North Berwick

North Berwick, a fashionable watering-place of Haddingtonshire, at the entrance to the Firth of Forth, 23 miles by a branch-line (1848) ENE. of Edinburgh and 10 by water SSE. of Elie in Fife. Behind it rises conical North Berwick Law (612 feet); and westward stretch splendid golf-links with an 18-hole course. Tantallon Castle, 3 miles E., fronting the Bass Rock (q.v.), is a magnificent ruin, finely described in Scott's Marmion. A stronghold of the Douglasses, it resisted James V. in 1528, but in 1639 was 'dung down' by the Covenanters. Robert III. made North Berwick a royal burgh, and till 1885 it returned, with Haddington, &c., one member to parliament. Pop. 2376. See Ferrier's North Berwick (11th ed. 1890).