HISTORY OF ABERLADY VILLAGE

The name "Aberlady" has several possible origins. In Pictish, Aberlady may mean "Aber" - mouth or confluence, at "ledaig" - a smooth place, i.e. the bay. In the story of St Kentigern the name used was "Aberlessie" - meaning "the mouth of stench" - referring to the piles of rotting fish to be found there. More favourably, Christian tradition held that the name Aberlady was derived from an early chapel dedicated to "The Blessed Virgin Mary" commonly referred to as "Our Lady" - perhaps the ruins in the Luffness burial ground of Aberlady Kirk could be its site.

Between Luffness House and the east end of Aberlady lie the ruins of a 13th Century Carmelite Monastery. There is a tomb and effigy remaining (see picture) and these give rise to the popular present-day name of the ruins: "Bickerton's tomb." The earliest reference is to a Christian chapel at this site in the 10th century, when the relics of St Verca, Abbess of Tyninghame in 674, were re-buried there in 941 during the Viking raids on the area. Later a convent and associated garden (today "The Gardens") were added at the east end of the village.

The Burgh of Aberlady lies on the East Lothian coast where the Peffer (Celtic word meaning "beautiful place") Burn flows into the Firth of Forth and forms the wide and shallow Aberlady Bay. It was once a natural sandy anchorage where quite large boats could come close into the shore and unload. Aberlady was a Burgh of Barony with its own Town Council and was the port for the County town, Haddington.

Free trade brought prosperity to Aberlady which was a local centre for weavers in the 18th century and also a noted centre for smuggling. Imports included bark for tanners, linseed cake, malting barley and guano. With the arrival of the railway in 1846 the shipping trade through the port of Aberlady declined. In 1845 the Burgh sold its rights of anchorage, etc. to the Earl of Wemyss. For the next twenty years or so a few farmers shipped in potatoes, manure, and so on from Leith. The last load to be unshipped at Aberlady was a cargo of stone from Fife for building Aberlady manse in 1863-64.

Through the combined effects of the railway and the Industrial Revolution, the local home-based weavers departed (some are recorded on their gravestones.) At that time there were five Ale Houses in the village, which the Minister regarded as far too many; today there are two. In the 1890s a branch railway line was built from near Longniddry through Aberlady to Gullane. This line was closed in the 1960s as part of the "Beeching" rationalisation of British Rail.

Aberlady bay has altered much with time. The Peffer Burn and the bay have become silted up. There is now a great sand-bar across the mouth of the bay which is visible at low tide, as are the remains of two war-time midget submarines which were stranded on the sand. The bay today is a Nature Reserve, and an attraction for tourists and bird-watchers. Each Autumn thousands of geese arrive to over-Winter on the bay and seals are a common sight on the sand-bars off Kilspindie Point.

The village has also grown and changed its character over the last few decades. These days it has a varied population - old-established families and newcomers, local workers and commuters to Edinburgh, the retired and the young (the primary school has some one hundred pupils.)

The local economy relies less on agriculture than it once did, though it's still important, with the local estates of Wemyss & March and Luffness employing several villagers. Increasingly the leisure industries of golf and tourism are major activities. In 1994 the village population was 851.

The above is based on "A Brief History of Aberlady Village and Church," a booklet written by Dr David Hutchison of Aberlady, published in 1993 and available from the Post Office.

Read an extract from "An Aberlady Boyhood" - written in the late 19th century. Coming shortly.