Restalrig, a decayed village in South Leith parish, Edinburghshire, in the northern vicinity of Jock's Lodge, and north-eastern vicinity of St Margaret's railway depot, 2 miles E by N of the General Post Office, Edinburgh. In pre-Reformation days, Restalrig was the capital of the parish in which it stands, and the site of the parish church. According to tradition, St Triduana, a noble virgin of Achaia, who came to Scotland in the 8th century in company with St Rule, died at Restalrig; and down to Sir David Lyndsay's time many pilgrims, afflicted with eye-diseases, resorted hither to Sanct Tredwall's shrine. At the death of William the Lyon (1214), the district of Restalrig- or, as it was anciently called, Lestalric- was possessed by the De Lestalric family. In 1291 Adam of St Edmund's, parson of Lestalric, obtained a writ to the sheriff of Edinburgh to deliver him his lands and rights; and, in 1296, in the ancient church here, he swore fealty to Edward I. During the reign of Robert Bruce, or the early part of the 14th century, the barony passed by marriage into the possession of the Logans, with whom it continued till they incurred forfeiture for participation in the Gowrie Conspiracy. In 1435 the patronage of the church was confirmed to Thomas Logan, by William, Bishop of St Andrews. A collegiate establishment, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the Virgin, and St Margaret, was established at Restalrig by James III. in 1487, enlarged by James IV. in 1512, and completed by James V. in 1515, the foundation comprising a dean, 9 prebendaries, 3 chaplains, and 2 singing boys. The parsonage, however, remained entire till the Reformation. In 1560 the first General Assembly ordained that the church, 'as a monument of idolatrie, be raysit, and utterlie casten downe and destroyed;' and that the parishioners should in future adopt as their parish church, St Mary's chapel in Leith. In 1609 the legal rights of the church and parish of Restalrig, with all their revenues and pertinents, were formerly alienated from them by parliament, and conferred upon that chapel, then legally declared to be the parish church of South Leith. Robert Logan of Restalrig, the Gowrie conspirator, who died a bankrupt in 1606, had sold in 1596 his estate of Nether Gogar to Andrew Logan of Coalfield, in 1602 his lands of Fast Castle to Archibald Douglas, and in 1604 his barony of Restalrig to Lord Balmerino. The Lords Balmerino held the lands of Restalrig till their forfeiture in 1746; and during the whole period of their possession appropriated the vaults of the forsaken and dilapidated church as the burying-place of themselves and their kinsfolk. Lady Balmerino, the wife of Arthur, the sixth and attainted Lord. resided in the village during the years of her widowhood, and died there in 1765. The Earls of Moray, who purchased the forfeited lands, now claim as their mausoleum an octagonal chapter-house to the S of the church, whose groined roof springs from a single central pillar, and which is said to have been built about 1435 by Sir Robert Logan. The Episcopalians have always, from the Revolution downward, had a strong attachment to Restalrig. They were for years prohibited from performing their funeral service in any of the city or suburban burying-grounds; so they adopted Restalrigs their cemetery, and here in 1720 interred the body of Alexander Rose, the last legal or more than titular bishop of Edinburgh. Here, too, is the grave of Lord Brougham's father, as well as of many a gallant soldier. The Second Pointed, three-bayed choir consisted of little more than the E wall and part of the side walls in 1836, when it was restored from designs by Mr W. Burn, and made a chapel of ease or mission chapel, subordinate to South Leith church. Under the verge of St Margaret's depot was a famous spring, called St Margaret's Well; and some fine old Gothic stone-work over this was removed in 1860 to a runnel at the N foot of Salisbury Craigs. Restalrig House, to the N of the village, is a plain substantial mansion, in a well-wooded park of 15 acres. It was built in 1815-17, and enlarged a few years afterwards. The ancient mansion on the barony was a castellated structure, opposite the W end of the church, and is now represented by the lower walls of a plain modern house in the village.—Ord. Sur., sh. 32, 1857.

     Lochend Castle; the former site of Restalrig Castle

This drawing taken from Grant's Old and New Edinburgh shows the site where the ancient Restalrig Castle stood.  The original structure has been described as a crenelated Pele tower and was mostly destroyed around 1600-1603, apparently by William Little, then Provost of Edinburgh.  The ?th Laird of Restalrig was recorded as seeking permission to rebuild/repair the structure.  It is unclear how much if any was repaired before the Logan family "sold" Restalrig to James, Lord Balmerino (the Logans did not receive the 18,000 marks payment, but the lands were not returned .)
 

Peel tower 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  

Peel towers (spelt Pele towers in England) are small fortified keeps, built along the English and Scottish Borders, intended as watch towers where signal fires could be lit to warn of approaching danger. By an Act of Parliament in 1455 each Peel Tower was required to have an iron basket on its summit and a smoke or fire signal, for day or night use, ready to hand.

A line of these towers was built in the 1430s across the Tweed valley from Berwick to its source, as a response to the dangers of invasion from the English Borders. Others were built in Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumberland, and as far south as Lancashire, in response to the threat of attack from the Scots and the Border Reivers.

 Apart from their primary purpose as a warning system, these towers were the homes of the Lairds and landlords of the area, who dwelt in then with their families and retainers, while their followers lived in simple huts outside the walls. The towers also provided a refuge so that, when cross-border raiding parties arrived, the whole population of a village could take to the tower and wait for the marauders to depart.

 The Peels in Peeblesshire formed an unbroken chain, within sight of one another, from the source of the Tweed down to its mouth at Berwick.

 In the upper Tweed valley, going downstream from its source, they were as follows: Fruid, Hawkshaw, Oliver, Polmood, Kingledores, Mossfennan, Wrae, Quarter, Stanhope, Drumelzier, Tinnies, Dreva, Stobo, Dawyck, Easter Happrew, Lyne, Barnes, Caverhill, Neidpath, Peebles, Horsburgh, Nether Horsburgh, Cardrona, etc.

