The first mention of Forth Street was in 1785, although there had been a track there named North Road or Back Street for the previous forty years. This area was the dumping ground for dunghills and the Council resolved to have the streets swept and dung collected in heaps every Thursday and Saturday ready to be carried off by the tacksman who paid the sum of £53 for the refuse.

The Clartyburn appears to have been an open sewer up to 1800, when a drain was put in. The road to the harbour was made up in 1799 and the land in Shore Street (Victoria Road) was feud in 1801. Toll bars were installed in 1805 at the Clartyburn (Law Road), Abbey Toll (Pointgarry Road) and Heugh Brae, but the townspeople were exempt from payment of the toll. At this time the land now between West End Place and Station Hill was occupied by three piggeries.

There were several friendly societies in the Burgh including the Benevolent Society which was divided into two distinct funds. The 'Funeral Fund' for allowances upon death of a member, their wife or widow and the other the 'Cow Fund' for giving mutual relief and assistance to members losing their cow by death. No member was permitted to kill their cow, even when rendered useless by accidental injury.

During 1832, sixteen cases of Asiatic Cholera were diagnosed in the town, seven died and the others survived with primitive medicine and prayer. The same year the Surveyor of Taxes described North Berwick as a small decayed Burgh with little or no trade, situated on a low sandy plain on the shores of the German Ocean. 'It appears to have been long quite stationary and there seems no reason to anticipate any alteration of its character in this respect.'

The laying of a single-track railway line by the North British Railway Company in 1850 was to herald a dramatic change in the Burgh's fortunes. The town became more accessible to visitors, attracted by the healthy aspect of sea-bathing, golfing and the scenic views. At this time the only other connection with Edinburgh was a coach with two horses.

The original single-track line was opened in August 1849, and terminated at Williamstone Farm where a temporary wooden platform was erected. The passengers were then conveyed by horse drawn carriage to North Berwick. The cutting beyond Williamstone was completed the following year and the rock used to construct new railway stations at Dirleton and North Berwick.

The North Berwick station had a single platform virtually on the same site as the present station. The facilities were rudimentary including a small track engine shed and a private siding for the lime works, owned by James Crawford at the Rhodes Farm. The goods yard was gradually improved with a cattle loading bank, and a coal store. The outward trains carried large quantities of fish, grain, potatoes, and even guano from the Bass Rock.

In the early years the line was losing money and by 1856 the steam engines were withdrawn and a horse drawn service known as the 'Dandy Car' introduced. This was nothing new as the engine attached to the first train which left here for Drem was unable to pull the carriages up the hill and had to be taken off and replaced by horses. The Dandy Car only lasted six months before the steam service was reinstated.

In 1894 the North Berwick station was extensively rebuilt with a second platform, waiting rooms, station offices, concourse and new frontage constructed. Together with a goods shed, weigh house, stables, engine shed and signal box situated beside the bridge over Ware Road.

The Gas Company proposed to erect their gas works adjacent to the burgh coal yard on the Anchor Green (Seabird Centre), but permission was refused. In 1845 the gas works were constructed at the westend of Pointgarry Road, and that year the town was lit by twenty gas lamps which were extinguished at 10.30 pm. They were not lit on moonlight nights.

In 1857, the Town Council adopted the Police (Scotland) Act which compelled Scottish Burghs to form a police force. Although the first police constable in North Berwick was appointed in 1832, assisted by the Burgh Officer. The uniform was a blue jacket with red collar, corduroy breeches and English-style helmet. Later a copper-coloured metal badge was worn, the origin of the slang word 'copper'. By the 1890s the helmet was discarded for the military type peaked cap but it was not until 1932 that the now familiar 'Sillitoe' chequered cap band was introduced.

The Police (Scotland) Act also covered civil maintenance such as drainage, cleaning streets, lighting, paving and removing ruinous or dangerous buildings. When the Act was enforced it had to be funded locally, and by May 1861 the Town Council had completed the laying out of Quality Street and High Street in causeway stones. No longer would the inhabitants risk being drowned in a sea of mud while crossing the roads during wet weather. A new pavement of Caithness stone was also laid , each proprietor paying for the laying opposite their own property. A new sewerage system was installed which added to the clean and well kept appearance of the town.

Other roads and tracks formed during this period included Graham's Close, Russell Square (Creel Court), Heriot Place (Lower Quay), Forrest's Court, Manse Road, Park Place (West End Place) and Bass View Terrace (Tantallon Terrace). Travellers entering the town from the west, until 1869, paid road tax at the Abbey Toll House while on the east the Lochbridge Toll was situated at the foot of Heugh Brae. There was one police officer Alexander Hay and a watchman at both the west end and east end during the night.

