an English implant in 1547 by Edward Seymour (1500-52), 1st Duke of Somerset/1st Earl of Hertford and Lord Protector (1547-9) for the nine-year-old King Edward VI (1537-53). The fort was demolished in 1550 by Queen Mary of Guise (1515-60), before being rebuilt in 1556 to defend against renewed attacks by the English. It was dismantled again c.1560 and it is said that some of the stone from this fort was re-used to build parts of the harbour c.200 years later. The area occupied by the remains of the fort is not included in this urban survey of Eyemouth town.

The town became a Burgh of Barony in 1597 when James VI (1566-1625) gave a charter to the local landowner, Sir George Home of Wedderburn, near Duns (1552-1616). The awarding of such a charter allowed markets to be held in the town, and the marketplace was established c.1600 at the east end of the High Street, ultimately given the street name Market Place.

Eyemouth’s original burgh core sits on the west side of the mouth of the River Eye. Its main thoroughfare is formed of High Street (running north-west/south-east), turning at Market Place into Church Street (running north-south). This High Street/Market Place/Church Street axis still retains the typical herringbone street pattern of a traditional Scottish burgh, with narrow plots running at right angles to the main street, despite experiencing various phases of redevelopment and expansion within the town centre. By contrast, the area to the north-east of Market Place, backing onto the beachfront and harbour, developed as an irregular series of wynds and courtyards during the 18th and 19th centuries, with numerous fishermen’s cottages, terraced houses, and warehouses being squeezed into this parcel of land. The haphazard nature of this corner of the burgh core remains today, despite various redevelopments during the late 20th century.

The early burgh’s main industries were based around the port, which took advantage of the natural harbour provided by the coast where the River Eye meets the North Sea. As the town’s fishing fleet grew, improvements were necessary to accommodate more boats safely. Eyemouth’s first harbour pier was built in 1747 by William Craw (d.1750) of Netherbyres House (to the south of Eyemouth). This original pier was then reconstructed in 1768 to innovative designs by civil engineer John Smeaton (1724-92), who became celebrated in the field of constructing canals, road bridges and lighthouses. At Eyemouth, his first harbour commission, Smeaton developed a design of harbour construction which involved laying blocks at an inclined angle, following the direction of the underlying natural rock formations. This provided far stronger defences against the sea than had previously existed. This original wall (NT96SW 537) survived as part of the harbour defences until a recent major redevelopment (2021-3).

Tragedy struck the town’s fishing fleet when 189 fishermen and 20 boats (129 men from Eyemouth) were lost during a hurricane on 14th October 1881, in view of loved ones waiting on the shore. Following the disaster, known as ‘Black Friday’, vigorous campaigning for a safer harbour resulted in new plans being drawn up by Messrs Meek & Sons of Edinburgh to deepen and extend the harbour. Although these plans had to be scaled back due to lack of funds, further improvements based on Meek’s plans were still carried out in 1885-7.

The Black Friday disaster is commemorated in two places within the historic burgh. In the former burial ground on the High Street (NT96SW 77.01) a memorial was erected in 1981, on the 100th anniversary of the disaster. The memorial (NT96SW 77.03) comprises a broken mast with rope twisted around it, and a life-ring and anchor above an inscription within a rocky base. On the beachfront promenade around St Ella’s Place there is a 5m-long bronze sculpture by sculptor Jill Watson (b.1957), erected in 2016 as one of a quartet placed in the four fishing communities affected by the disaster (Eyemouth, Burnmouth, Cove and St Abbs). This evocative sculpture is entitled ‘Widows and Bairns’ and depicts the wives and children of the fishermen watching for their menfolk returning in the storm.

Further deepening works were carried out to Eyemouth Harbour (NT96SW 76.00) in 1892-3, as it continued to silt up with sediment washed in from the River Eye. Proposals were put forward for yet more improvements in 1912, but lack of funding for the proposed scheme meant no works were carried out until 1963-4, with additional deepening at the entrance, along with a new breakwater. In 1982, another scheme was put forward to create a deep water basin and a new entrance, but the price-tag of £12m was deemed too expensive, and it was not until 1993 that a scaled down version, costing £4m, was approved.

