Anchor, Great Michael Rise

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 22 Feb 2024

It seems likely that this anchor was put in place when the street it is at the bottom of was built in the late 1950s. Apparently it is purely ornamental and wasn't taken from a particularly relevant boat (or ship - some say that ships are just large boats, but others argue that if a boat cannot be transported on a larger boat it becomes, by definition, a ship). As Great Michael Rise was built on grassland formerly used to dry and mend nets the anchor was probably put here as a kind of elegy to a way of life that was already rapidly disappearing way back then. The street was built to rehouse the residents of New Lane - the next street to the East, rebuilt slightly later - whose properties were deemed too basic to live in at the time. The Great Michael was the nickname given to a warship built for King James IV of Scotland at Newhaven in the early 1500s. It could also be said that it was responsible for this Edinburgh area's name: there were problems launching a slightly smaller big warship from the big port of Leith just downriver from here due to its shallower shore depths, causing King James to move his boat-building operations to this former hamlet. The ship never got used in battle (by the Scots at least) due to its size making it too hard to handle, when it mattered, for the mariners of the day. A few years after its construction James was killed in battle and it was pragmatically (and possibly with good salesmanship) sold on to the French shortly afterwards, who may also have never risked it in battle by all accounts.

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