St Margaret's Loch: Prince Albert's Lake
Why is it significant?
Walk down to the edge of St Margaret's Loch and you will probably be met by a crowd of swans, geese and ducks who assume you have brought them lunch. Please do not feed them bread... it is bad for the birds and for the water.
Key Facts
| Place | St Margaret's Loch: Prince Albert's Lake |
|---|---|
| Address | St Margaret's Loch, Queen's Drive, Holyrood Park, Edinburgh EH8, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.95230, -3.16110 |
| Part of Walk | Climbing a Volcano: Arthur's Seat & Holyrood Park, Edinburgh |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk down to the edge of St Margaret's Loch and you will probably be met by a crowd of swans, geese and ducks who assume you have brought them lunch. Please do not feed them bread... it is bad for the birds and for the water. Above the loch, on a rocky knoll, stand the broken walls of a medieval chapel, the most romantic ruin in the park.
The loch looks ancient, but it is younger than the railway. It was created in 1856, when a marshy patch at the foot of the hill was dug out and flooded. It was part of a programme of improvements to the park encouraged by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, who had firm ideas about how a royal park ought to look. Dunsapie Loch, higher up the hill, was made in the same spirit a few years earlier.
The same improvements gave the park the road you keep crossing, Queen's Drive, which loops right around the hills so that carriages could enjoy the views. Victorian Edinburgh came out here on Sundays in its best clothes, and the park became a stage for enormous gatherings too. In 1860 Queen Victoria reviewed more than twenty thousand volunteer soldiers here, with vast crowds watching from the slopes.
The loch is named after Saint Margaret, the English-born queen of Malcolm the Third, who died at Edinburgh Castle in 1093. Her name is on another curiosity nearby: at the foot of the crags, beside the road, a small medieval well house called St Margaret's Well. It was moved here in the nineteenth century, stone by stone, from its original site at Restalrig, when railway works threatened it.
Wildlife has made itself very much at home in this artificial loch. Herons stand in the reeds like grey statues, and in winter extra visitors fly in from colder places. Now take the path that climbs the knoll above the water to the ruined chapel. It is short, but steep.