Major redevelopment works to the buildings around the harbour area were undertaken in c.2000. The 1960s fishmarket (and former maritime museum) on Harbour Road (NT96SW 540) was replaced with a new combined fishmarket, harbour masters’ office, ice plant and visitor centre (NT96SW 449) located on the eastern side of the harbour, north of Gunsgreen House. Designed by local architecture firm Bain Swan Architects, it comprises a two-storeyed shed-like section, with brick-clad lower floor and wood-clad upper, and a gently curving metal roof. The metal-clad ice plant sits at right angles on the southern end of this block and is slightly taller. In the 2020s, a series of pavilions has replaced the old fishmarket on Harbour Road, the design of which is based on the form of traditional boathouses. They are two-storeyed with a glazed ground floor on three sides facing towards the harbour, and a timber-clad upper floor and street elevation. They have curved zinc-clad roofs and a verandah around the harbour side. These pavilions provide self-contained studios for small businesses above spaces for community use on the ground floor. In tandem with this 2020s development, the northern end of the harbour was rebuilt and an operations and maintenance base to support the Neart na Gaoithe (NnG) offshore wind farm (being constructed c.10 miles off the Fife coast) was opened in 2023. This was designed by Corstorphine & Wright Architects, and is composed of a three-storeyed block containing office and meeting spaces, with a lower storage warehouse to the east. The whole building is constructed from a range of materials including artificial stone cladding to ground floor, metal cladding to upper floors, large glazed sections and a viewing platform providing views out to sea and into the harbour, and large pitched metal roofs at different levels and angles sloping down towards the harbour, following the natural contours of the landscape around the harbour. The harbour still hosts a fishing fleet of around 20 vessels, along with moorings for tourist boats including ribs and wildlife cruises, as well as space for visiting work boats and leisure crafts.

One of the landmark buildings in the burgh and harbour area is the mid-18th-century Gunsgreen House (NT96SW 59.00) which sits in isolation overlooking the harbour and town from above the east side of the harbour. Built in 1753, to designs by John Adam (1721-92) for local merchant and notorious smuggler, John Nisbet (1712-96), it is an imposing Palladian-style, five-bayed, three-storeyed-plus-basement villa. Balustraded steps lead to the central front entrance, with early 19th-century cast iron latticed railings curving from the steps to the corners of the house. Also dating from the early 19th century, there is a curved battlemented retaining wall, with blind oculi between retaining buttresses at harbour level. It is an unusual setting for such a villa but is rumoured to have had secret tunnels and a hidden tea chute behind a fireplace to facilitate Nisbet’s smuggling operations. During the 18th century, tea was a heavily-taxed import, and was one of the main commodities that Nisbet traded and brought into the UK. Although externally unchanged, Gunsgreen House was heavily altered internally during the 20th century when it operated as a guesthouse and latterly as clubhouse for the Eyemouth Golf Club from the 1960s until 1997. It lay empty from 1998 until major renovation work was undertaken by the Gunsgreen House Trust c.2007, to provide holiday accommodation in the upper floors, and a museum and visitor centre in the basement. Just to the south of the main house, Nisbet’s Tower (NT96SW 59.01), a square-planned, battlemented building of the early 19th century that was originally a dovecot and possibly a coach house, was also converted into a holiday let by the Gunsgreen House Trust in 2005.

Fishing was the main industry which caused Eyemouth to flourish, but other associated trades and industries grew up to support this industry. Coopering, fish processing, and boatbuilding and repair workshops were established in the area alongside the harbour, and some evidence of these functions remain between Harbour Road and Church Street, with fish processing and sales businesses still operating. Many of the warehouses and workshops which occupied the fishertown area around St Ella’s Place, George Street and Marine Parade were demolished in the late 20th century and replaced by blocks of flats -Marine Parade dates between 1980 and 1990, and the local authority-run Saltgreens care home for older people was built in 1986-9 between Chapel Street and Manse Road. Sitting below Brown’s Bank, three adjoining tall, brown-painted, metal-clad sheds with pitched roofs, dating from the mid- to late 1960s, form the one boatbuilding yard (NT96SW 380.00) which still survives to this day (2024) at the southern end of the harbour. Boatbuilding has occupied this site since the turn of the 20th century, when local boatbuilders Hall & Weatherhead moved their business, already 50 years old at that point, to this location from a site located above the beach. The Weatherhead name continued to be associated with this boatbuilding yard through much of the 20th century. The firm also used the mid- to late 18th-century terraced houses on the east and west sides of the River Eye (NT96SW 380.02, NT96SW 380.04 and NT96SW 448) as offices until the mid-20th century. The current operators, Eyemouth Marine Ltd, took over the yard in 2017 and continue to use those on the east side as offices.