 Peel towers are not usually found in larger places which have a castle, but in smaller settlements. They are often associated with a church: for example the pele tower in Embleton, Northumberland is a fine example of a so-called vicar's pele and the one at Hulne Priory is in the grounds of the priory. Hawkshaw, ancestral home of the Porteous family at Tweedsmuir in Peeblesshire, a peel tower dating from at least 1439, no longer stands but its site is marked by a cairn.

 Nowadays some towers are derelict while others have been converted for use in peacetime; the Embleton tower is now part of the (former) vicarage and that on the Inner Farne is a home to bird wardens. The most obvious conversion needs will include access, which was originally difficult, and the provision of more and larger windows.  See also: Bastle house

Example of a Pele Tower (in ruins)

Bastle houses are found along the Anglo-Scottish border, in the areas formerly plagued by border Reivers. They are farmhouses, characterized by extremely tight measures taken against raids. Their name is said to derive from the French word "bastille."

The characteristics of the classic bastle house are extremely thick stone walls (1 meter or so), with the ground floor devoted to stable-space for the most valuable animals, and usually a stone vault between it and the first (American second) floor. The family's living quarters were on the floor above the ground, and during the times prior to the suppression of the reivers, were only reachable by a ladder which was pulled up from the inside at night. The only windows were narrow arrow slits. The roofs were usually made of stone slate to resist attempts at arson.

Bastle houses have many characteristics in common with military blockhouses, the main difference being that a bastle house was intended primarily as a family dwelling, instead of a pure fortification.

Many bastle houses survive today; their construction ensured that they would last a very long time. They may be seen on both sides of the old Anglo-Scottish Border.

http://www.leithhistory.co.uk/2003/12/20/farming-in-the-restalrig/

Farming in the Restalrig

From the records of the Land holdings and medieval Charters of Restalrig that we can find not only the names of the farmers who farmed around the area but we can also reconstruct in our minds eye what Rstalrig would have looked like several hundred years ago.

The area around Restalrig for centuries was open fields and unenclosed. There were no hedges or dykes dividing it into separate fields and in fact it was divided into strips and each individual in Leith or Restalrig owned a certain number of strips of land. Just to complicate things a person’ s strip of land could be dotted all over the area and not necessary side by side. This open field system can still be worked out today from a map of the area as the houses now built on the fields follow basically the same plan. So it can be seen that the first large field was around Lochend, the second stretched from Lochend to Easter Road, another from Lochend to the Restalrig Road, and finally from Restalrig Road to Craigentinny. It is obvious that no one person could plough these fields themselves so people had to work together to farm the land. To plough the land wooden ploughs, which was the joint property of the farmers drawn by teams of eight oxen was used. This system existed up the middle of the eighteenth century and from the records of land ownership many of the farmers names are still known going back to the early Middle Ages.

To organise this further the farmers organised open air meetings called the Burlaw Court at what is now Hermitage place in what was called the Docot Park. If the weather was bad then they met at Clephands Tavern in Duke near to what is now Queen Market University College. This ceased in the middle of the Eighteenth century. The purpose of the Burlaw Court was to fix prices, discuss crops etc. There is oddly enough one of these farmers who became world famous or perhaps I should say infamous in the world of literature and that was a gentleman called John Pow. If you visit South Leith Churchyard you can still see his headstone. The story how this came about started in the Nineteenth century before Robert Louis Stevenson left Scotland for ever. As a youth he would visit the Churchyard to see the headstones of his ancestors the Balfours of Pilrig and he passed the headstone of John Pow who died in the Eighteenth century and own the farm at the Laugh at Leith where Leith, St Andrews Church now stands at the foot of Easter Road and stretched between Lochend Road and Hermitage place. According to the records he had twenty-six children and was what was called a Thrawn-man and would argue, moan, complain with everybody.

Not only this but he would sneak out at night and move his neighbours March Stones ( In some cases fields were separated by piles of stones to mark out land ownership) and steal his neighbours hay rigs. Eventually he was thrown out of the Burlaw Court but that didn’t stop him as he took them to Court which lasted for years. Not only this but. when he grazed his sheep on Leith Links for which a rent was paid he always grazed more then what he should have done. Eventually he was thrown out of South Leith Church over the pregnancy of a young woman from the Canongate which of course he denied and became an Episcopalian. However Bishop Forbes (buried in the Maltman’s Aisle at South Leith Church and author of the Lion in mourning about the Jacobite uprising of 1745) records the baptism of the Child at the Laugh at Leith in 1748. It was from John Pow that Stevenson changed to John Pew and used in his story of “Treasure Island” and immortalised him as the blind pirate who gives the black spot to Billy Bones at the Admiral Benbow Inn. As a matter of interest Stevenson took the name “Long John Silver” from the grave of John Silver from the Calton Cemetery which in the early Eighteenth century came under South Leith.

So it is from the records of the Land holdings and medieval Charters of Restalrig that we can find not only the names of the farmers who farmed around the area but we can also reconstruct in our minds eye what Restalrig would have looked like several hundred years ago. We find the names of the freemen who gave military service for their land under the feudal system and the unfree or villains who were tied to the land. Even up to the seventeeth century in old feu charters can be found that payment was made at so many pence Scots and one days work in the fields of the Laird of Restalrig.

Craigentiney Castle
Picture courtesy of Brian Wynn, Australia
Craigentinney Castle stands on what was once the eastern part of the Barony of Restalrig.  Sold by Sir Robert Logan to James Nisbet about 1604; present house built by James Nisbet; sold to Miller family after 1764.