Three bridges arc across the Firth of Forth and land at the same Fife village. The 1890 cantilever, painted Forth Bridge red, carries the railway. The 1964 suspension bridge carries traffic that no longer fits its lanes. The 2017 Queensferry Crossing, cable-stayed and white, picked up the road traffic and made the older bridge a backup. They all touch Fife at North Queensferry, a coastal village of about a thousand people that has been the natural crossing point on this estuary since long before there were bridges to do the work.
The name comes from Margaret of Scotland, wife of King Malcolm III, who arrived in Scotland in 1068 fleeing the Norman conquest of England. Margaret used the ferry crossing here regularly, travelling between Dunfermline, then the Scottish capital, and Edinburgh Castle. She established a regular service to support pilgrims walking to Saint Andrews, and the crossing became known as the Queen's Ferry. When Margaret died in 1093, her body made one final journey by ferry, west to Dunfermline Abbey, where she remains buried. Her son David I gave the ferry rights to the abbey. The North in the name was added centuries later, to distinguish the Fife shore from South Queensferry on the Lothian side.
The Firth narrows here, with the rocky island of Inchgarvie set like a stepping stone in the middle. That geography made North Queensferry inevitable. Mary, Queen of Scots, used the ferry in 1567 on her way to imprisonment at Lochleven Castle. In July 1651, during Oliver Cromwell's campaign in Scotland, the New Model Army under Major-General John Lambert crossed the Forth from Leith over several days and landed at Cruickness. They took up position on the Ferry Hills above the village. On 20 July the royalist force under David Leslie attacked. The Battle of Inverkeithing spread south as far as Pitreavie and was particularly bloody. Lambert won, claiming his men killed two thousand Scots and took fourteen hundred prisoners. With the battle, Cromwell took Fife and the Forth.
On the Town Pier, designed by John Rennie and built between 1810 and 1813, stands a hexagonal stone tower 23 feet tall. The Harbour Light Tower, designed by Robert Stevenson in 1817, is the smallest working lighthouse in the world. Robert Stevenson, grandfather of the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, was the engineer behind dozens of Scottish lighthouses. Most were towering pillars on lonely rocks. This one is the size of a single room. It once warned ferries away from the rocks at the pier's edge; today, after restoration, it still shines for visitors. The pier itself was extended in 1828 by Thomas Telford to accommodate larger steam ferries. Both engineers' fingerprints are on this stretch of shoreline.
The peninsula on which the village sits is a geological sill of quartz dolerite, locally called whinstone, an extraordinarily hard igneous rock. Cruicks Quarry, in the north-east of the peninsula, has been worked since at least the 1820s. Its stone built the docks at Leith and Liverpool, and paved many of the streets of London. The quarry went silent in 2009. The pool that became Deep Sea World aquarium in 1993 is an old quarry hole. The shoreline is two adjacent Sites of Special Scientific Interest, designated for both geology and biology. Fulmars nest on the old quarry cliffs. Killer whales have occasionally been spotted coming up the Firth as far as Queensferry, observed from the Fife Coastal Path.
Gordon Brown, the former British Prime Minister, has lived in North Queensferry since the 1990s. So did the novelist Iain Banks, who grew up here, moved away, and returned in the early 1990s. The journalist Ian Jack grew up here too. The village population is just over a thousand, but its quiet streets have produced a remarkable concentration of national figures. The oldest inhabited house, once the Black Cat Inn, sits on Main Street opposite the Georgian Albert Hotel; a tunnel under the floorboards, found in the early 20th century, runs toward the sea. The chapel of Saint James, founded by Robert the Bruce around 1320, was destroyed by Parliamentarian troops in 1651. Very little remains.
Coordinates 56.0111 N, 3.3942 W, on the north shore of the Firth of Forth, 9 statute miles northwest of Edinburgh city centre. The three Forth bridges - Forth Bridge (railway, 1890), Forth Road Bridge (1964), and Queensferry Crossing (2017) - all land within a few hundred metres of each other at North Queensferry, making the area one of the most distinctive aviation landmarks in Scotland. The red cantilever truss of the railway bridge is recognizable from 30+ nm. Edinburgh Airport (EGPH) is about 7 nm south, with arrivals from the north often routed over this area. Best altitude for photography 2,000 to 5,000 feet AGL. Watch for haar drifting in from the North Sea, which can rapidly reduce visibility over the Firth.