Prior to this office use in the early 19th century, the northernmost house on the west side, Dundee House (NT96SW 448), is believed to have been occupied by William and Mary Willis, whose grandson, John Willis Jnr (1817-99), built the tea clipper, Cutty Sark in 1869. During the later 20th century, Dundee House and the adjoining premises were occupied as shops and other commercial premises, and Dundee House retains signage from this latter function as the premises of W L Collin, electrical contractor. These two groups of terraced houses are two-storeyed, with arched (on the east bank) or pedimented (on the west bank) entrance doorways. They retain traditional sash and case windows in a variety of glazing patterns, mostly six-over-six panes and both groups have pitched pantile roofs, with slate easing courses at the base to help shed rainwater. Dundee House has a marker on its north-eastern corner noting the level of the flood which Eyemouth experienced on 12th August 1948, when over 4 feet of rain fell in 24 hours and damage was caused to the main east coast railway line and Eyemouth Viaduct upstream of the town.

During the 19th century, support services and amenities for the safety and welfare of the fishermen and other trading vessels were established in and around the harbour. Lifeboats have been a vital part of coastal communities for 200 years (the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) was established in 1824), and there has been a lifeboat stationed at Eyemouth harbour since 1876. A boathouse and slipway was first built on the eastern side of the harbour, where the 21st-century fishmarket has recently been developed. This was superseded around 1908, when a new brick-built boathouse and slipway (NT96SW 76.03) was built against the former Smeaton Wall of the harbour. This was replaced in turn in 1992 by today’s modern base, on the eastern side of the harbour at Gunsgreen Quay, just below Gunsgreen House. This single-storeyed, six-bayed building contains crew facilities as well as a store for fuel and other equipment and supplies. It is brown- and beige-harled, with artificial stone base course, quoins and dressings, and its hipped slated roof has red ridge tiles. A new berth was created for the lifeboat in 1999, followed by a pontoon berth and boathouse in 2008 and 2010 respectively.

Eyemouth has also been home to a coastguard station since the turn of the 20th century, originally sited on North Street around the location of the former barracks at the western end of the beachfront. A new station was built in the 1950s in Fort Road (NT96SW 19), now sitting alongside the entrance to the Eyemouth holiday park.

An invaluable national support service for fishermen and their families grew from the aftermath of Black Friday in 1881. It is believed that one of those standing on the shore watching the disaster unfold, was Ebenezer Mather (1849-1927) from the Thames Church Mission in London. Mather was so shocked by the conditions that fishermen lived and worked in across the UK, that he founded the National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen shortly after the Eyemouth disaster. This charitable organisation was set up to ‘provide ministry’ and other support to fishermen, and a fleet of mission ships provided welfare and other services to fishermen at sea. During the mid- and later 20th century, the Mission set up hostels and centres which would provide facilities such as showers and accommodation. In 1987, a large four-storeyed, eight-bayed rubble-built granary and warehouse on Eyemouth’s Harbour Road (NT96SW 138) was converted to provide the Mission’s services to the town’s fishermen. Dating from the 1830s, the building had also previously housed a range of activities associated with the fishing industry including gutting, packing and smoking fish, mending nets and re-using a sail loft to host gatherings for the fishermen. The building subsequently became known as ‘The Hippodrome’, said to be taken from the Hippodrome in Great Yarmouth, where the herring boat fleet from across the UK would hold its annual get togethers. The building fell out of Mission use during the early 21st century, then operating as a community facility until becoming a marine education centre for the Berwickshire Marine Reserve in 2022.

A later addition to support services for fishermen lies further south on Harbour Road. The Fishermen’s Mutual Association was founded in 1946 as a co-operative to assist fishermen with all aspects of catching, marketing and transporting locally caught fish and shellfish. It was not until the 1960s however that the Association had its own premises built on Harbour Road, including a chandlery to supply and support boat owners and fishermen. The three-storeyed building follows the rigg pattern of the original burgh plots and its scale and design also follows that of many Scottish burgh buildings, with gable-front onto the main street, and small window openings mimicking those of former warehouses that would have occupied the harbour area in the town. At first-floor level on the front elevation there is a projecting timber-clad square bay window above the entrance to the shop, and there is a tall tower on the north elevation which possibly contained a hoist or lift for loading and unloading equipment such as nets. The whole building is white harled, and has a pitched metal roof, with blue painted fascia to match the blue-painted tiles on the shop front, which is slightly recessed at an angle into the entrance door.

