This fascinating collection images is a sample of some of the many pictures of Newhaven held by the Edinburgh Room. They include some of the world renowned Hill and Adamson images from 1847, some of the earliest photographs ever taken. These posed, yet stunningly beautiful works, provide a rare snapshot in time. Fifty years later we have the atmospheric works of John McKean, giving us an insight to how the village and its people looked going about their daily business. As well as images of the past, more modern colour images of the harbour let us see what has remained of the original fishing village.
Newhaven was founded by James IV in 1504 as a royal dockyard. The flagship of the Scottish navy, the Great Michael, was built here in 1511 and she was the largest ship of her time. The death of James IV at Flodden saw the end of the expansion of the Scottish Navy. Newhaven however continued to thrive as an important fishing village, famous for oysters and herring. An indoor fish market was built there in 1896, that served many of the fishing villages up and down the coast. Newhaven fishwives, with their distinctive striped clothes and creels, were a common sight on the streets of Edinburgh selling fish.
Newhaven became part of Edinburgh in 1920, four centuries after its foundation. Its fishing industry however went into decline in the 1950s, but land reclamation that was started in the 1940s to extend Leith Harbour has continued in recent years giving rise to extensive new housing and transforming an industrial landscape into an extension to the village.
The image library for the collections of Edinburgh Libraries and Museums and Galleries