Month: July 2016

Harmony Cottage
The house on Forth Street, North Berwick was called Harmony Cottage and was owned by Granny Holmes. The cottage was demolished in the 1960s to widen Forth Street. According to this website: http://www.northberwick.org.uk/massy.html
it was once owned by the Henderson family.
Carl Henderson
As a child I remember that Carl Henderson lived in one of the houses at the back of Harmony Cottage.
One story I remember, from clearing out the cottage before its demolition, is that my parents threw out a lot of wooden golf clubs at the backdoor. Carl Henderson saw them and asked my parents if he could have them. The story goes that he donated these to the North Berwick museum – apparently they were early and valuable clubs. Later the museum was broken into and the clubs were stolen.
I, my brother and sister used to dig around in the East bay for “treasure”. Carl Henderson got to hear about this and presented me with a box full of musket balls that he had rescued from the beach below Tantallon Castle. According to him the spoil from an excavation of the castle moat was flung over the cliff and he rescued the musket balls. I still have them.
More information on the Carl Henderson collection (gifted to North Berwick museum) can be found here:
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-352-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_121/121_335_357.pdf