In common with many Scottish historic burghs, Eyemouth’s main thoroughfare (High Street/Market Place/Church Street) consists of late 18th- and 19th-century terraced buildings and tenements with commercial or retail premises at ground floor. These are mostly two-storeyed or two-storeyed-plus-attic, stone-built or harled with stone dressings, and have either slate or pantile roofs. Mid-19th-century maps show the burgh containing many civic amenities, including a police station off the High Street and masonic lodge (NT96SW 305) and post office on Market Place. The parish school was at Nos 7-9 High Street (NT96SW 302), built in 1819 to designs by architect Alexander Gilkie (1756-1834). After the school moved to Albert Road in 1876-7 (see Victorian Expansion Area of Townscape Character), from 1880 the building was used as a reading room, holding a substantial 2,400 volumes. The Old and New Statistical Accounts of Scotland (1792 and 1845 respectively) both pass comment that there are ‘too many alehouses’ in Eyemouth (NSA states there are ‘no fewer than 14 alehouses’). However, Ordnance Survey maps from 1856 only have two inns and two hotels marked, and this doesn’t change much across later maps of 1898 and 1906. The Ship Inn (or Ship Hotel) on the corner of Harbour Road and Chapel Street (NT96SW 299) is one of the earliest in the area, dating from c.1730, and remains a bar and restaurant today (2024). The original Inn has a decorative Dutch gable onto Harbour Road, whilst an early 19th-century two-storeyed addition to the north has three straight gables onto the street frontage and is currently in use as a guesthouse. The segmental-arched window to the left ground-floor bay of the later addition infills a former cart entry.

At the junction of Harbour Road and St Ella’s Place, are two further 18th-century hotels and public houses. Closed at time of survey (2024), the Whale Hotel (NT96SW 296) retains a gated segmental-arched cart entrance in its southern bay, while the Contented Sole (NT96SW 288) on the north side of St Ella’s Place, has a small single-storeyed, flat-roofed mid-20th-century extension onto St Ella’s Place. Both are typical examples of Scottish burgh vernacular from the 18th/19th centuries, being two- and three-storeyed, cream- or white-harled, with a mixture of slate and pantile roofs.

Another landmark building in Eyemouth’s historic core is the former town hall and burgh chambers (NT96SW 282). The former town hall sits on Renton Terrace, just off the junction of Market Place and Church Street. Built in 1873-4 to designs by architect William J Gray Jnr (1846-1933), it is a fairly plain pitched roof building. Adjoining and fronting onto the aforementioned junction is the slightly later (1880) burgh chambers. Originally built as the Commercial Bank of Scotland to a typical Scots Baronial design by David Rhind (1808-83), it displays features such as crowstepped gables, a corbelled corner bay with a conical-roofed tower and bands of fishscale slates, gargoyles and a carved relief of the fishing boat ‘The Supreme’ in the gable above the main entrance. These two adjoining buildings were merged to become Council offices in the 1960s, with the original town hall hosting dances and concerts. The building has lain empty since the early 1990s despite attempts to convert it into a community hub during the 2000s.

The burgh chambers sits opposite another civic building in the burgh core -the former parish church (NT96SW 77.00). Converted into the town museum c.1980, the church was built in 1811 to designs by architect Alexander Gilkie (1756-1834). The church is distinctive for its four-stage tower above the central entrance door in the west elevation, with clock faces at third stage, belfry at fourth, and topped by a weathervane. It was extended to the south elevation in 1902 to form an L-plan. When the church was converted to the museum, the congregation moved to its current location in what was the United Free Church at the corner of Albert Road/Coldingham Road/Victoria Road (see Victorian Expansion Area of Townscape Character).

