Inveresk (
Gaelic: Inbhir Easg) is a village in
East Lothian, Scotland situated 5⁄8 mi (1 km) to the south of
Musselburgh.[1] It has been designated a
conservation area since 1969. It is situated on slightly elevated ground on the north bank of a loop of the
River Esk. This ridge of ground, 20 to 25 metres above sea level, was used by the Romans as the location for
Inveresk Roman Fort in the 2nd century AD.[2]
The prefix "
Inver" (Gaelic inbhir) means a river mouth and refers to the point where the River Esk meets the
Firth of Forth.[3]
The village was formerly in the
Midlothian parish of Inveresk and developed separately from the
burgh of Musselburgh.
History
A Roman cavalry fort sat on the hilltop around 200AD and numerous Roman artefacts and buildings have been found in the village over the years. In 2004, archaeological excavations by
Headland Archaeology found Roman artefacts on Inveresk Brae.[4] The lands were gifted to
Dunfermline Abbey in the 12th century.[5]
Inveresk centres on a street of fine 17th- and 18th-century houses. Its location being thought to be agreeable and healthy earned for the village the name of the Montpellier of Scotland.[6]
Inveresk Lodge (1683) is now privately leased, but the adjacent
Inveresk Lodge Garden belongs to the
National Trust for Scotland, and its west facing gardens overlooking the river Esk are open to the public. This was formerly the mansion of James Wedderburn who had made his fortune as a slave-owning sugar plantation owner in Jamaica. When his son by one of his slaves,
Robert Wedderburn, travelled to Inveresk to claim his kinship, while his father did not deny him to be his son, he "called me a lazy fellow, and said he would do nothing for me. From his cook I had one draught of
small beer, and his footman gave me a cracked
sixpence". This experience turned Robert Wedderburn to radicalism.
Halkerstoun dates from around 1690. The
Manor House was built in 1748 for Archibald Shiells. Catherine Lodge built in 1709 for Alexander Christie. Eskhill was owned by
Thomas Mylne in 1710 and incorporates a finely carved 1760 doorpiece moved from a demolition in
George Square, Edinburgh in the 1970s. Oak Lodge dates from c.1720, Eskgrove House from around 1750. Inveresk House is one of the oldest in the group dating from at least 1643, and Inveresk Gates dates from 1773.[7]
The war memorial, south of the church, was designed by Sir
Robert Lorimer in 1920.[8]
St. Michael's Church
The church site predates the Reformation and originally belonged to the
Abbey of Dunfermline. From 1560 it came under the Presbytery of
Edinburgh but in 1591 transferred permanently to the control of the Presbytery of
Dalkeith.[9]
The village is dominated by St. Michael's church that stands at its west end on the summit of a hill overlooking
Musselburgh. Its graveyard/cemetery stretches westwards for almost 300m and is split into separate walled sections (marking its various stages of extension) which can be broadly bracketed as original (mainly 18th century), a late Victorian extension, an Edwardian/ early 20th century extension to the north, and a modern section to the far west.
The current church is by Robert Nisbet and dates to 1805 and has a stone spire of
Wren-influence.[10]
A white-painted, cast-iron sculpture of a coffin draped in military regalia, atop a full-sized cannon and cannon-balls, just south of the church marking the grave of Major William Norman Ramsay of Waterloo fame (see separate article
Order of battle of the Waterloo Campaign)
Mary Levison served as Deaconess in St Michael's Church in Inveresk from 1954,[12] and was the first person to petition the Church of Scotland for the ordination of women to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament in 1963.
^Burnet,JEM (1999) A reason for Inveresk. Courtyard Press, Inveresk.
ISBN0-9537450-0-7
^Dixon, Norman.
"The Placenames of Midlothian"(PDF). Archived from
the original(PDF) on 27 August 2011. Retrieved 4 July 2012. "'The mouth of the R. Esk' v. G. inbhir, inbhear: 'the confluence of a stream with the sea.'"
Moodie, Leslie; Beveridge, J. G. (1845).
"Parish of Inveresk". The new statistical account of Scotland. [electronic resource]. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. pp. 246–304.