Inveresk


Inveresk is a village in East Lothian, Scotland situated to the south of Musselburgh. It has been designated a conservation area since 1969. It is situated on slightly elevated ground on the north bank of a loop of the River Esk. This ridge of ground, 20 to 25 metres above sea level, was used by the Romans as the location for a fort in the 2nd century AD.
The element "Inver", from the Gaelic inbhir, refers to the confluence of the river Esk with the Firth of Forth.
The village was formerly in the Midlothian parish of Inveresk and developed separately from the burgh of Musselburgh.

History

Inveresk has a fine street of 17th- and 18th-century houses. Inveresk Lodge is now privately leased, but the adjacent Inveresk Lodge Garden belongs to the National Trust for Scotland, and its west facing gardens overlooking the river Esk are open to the public. This was formerly the mansion of James Wedderburn who had made his fortune as a slave-owning sugar plantation owner in Jamaica. When his son by one of his slaves, Robert Wedderburn, travelled to Inveresk to claim his kinship he was insultingly rejected by his father who gave him some small beer and a broken or bent sixpence. This experience turned Robert Wedderburn to radicalism.
The war memorial, south of the church, was designed by Sir Robert Lorimer in 1920.

St. Michael's Church

The village is dominated by St. Michael's church that stands at its west end on the summit of a hill overlooking Musselburgh. Its graveyard/cemetery stretches westwards for almost 300m and is split into separate walled sections which can be broadly bracketed as original, a late Victorian extension, an Edwardian/ early 20th century extension to the north, and a modern section to the far west.
The current church is by Robert Nisbet and dates to 1805 and has a stone spire of Wren-influence.

Noteworthy graves

The graveyard has a number of interesting graves:-