The properties at the west entrance to the town (Westgate) had been in a dilapidated state for many years and several rickety buildings were being replaced by new dwellings, to be sold by public auction. A branch of the British Linen Bank was established on a vacant piece of ground west of Charles Cunningham's brewery in Westgate, and a new road constructed leading to an elevated terrace. The feuing of a row of houses on the west side of Quality Street was in hand and the construction of a new street of working-men's houses by Sir Hew Dalrymple, leading from Shore Street towards Melbourne Park was also in progress (named after Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne,1834-1841). The term 'feu' in Scottish Law is a right to the use of land in return for a fixed annual payment (feu-duty).

At this time the High Street (Quality Street to Market Place) had undergone a series of improvements which had entirely changed its character. During an eighteen month period from June 1869, the work included the Town Council ordering the pulling down of an unsightly building known as 'Somerville's Turnpike' or the 'Roundal'. This was situated on land now occupied by the Police Station. The 'Roundal' was once the residence of Bailie Reuben Ballcraftie a former Town Councillor. It had a round staircase which stood at the front protruding into the street and small square windows known as lossens. This building is believed to have been the manse of the Auld Kirk. To the east of this was a new building (48, High Street) being constructed by Mr. Fraser, with an ironmongery warehouse underneath. At the same time a new property was being erected opposite at No. 43, by Mr. Duncan. Next door, the frontage of the General Post Office (No. 37) was completely renewed by Peter Brodie.

The old tenement that stood at the corner of Law Road was gutted in the 1860s in order to make way for a large shop at No.1 Westgate (now No.59 High Street). Mr. Edington was in the process of enlarging the Commercial Hotel (County Hotel) with the addition of an upper floor and attics, the latter commanding a splendid view of the sea. The amount of building work in the town added £300 to the rental accommodation in the Burgh. The only traces remaining from those bygone times are the numerous wells to be found on the low ground between St Andrew Street and the beach. There is a well behind the buildings at 40 High Street, one of the most densely populated areas during the 18th century and a cluster in Westgate supplying the purest clear spring water.

The property at 23-25 High Street is unique, not only in the design of the stonework but the ownership by only two families can be traced back to 1704. The ground now occupied by the buildings at 23-25 High Street was owned by William Graham. It passed to his son George Graham and then to his daughter Elizabeth who married David Dall, headmaster at Gifford school in 1760.

In the novel 'The White Cockade' written by James Grant (1822-87), he describes North Berwick as a quaint and quiet little place, its houses were chiefly thatched and had outside stairs and picturesque out shots overhanging the street on beams of wood and pillars of stone. James Grant was familiar with the town and although the characters are fictional the novel has a historical basis and is the only descriptive account of the High Street during the eighteenth century.

The land at 23-25 High Street was inherited by James Dall, the youngest son of David and Elizabeth Dall. In 1804 at the age of 20 years, James Dall was described as a Merchant of the Burgh, when he established an ironmongery business on that site. In 1812-15, Dall constructed the present three storey building which is one of only three in the town using the same masonry. The stone was quarried from Berwick Law where a unique vent of black carboniferous basaltic rock was found and used to pin the reddish brown blocks in the stonework. The others are in Quality Street - the Council Office and Nos.15-17 opposite.

James Dall was elected Chief Magistrate (Provost) of the Royal Burgh (1839-51), his son James Dall Jnr was also Chief Magistrate (1855-66) and his youngest son Thomas Dall was Town Clerk (1863-80). James Dall Jnr. continued the ironmongery business and when he died in 1868 the property passed to his daughter Janet, the sixth generation of the Graham / Dall families. In 1901 the property at 23-25 High Street was sold by public auction to John Wightman and John Whitecross (Builder). Wightman continued the ironmongery business while Whitecross developed the garden into the three storey building and shops at 29-31 High Street. The property at 25 High Street continues to be owned by the Wightman family and 23 High Street has been a hardware store since 1815.

Going further eastwards, nine houses had been constructed in the Quadrant, ideal for sea bathing quarters. The first feus in the East Links were sold in 1846 when the roadway was extended to the base of Castle Hill. Annie Abel's Tantallon House (4 West Bay Road), was the original guest house and continued to be very popular with visitors. Accommodation in the town had greatly improved since the opening of the Royal Hotel in 1861 and the Bradbury Hotel in 1870.

