Eastern Interior Wall of Possible Old Summer House

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 22 May 2021

If this was a summer house it was certainly an unusual one. Although still in pretty good condition it was very difficult to get any decent pictures, due to the amount of trees, plants and undergrowth in and around the structure, along with its height - this picture shows most, but not all, of the wall and I would guess goes up to about 15 feet. I stumbled across the building while looking for a non-existent footpath on the steep slope above the houses that look out to Limekilns Harbour. As detailed in my other picture, it isn't shown in any modern mapping, whatever the scale, and the only lead, as it were, is the marking of a summer house in pretty much the same spot on an 1850s OS map. It is entirely possible that the summer house is long gone, and that this is something else entirely, but as I don't have much else to go on I've decided that the summer house idea is at least a plausible theory. Since it may be around 200 years old it may well be that most of the trees and houses that now obscure the view of the River Forth were not there then making it, back then, a stunning viewpoint. It sits at the far Eastern end of a long line of sandstone cliffs. Again, there isn't much information about their origin either, but a bit of delving into the history of the nearby mansion at Broomhall, makes me think that they are the result of quarrying. According to Historic Scotland, who don't mention this building at all, most of the building materials for the house were quarried nearby. The site is well worth a visit, though getting here does involve a long schlep through chest-high brambles and nettles.

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