Invasion

Inveresk village with its 17^th and 18^th 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.