Inveresk village
with its 17th and 18th century houses and
beautiful gardens is one of the finest conservation areas in
Scotland.
Gardens to delight the senses are stocked with plants from every part of the world.
The stones that made the garden walls and the old houses are from still older buildings as far back as the Roman town. There are no ruined stones only ruined buildings and good stone will always find a home... or make one
It has not always
been the place for tranquil contemplation. Situated on a ridge
commanding views of the Forth and above the point where the Esk
river meets the Firth of Forth – Inbhir Easg , the confluence of
the river Esk, with the Forth, in Gaelic – it was of strategic importance on the coastal
plain.
It was occupied by
the Brythonic tribe, the Goddodin who, no doubt, had displaced the
earlier inhabitants. When the Romans invaded and marched north,
its significance was obvious to them and they established a large
fort and, later, a vicus or
township. The Goddodin, latinised toVotadini became a client state
of the empire at its northern
frontier, at the eastern end of the Antonine Wall.
Diagonal chisel marks of Roman stonemasons | on the walls of the church |
When
the legions left, the land was disputed by Northumbrian Angles and
Southern Picts. By the time the country had melded into the nation
of Scotland, the invading English armies took the same route north.
The
land around St Michael's
Kirk had great mounds to take artillery batteries guarding the old
bridge and port.
The
Rough Wooing of 1547 when Henry VIII tried to force a marriage
between, the infant Mary, Queen of Scots and his son Edward, had the
English armies devastating the area and defeating the Scots at the
Battle of Pinkie Cleugh.
Pinkie Cleugh Battle Site |
The
seventeenth century saw Cromwell's Roundheads take possession and the
eighteenth saw the arrival of Charles Stuart's Jacobites
Invaders
and invasions have come and gone, none have possessed the land but
fleetingly. All have retreated and left. But now there are more
persistent interlopers.
The
plant invaders – Japanese knotweed, Himalayan balsam., Giant
hogweed. More demanding and more dogged than any Roman, Anglo-Saxon
or Englishman, they have colonised great tracts of the country,
subduing and displacing the natives. These invaders are here to stay
it would seem.
Himalayan Balsam |
Japanese Knotweed |
Napoleon
called us a nation of shopkeepers – he didn't manage to invade
either – but it is because we are a nation of gardeners that we
suffer under the alien intrusions. Plants brought back to Victorian
gardens have commandeered great swathes of riverbank overpowering all
in their path.
It looks like these invaders have succeeded where all others have failed. They are the possessors of the land now.
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