7. Some Lesser Lothian Streams This Is A
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7. Some Lesser Lothian Streams This is a ‘wash-up’ section, in which I look briefly at a number of small streams, mostly called burns, which flow directly to the sea or the Firth of Forth, but which in terms of discharge rate are mainly an order of magnitude smaller than the rivers looked at so far. For each, I give a short account of the course and pick out a few features of interest, presenting photographs as seems appropriate. Starting furthest to the east, the streams dealt with are as follows: 1. Dunglas Burn 2. Thornton Burn 3. Spott Burn 4. Biel Water 5. East Peffer Burn 6. West Peffer Burn 7. Niddrie Burn 8. Braid Burn 9. Midhope Burn As shall become clear, some of these streams change their names more than once along their lengths and most are formed at the junction of other named streams, but hopefully any confusion will be resolved in the accounts which follow. 7.1 The Dunglas Burn The stream begins life as the Oldhamstocks Burn which collects water from a number of springs on Monynut Edge, the eastern flank of the Lammermuir Hills. No one of these feeders dominates, so the source is taken as where the name Oldhamstocks Burn appears, at grid point NT 713 699, close to the 200m contour. After flowing c3km east, the name changes to the Dunglas Burn which flows slightly north-east in a deep, steep- sided valley for just over 7km to reach the sea. For the downstream part of its course the burn is the boundary between the Lothians and the Scottish Borders, but upstream it flows in the former region. The village of Oldhamstocks lies along a single street, with attractive houses and cottages, a few dating to the 18th century; the road leaving to the south-east crosses the burn, already running in a gorge by way of a bridge which may date, at least in part, to the 17th century. 1 Oldhamstocks Church, shown alongside, viewed from the south-east, has origins and probably some lower stonework dating to the 12th and 13th centuries, but most of the masonry was reconstructed in 1701. However, attached to the east gable-end is a chamber dating to 1581 which was the burial aisle of a branch of the Hepburn family who owned a nearby castle, and is now adapted as the chancel. The ornate, low sandstone structure makes an unusual contrast with the neat whitewashed main body of the church As the Dunglas Burn nears its mouth, it passes on its left bank, remains of a fort incorporating ramparts and ditches built by the English army which occupied part of Scotland after the Battle of Pinkie in 1547, until 1550, when the fort was placed in Scottish hands under the terms of a Treaty of Boulogne. Further downstream, also on the left bank, is the site of a 14th century castle of the Home family, where a mansion built in the 1960s now stands. More tangible remains are immediately to the east; Dunglass Collegiate Church was founded by Sir Alexander Home in 1444. As originally built, there was a choir and a nave. By the early 1500s north and south transepts had been added to the church to provide additional chapels, together with a tower above the crossing. In 1560, the college of priests had grown to include a provost and twelve chaplains, plus boy-choristers, but all were expelled after the Reformation. The building remained in religious use until the 18th century, but was then converted to a barn by the removal of the large east window and the stonework below it, frankly an act of vandalism, to provide a suitably-sized doorway, as can be clearly seen in the photograph above, taken from the north-east. Since then, the ruined church has had gentler treatment, and is again in use for services of various types, albeit that with the large hole in the wall, and no window glass, it must be very drafty. The gorge formed by the burn has always been a significant obstacle which had to be bridged to allow travellers seeking to skirt round the east end of the Lammermuir Hills to progress. The Edinburgh/London railway line is carried on a viaduct with 6 arches, opened in 1846; the main central arch spans 41m, and is 33m above the burn. There are four standing road bridges crossing the burn in close proximity; that furthest upstream is a reinforced concrete structure, opened in 1932, with a main segmental arch spanning 47m. Next to it downstream, is the railway viaduct, and then the road bridge it replaced, which was opened in 1798; it 2 was a masonry structure with a single segmental arch spanning 25m, and 23m above the burn. Then comes the newest bridge built around the year 2000 to a totally different design with massive girders at each face carrying the road platform, and supported on seemingly slender cylindrical pillars. Another 150m downstream is the 5th bridge in all, which is the oldest, found by walking down a track on the left bank. It looks like a wedge of masonry pierced by a single stilted semi- circular arch, as shown in the photograph alongside of its downstream face. Its 4.6m wide trackway originally dipped to a pronounced hollow in the centre, but has been levelled up to a degree. The bridge has undergone much repair and is supported by two buttresses, themselves patched. The first construction is likely to have been early in the 17th century, and some of the patching and buttressing probably dates to c1648. It was clearly kept in a reasonable state of repair, even after a replacement had been opened in 1794. The top of a subsidiary arch, now largely earthed up, is visible near the base of the upstream face. It was probably built to accommodate a mill-lade in the mid-17th century because the existence of Dunglass Mill was recorded in 1648; parts of the mill, downstream from the bridge, may survive in a present-day house. The photograph is not my own, but was apparently taken in 2011 and is on a website called hiveminer.com; when I visited, the bridge was heavily obscured by foliage, and I could see no way down to the burn. It was quite a stretch of the imagination to accept when standing on the bridge, that for almost 2 centuries it formed part of the main route from Edinburgh to England. There must have been an earlier crossing, but whether it was a ford, where the burn reaches the sea, or another bridge is a matter for conjecture. 7.2. Thornton Burn The water in this stream also comes from the eastern flanks of the Lammermuir Hills, but definition of its source involves an element of choice. Tracing it upstream from its mouth, choosing the larger branch at each confluence where names change, the likeliest sequence is Thornton Burn, Braidwood Burn, Thurston Mains Burn, and Aikengall Water. The source of the last-named is at grid point NT 683 700, just above the 350m contour, and less than 1km north-west of the northernmost stream which forms the Oldhamstocks Burn. The most notable feature here is a very large wind-farm. Defined in this way, the burn is c12km long and most of its course is in a deep defile through moorland suitable for rough grazing, running first north-east and then east. A more arable landscape appears by the time it has transformed into the Braidwood Burn, but it still flows in a gorge to where it makes its last name change at the hamlet of Thornton, at a tight S-bend. 3 Here, there were two castles, Thornton and Innerwick, set high on the right and left banks respectively. The ruins of the latter are substantial, as shown in the photograph above, of an enclosure castle, occupying a rocky promontory, cut off by a rock-hewn ditch 4.5m deep and 5.4m wide. This castle was probably begun in the 15th century with a keep and an outer courtyard wall, and additional buildings were added later, though only the lower storeys now remain. The first castle on the site was built in the 14th century by the Stewarts, but in 1398, the castle passed to the Hamilton family, ancestors of the Earls of Haddington. The castle, which was near the easiest invasion route from England saw considerable action; it was besieged in 1402, by Sir Henry Percy, ‘Hotspur’, and then captured and fired in 1547 during the Duke of Somerset’s invasion. It was sleighted by Cromwell in 1650, and since then has probably been quarried, reducing it to its present state. Though on private ground, it can be approached from the north up a field path. Thornton Castle has vanished almost completely, so nothing can be said of its configuration. It can be traced back to the 16th century when it also was taken by the Duke of Somerset’s invading force, and Cromwell was responsible for its destruction. Having negotiated the aforementioned S- bend, the burn emerges from its deep valley to flow under the main railway and road from Edinburgh to north-east England; the photograph alongside looks downstream here. In the distance the buildings of a corn-mill may just be visible; it dates to c1800 according to the RCAHMS website, and though no longer in operation in the 1970s, the water wheel was claimed to be still in situ then, though I was unable to confirm that it is there now.