North Queensferry - History

History

The village takes its name from Saint Margaret of Scotland, the wife of King Malcolm III of Scotland, who is said to have established the village to ensure there would be regular ferry crossings across the Firth of Forth for the benefit of pilgrims travelling to St Andrews. Margaret is said to have made her arrival in Scotland here in 1068, and to have regularly used the ferry crossing when travelling between the then capital Dunfermline, and Edinburgh Castle. From around this time, the crossing became known as the Queen's Ferry.

Margaret died in 1093 and made her final journey by ferry to Dunfermline Abbey, where she remains buried. Her son, David I of Scotland, awarded the ferry rights to the abbey.

However, it is likely that there was a settlement around the present site of the village long before the time of Margaret. The site of the village, on the narrowest part of the Firth of Forth, with added advantage of the island of Inchgarvie in between, suggests that it would have been the natural point of crossing and a vital link to the north of Scotland for centuries before the Queen's Ferry was established.

North Queensferry over the centuries remained a small community, with a population of probably no more than 600, and it never achieved the status of burgh like many of the nearby settlements. Yet the numbers passing through the village daily were huge. From noblemen to commoners, from Kings to cattle, all had to use the Queen's Ferry to cross the Forth. It is recorded that Mary, Queen of Scots used the ferry on the day she was transported to Loch Leven Castle where she was imprisoned in 1565.

In 1651, during Oliver Cromwell's campaign against Scottish royalist forces, the decisive engagement known as the Battle of Inverkeithing took place on and around the isthmus between the North Queensferry peninsula and Inverkeithing and Rosyth. The battle gave Cromwell control of Fife and the Firth of Forth. Troops of the New Model Army under Major-General John Lambert crossed the Forth from Leith over several days. They landed at Cruickness, the point to the south of Inverkeithing Inner Bay, and took up position on the Ferry Hills. On 20th July as they moved north across the isthmus they were attacked by the royalist forces under David Leslie. Fighting spread as far as Pitreavie on the far side of Inverkeithing and was said to have been particularly bloody: reputedly the Pinkerton Burn ran red with blood for days and the heaps of the dead resembled stooks in a harvest field. Lambert was victorious and claimed his men had killed 2000 and taken 1,400 prisoners, although these may be exaggerations. It is believed that the destruction of the Chapel of St James by Cromwell's men took place at this time. In the 18th century, the chapel ground became a cemetery for members of the North Queensferry Sailors’ Society.

The Town Pier, the main ferry terminus for many years, was designed by John Rennie and built between 1810 and 1813. The Harbour Light Tower was built in 1817; until then, the Signal House was used by boats as an aid to navigation. Ferries berthed both at the Town Pier and at the Battery Pier (now beneath the Forth Bridge). To accommodate the deeper draughts of the new, larger steam-powered ferries, Thomas Telford extended Town Pier in 1828 to its present length. The Railway Pier, on the far side of West Bay, was the terminus of the new Dunfermline-North Queensferry Railway which opened in the 1870s.

The ferry's importance diminished during the 19th century, with an alternative ferry crossing operating for a while between Burntisland and Granton. By the 1870s there was an increasing call for a bridge to be built over the Forth. The idea of a bridge across the Forth had been debated frequently in the past, but the depth of the water and the hard whinstone rock base found underneath had discouraged any attempts. Work on a bridge for rail traffic eventually began in 1883, under the supervision of Benjamin Baker and John Fowler. The construction of the bridge would alter life in North Queensferry drastically. At its peak, the construction of the bridge employed over 4,000 men.

The Forth Bridge was opened on 4 March 1890, by the then Duke of Rothesay (later to become King Edward VII). North Queensferry railway station opened the same year. The ferry crossing continued however, and with the coming of the motor vehicle in the 20th century, its importance was restored. By 1960, the Queen's Ferry was handling over two million passengers a year and over 600,000 motor vehicles. Naturally, this number was ever increasing and it soon became apparent that another bridge would be required.

The last ever commercial ferry crossing of the Queen's Ferry left Hawes Pier, South Queensferry on the evening of 3 September 1964, and docked at North Queensferry shortly after. The very next day, HM The Queen opened the new Forth Road Bridge, and 800 years continual use of the Queen's Ferry were finally brought to a close.