Malcolm Cant discusses Liberton in this extract from his "Villages of Edinburgh: an Illustrated Guide vol 2".
Liberton is perhaps one of the most elusive villages on the south
side of Edinburgh in that it is possible, even today, to identify four
separate communities with Liberton.
The most important, by position and reputation, is Kirk Liberton, which grew up around the old church at the head of Kirk Brae. Half a mile to the west, Over Liberton
or Upper Liberton came to prominence through the Littles of Liberton
who resided, firstly, in the defensive Liberton Tower, and later in the
much more elegant Liberton House. Two other communities to the north
complete the group: Liberton Dams nestles at the foot of Liberton Brae, and Nether Liberton
is clustered around the junction of Gilmerton Road and Craigmillar
Park. All four, although distinct in themselves, came within the parish
of Liberton and have in many ways developed along similar lines. The
way that development has taken place is what makes Liberton
historically interesting. The origin of the name "Liberton" is beset
with problems. The usual explanation is that it is a corruption of
Leperton or Lepertown, from a hospital for lepers which is said to have
stood in the district. There are two objections to this, however. The
first is that no trace has ever been found of a hospital in the
district which admitted people suffering from leprosy. The second is
even more convincing: the name Liberton or Libberton, as a surname,
existed in the district for more than a hundred years before known
outbreaks of the disease in Edinburgh. Stuart Harris, the eminent
authority on place names in Edinburgh, goes even further. In The Place
Names of Edinburgh Mr Harris states that the leper town explanation is
not only fanciful but impossible, since the place name is much older
than any use of the word "leper" or "lipper" in Scots’. According to Mr
Harris, the name has an Anglian source in the old words for ‘barley
farm on the slope’.
Kirk Liberton
Kirk Liberton, as the name suggests, is that part of the parish of Liberton situated around the old church.
In this small area all the main elements of village
life were located. The old approach to the village was by Kirk Brae to
the crossroads at the junction of Lasswade Road, Mount Vernon Road and
Kirkgate. The school was in the building now owned by Liberton Inn; the
church and manse occupied a large area of ground to the north-west; and
the village smiddy was on the north-east corner of Kirk Brae and Mount
Vernon Road. Altogether it was a very compact community with most of
the outlying district under cultivation. Liberton Church, designed by
the eminent architect, James Gillespie Graham, has been described, in
Groome’s Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland, as a handsome semi-Gothic
edifice. The very distinctive west tower, with its corbelled parapet
and four slender pinnacles, is a prominent landmark seen from several
viewpoints. The main body of the church is rectangular but its
symmetrical walls are interrupted by graceful windows and several
doorways. The foundation stone was laid on 27th January 1815 in the
presence of the minister, the Rev. James Grant, the heritors and many
of the parishioners.
Over Liberton
The old hamlet of Over Liberton, as distinct from the barony, was
never more than a handful of houses and farm steadings, huddled around
two principal buildings: to the west stood the ancient, high-walled
fortress of Liberton Tower; and to the east, at the end of a long
tree-lined avenue, lay Liberton House.
At the present day, Liberton Tower lies to the north of Liberton
Drive and Liberton House lies to the south. The high-walled fortress of
Liberton Tower stands, surrounded by buildings of considerable
antiquity, a few hundred yards north of Liberton Drive, almost opposite
the private road leading to Meadowhead Farm.
The
tower was built in the fifteenth century by the Dalmahoy family who
eventually sold out to the Littles. It has recently been extensively
restored and is now used as a holiday home by Country Cottages in
Scotland. To the south-east, Liberton House lies at the end of an
avenue of elm trees, a few hundred yards south of Liberton Drive. The
entrance is marked by twin gate pillars, unusually close together,
supporting tall ornamental iron gates bearing the letters LH in gold.
The driveway leads past a seventeenth-century doocot on the west side
and ends in a courtyard formed by two aspects of the main house and a
two-storey addition built slightly later as servants’ quarters. The
exact age of Liberton House is uncertain although the best-informed
opinion places it in the late sixteenth century. It was built for the
Little’s of Liberton who were previously resident in the much plainer
Liberton Tower. No respectable Scottish house of comparable antiquity
is without its ghost, and Liberton House is no exception. An apparition
is said to have appeared on numerous occasions over the years in a
variety of forms, one of which was reproduced in The Scotsman on 17th
June 1936 along with a letter from David Hunter Blair who possessed the
original photograph taken at Liberton House, in which a large and
extraordinarily sinister human face appeared with handsome features and
a smile as enigmatic as that of Mona Lisa. The original photograph has
not been traced but the newspaper reproduction, with its consequent
reduction in quality, is disappointing. Tradition has it that the ghost
has appeared in at least three different guises: Pierre, a French
nobleman, with a propensity to startle the occupants by whistling when
least expected, especially near the doocot; a female member of the
Little family who was imprisoned in Edinburgh for assisting the
Covenanters; and a Cavalier in costume and headgear of the seventeenth
century; believed to be the one whose photograph appeared in The
Scotsman. Even an extensive fire at Liberton House in 1991 does not
appear to have extinguished the ghost completely. Although no sightings
have been reported in recent years, voices have been heard and
electrical apparatus has malfunctioned without any obvious human
intervention.
Nether Liberton
Nether Liberton lies at the junction of Craigmillar Park and Gilmerton Road.
Its origins are traced by George Good to at least 1143. The
population probably reached its peak in the late eighteenth century
when there was a community of about three hundred people. There was a
village cross, a weekly market, a school, a schoolhouse, and a
schoolmaster. The two main occupations were brewing and milling, both
of which relied heavily upon the water of the Braid Burn. One of the
mill buildings, at Old Mill Lane, is still extant with the remains of
its iron wheel visible on the south wall.
Perhaps the part of Nether Liberton best known is Good’s Corner at
the north-west end of Gilmerton Road. For many years the old buildings
were used as a sawmill and joiner’s shop by the Good family.On
Gilmerton Road, a few hundred yards south of Good’s Corner, is Nether
Liberton doocot dating from the fifteenth or sixteenth century. It was
probably built by the proprietors of Inch House on the east side of the
main road. Inch House, now a Community Centre, lies to the east of
Gilmerton road. The earliest date on the house is 1617 when the
property belonged to James Winram whose descendant George Winram became
a Lord of Session in 1649, taking the title Lord Liberton.
Liberton Dams
Laurie’s Map of 1766 shows Liberton Dams between Mayfield Road and
Kirk Brae on the main route out of Edinburgh from Causewayside to
Liberton. Liberton Brae and Craigmillar Park were not constructed until
the road improvements of 1815. The dams was the smallest of the four
Liberton communities but was still large enough to have a school and
mission hall up until about 1890. There was also a large dairy owned by
the Laidlaw family on the triangular piece of ground to the east of
Mayfield Road. A photograph reproduced in The Print of his Shoe by
James Goodfellow, the missionary, shows Liberton Dams in the early
1900s. There are no villas yet at the south end of Mayfield Road, but
among the old houses on the west side, opposite Laidlaw’s Dairy, is a
small general shop reached by a tiny stone bridge across the mill lade
as it returns to the Braid Burn.
© South Edinburgh Echo, August 1999
