Giant's Brae: Siege Guns and Plague on Leith Links
Why is it significant?
In front of you the flat green of Leith Links suddenly heaves itself up into a smooth grassy hump, the kind of slope children roll down on summer evenings while dogs chase them to the bottom. It is called Giant's Brae, and a little further east there is a smaller twin, Lady Fife's Brae.
Key Facts
| Place | Giant's Brae: Siege Guns and Plague on Leith Links |
|---|---|
| Address | Leith Links, Edinburgh EH6, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.97020, -3.16680 |
| Part of Walk | Leith Uncovered: The Shore, the Docks and the Birthplace of Golf's Rules in Edinburgh |
| Generated | Generated |
In front of you the flat green of Leith Links suddenly heaves itself up into a smooth grassy hump, the kind of slope children roll down on summer evenings while dogs chase them to the bottom. It is called Giant's Brae, and a little further east there is a smaller twin, Lady Fife's Brae. Nobody piled them up for picnics.
In 1560 Leith was a fortress. Mary of Guise, the French-born regent of Scotland and mother of Mary Queen of Scots, had ringed the town with modern walls and filled it with French soldiers. The Scottish Protestant lords, backed by an English army and fleet, laid siege to it that spring, and on this open ground they dug gun batteries to pound the walls. Tradition has long held that these two mounds are what remains of those emplacements, though historians still argue about it, and the braes have never been fully excavated.
The siege ended without a grand storming. Mary of Guise fell ill and died in Edinburgh Castle in June 1560. In July the Treaty of Edinburgh sent both the French and the English troops home, and in August a parliament in Edinburgh broke with the Pope. So the Scottish Reformation was settled partly by sickness, partly by diplomacy... and partly by the cannon that may once have stood roughly where you are standing.
The Links remember a darker year as well. In 1645 plague swept through Leith, and by some estimates it killed around half of the town's people. The kirkyards could not cope, and many of the dead are believed to have been buried out here, on the common ground beyond the town. It gives a different weight to all this cheerful grass.
And yet this same turf gave the world something joyful. When Edinburgh's gentlemen were not besieging anybody, they came out here with long wooden clubs and stitched leather balls... and wrote down rules that golfers still recognise today. Walk north-east across the Links towards their northern edge by Links Gardens, where the old course once ran.