The burgh core was home to churches of a variety of denominations during the 19th century, but most of these have been demolished and/or moved to larger premises outwith the Historic Burgh and Harbour Area of Townscape Character. Eyemouth Free Church is identified on the OS 1st edition 25” map of 1856 at the west end of the promenade, on the site now occupied by the car park between The Tavern and the Beachcomber Amusements. The building is not marked as ‘church’ on any later maps, is a ‘Garage’ on the OS 1:2,500 map of 1966, and was demolished in the 1970s. A Primitive Methodist Chapel was located in St Ella’s Place but moved to its current location, opposite the current Parish Church at the junction of Albert Road, Coldingham Road and Victoria Road, at the turn of the 20th century (see also Victorian Expansion Area of Townscape Character). On Church Street there was a United Presbyterian Church, built in the mid-19th century and converted to the town’s cinema (NT96SW 323) around the 1930s. The cinema was subsequently demolished and replaced in 2002 by housing association flats at Church Court. Further north on the west side of Church Street, is the former Congregational Church (NT96SW 283), which was built by the fishermen of the town c.1863. This church was converted to flats in the late 20th century, but retains the window pattern and decorative wrought-iron arch and lantern at the steps leading to the first-floor entrance. The newest church in this area is St Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church at the junction of Harbour Road with Victoria Road, which was established in 1961 in a converted single-storeyed former boatbuilding shed with red tiled roof.

The town’s historic burial ground (NT96SW 77.01) is located at the west end of the High Street. By the mid-19th century, this was very overcrowded, particularly after it was relevelled to accommodate over 100 cholera victims following an epidemic in 1849. A new cemetery was established at the western end of Coldingham Road (see Victorian Expansion Area of Townscape Character) and the historic burial ground was eventually landscaped, with some of the grave slabs being inserted in the surrounding walls. Adjoining the wall in the north corner of the burial ground is a small watch-house (NT96SW 77.02) dating from around 1849, which has also been built re-using gravestones from the old burial ground. The 1981 memorial to Black Friday mentioned above sits in the centre of the landscaped burial ground.

The topography of Eyemouth burgh core has shaped some of the housing built in the later 19th/early 20th century, most notably in the plots running from High Street and Market Place west towards Albert Road. Home Street, Armatage Street and Renton Terrace are a trio of narrow vennels lined by stepped housing terraces. While Home Street is open at both ends to vehicular access, Armatage Street (NT96SW 269) and Renton Terrace are narrower routes, and only accessible to pedestrians, with Albert Road being accessed from these two streets via tall arched pends containing a set of steep steps.

To the north-west of the Historic Burgh and Harbour Area of Townscape Character lies the Eyemouth Holiday Park (see Recreation (Holiday Park) Area of Townscape Character). The arrival of the holiday park in the mid- to late 20th century saw the town centre and harbour area of Eyemouth undergo many developments to provide entertainment and facilities for visitors to the town. During the 1970s and 80s, the beachfront was transformed with the arrival of additional public houses, cafes, a supermarket and an amusements arcade with ten pin bowling on first floor added in 1970-1. Eyemouth Town Council built an indoor leisure pool (NT96SW 513) just off North Street in 1973, which replaced the outdoor paddling pool shown on the 1966 OS 1:2,500 map. Just like the plots running off the main thoroughfare of the burgh core, these late 20th-century developments have maintained the one- or two-storeyed scale and the unplanned layout of the buildings in this part of the town.

More in-depth discussion on the character of 12 further Areas of Townscape Character identified in the town can be found under:

-Eyemouth, Victorian Expansion Area of Townscape Character (NT96SW 549)

-Eyemouth, Inter-War Area of Townscape Character (Hurkur Crescent and Schools) (NT96SW 548)

-Eyemouth, Mid- to Late C20 Area of Townscape Character (The Avenue) (NT96SW 552)

-Eyemouth, Mid- to Late C20 Area of Townscape Character (Barefoots) (NT96SW 544)

-Eyemouth, Mid- to Late C20 Area of Townscape Character (Deanhead) (NT96SW 545)

-Eyemouth, Mid- to Late C20 Area of Townscape Character (Gillsland) (NT96SW 550)

-Eyemouth, Modern Area of Townscape Character (Gunsgreenhill) (NT96SW 553)

-Eyemouth, Modern Area of Townscape Character (Acredale) (NT96SW 546)

-Eyemouth, Industrial Area of Townscape Character (Acredale and Eyemouth Industrial Estates) (NT96SW 547)

-Eyemouth, Industrial Area of Townscape Character (Gunsgreenhill Industrial Estate) (NT96SW 554)

-Eyemouth, Recreation Area of Townscape Character (Holiday Park) (NT96SW 543)

-Eyemouth, Recreation Area of Townscape Character (Golf Course) (NT96SE 41)

Information from HES (LCK) 30th April 2025