Visitors were now supplied with a card indicating the high and low tides, railway timetable, departure times for posting letters and a list of the colours used on the funnels of the passing steamers plying up and down the Forth. These included the General Steam Navigation Company (London) - Blue paddle boxes and painted ports; Aitken's Leith and London Company - Black funnel with red stripes; Miller & McGregor (Rotterdam and St Petersburg) - Red and black top; Inkster & Gibson ( Hamburg and Hull) - Black and white strips and cream and black top; Grangemouth-London - All black.

The Water Company was in the process of installing running water to every property, supplied from a reservoir near the Law. The Town Council also placed fire-plugs at intervals around the town, with a length of hose attached in case of fire. Although there had been several serious fires in the town, the first fire engine was not purchased until 1894.

The East Links or Coo's Green, where golf was originally played prior to 1798, was the property of the town, a common for the burgesses to graze their animals at a charge of 7/6d per cow. In 1728, the town herder was paid £5 Scots, with 24 shillings for cutting the weeds and extra for each cow grazing on the green. The burgesses supplied him with food. In 1731, rabbits were destroying the green to such and extent that authority was granted to the burgesses to shot and destroy them.

Admission to the burgess roll was approved by the Town Council and an annual fee imposed. During the nineteenth century with the abolition of the system of election of burgesses the Town Council could only appoint honorary burgesses. These included James Crawford Jnr. W.S. (1836) Town Clerk 1833 -1863; Robert Stewart M.P (1841) who represented the Burgh in five successive Parliaments; Sheriff Substitute Riddell (1842); G. H. Girlie (1848); Allan Wilson engineer to the North British Railway Company when the branch line was formed (1849); Sir Hendry R. Ferguson Davie Brt. M.P.(1868) and Robert Lyle (1874) Town Clerk 1872-1892. The East Links stretched to the ruins of a public washing-house and bleaching-green, near the Burgh boundary at the Glen Burn. At this time the East Links were lined with poplar trees planted in 1853 and provided a safe play-ground for children.

During the 1860s the family of Robert Stevenson, the famous engineer whose work included the Bell Rock lighthouse, spent many summers at Anchor Villa (West Bay Road), North Berwick. Three generations of his remarkable family, shared the holiday home, including his grandson Robert Louis Stevenson. The town made a lasting impression on the young Robert Louis and his first journey by train was from Waverley to North Berwick in 1862. He often recalled playing as a child with his friends as smugglers and pirates in a small cave at Point Garry, learning to ride a donkey on the broad sands, and climbing Berwick Law with his cousins. In the 'Lantern-Bearers', a short essay first published in February 1888 in the Scribner's Magazine, he described the town as ' A fishing village with drying nets, scolding wives, the smell of fish and seaweed and the blowing sands. He remembered the small shops with golf balls, lollipops in jars and penny pickwicks (a delightful small cigar) and the stationer selling the London Journal with illustrations and short stories.' Many of the local landmarks were the inspiration for his writing in such books as Kidnapped and Catriona.

Hansel Monday, the first Monday in the New Year was the main festival in the town when all the inhabitants turned out to compete in games on the West Links. The highlight each year was a horse race and in 1862, Peter Brodie's ' Great Unknown ' was first past the winning post. The other two annual fairs were held on the first Thursday after Whitsuntide, and the first Thursday after Martinmas, both described as old style.

Employment in the town was increasing, although most positions were seasonal. The main areas of work were at the Iron Foundry in the East Bay, agricultural labouring, domestic staff employed in the various villas, caddying and herring fishing, with 25 boats and over 60 men. In 1839, the Foundry employed 20 men manufacturing steam engines and machines for making drainage tiles. The lime kilns on the Rhodes Farm also employed a number of men. An advert in 1802 suggests that the lime produced was of the highest quality and had extensive sales not only in the Lothians but also in Fife and beyond.

In March 1870, North Berwick was the first town in the county to have telegraphic communications. Known as the alphabetic telegraph as individual letters were transmitted in the form of an electric pulse to the receiver who then arranged the letters into a word. The Telegraph Office was situated in the Post Office at 37, High Street. Previously there was no direct post to North Berwick as it was a sub-office to Haddington. In 1801 John Yorkston walked every day except Sunday, from Haddington to North Berwick with the post bag on his back. That year the town's first Post Office was established in the foyer of the Dalrymple Arms Hotel (12 Quality Street).

By 1871, the population of the Royal Burgh numbered 909, the total population in the Parish of North Berwick was 1,427. Life expectancy in Scotland was 42 for men and 45 for women. More than one in every four children died before the age of five, and around 40% did not make it beyond the age of 25.