Qualla: South Queensferry

South Queensferry: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Once a year, on a Friday in August, a local man steps out of a Queensferry house wearing a costume of sticky burdock burrs that has been pressed onto his body until only his shoes, his hands, and two small holes for his eyes show through. He cannot bend his arms. He cannot sit down. With a sash, a floral hat, and two staves grasped in burr-wrapped fists, he begins a slow nine-hour walk through every pub in town, sipped whisky through a straw by his attendants, while children collect coins on his behalf. The custom is over three centuries old and probably pagan. Nobody quite knows why. South Queensferry, it turns out, is full of that kind of story.

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South Queensferry: The Queen's Ferry

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The name belongs to Margaret. In the eleventh century, Margaret, queen consort to King Malcolm III and later Saint Margaret, established a ferry service across the Firth of Forth at this point, the narrowest practical crossing on the river. A mid-twelfth-century source records th...

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South Queensferry: Mesolithic Beginnings

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2012, archaeologists working in advance of the Queensferry Crossing construction excavated a dwelling at Echline that dated to roughly 10,000 years ago. It may be the earliest home discovered in Scotland, and possibly the whole United Kingdom. Margaret's ferry, in other words,...

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South Queensferry: The Loony Dook

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On New Year's Day, hundreds of people walk into the freezing Firth of Forth in fancy dress. The Loony Dook started in 1986 as a joke between three locals looking for a hangover cure. They did it again the next year for charity. It is now part of the official Edinburgh Hogmanay ce...

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South Queensferry: Hawes Inn and Stevenson

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Under the southern end of the Forth Rail Bridge sits the Hawes Inn, dating from the seventeenth century. Opposite is the pier that served Margaret's ferry until 1964. Robert Louis Stevenson, an Edinburgh native, used the Hawes Inn as a setting in his 1886 novel Kidnapped, the mom...

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South Queensferry: Black Castle and Old Stones

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Some of the older buildings carry harder stories. Black Castle, a house on the High Street built in 1626, takes its name from a tragedy. When its original owner, a sea-captain, was lost at sea, his maid was accused of paying a local beggar-woman to cast a spell that killed him. B...

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South Queensferry: Most Beautiful Town

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2025, a Telegraph study ranked 1,250 towns across the United Kingdom. South Queensferry came first. With its High Street curving along the water, its three bridges visible above, the Hawes Inn at one end and the Tolbooth clock tower at the other, it is the kind of place where ...

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