The Abbey was a Cistercian nunnery founded by Duncan, Earl of Fife, who died in 1154. The remains of the nunnery are the oldest buildings connected with the town and the total length of the building was 170 feet. It was consecrated to the Virgin Mary, and richly endowed with lands in the Manor of North Berwick. Its founder also bestowed on the convent the patronage of the Auld Kirk of North Berwick. In 1296 the Prioress submitted to the power of Edward 1, ensuring protection and for a while the female inhabitants of the nunnery were safe. But with the turbulent violence during the reign of James lll, the nunnery was plundered. The Prioress in 1482 applied to Parliament for protection and redress, and the Lords decreed the restoration of the property and the repair of the damages that the assailants had inflicted.

In the succeeding reign, Margaret Home fourth daughter of Sir Patrick Home of Polwarth, became a nun and rose to be prioress of the convent. Her niece Isabella, third daughter of Sir Alexander Home of Polwarth, also succeeded her aunt as prioress. Thus, previous to the Reformation, the nunnery had become part of the Home family estate. After the Reformation, the untransferred were erected into a lordship for Sir Alexander Home of North Berwick, a special favourite of James VI.

At the Reformation, the convent contained eleven nuns but in 1544 we learn that there were twenty-two of them. And even by this time the convent must have been reduced to comparative poverty, for it had been pillaged, burnt and destroyed in 1529, a full thirty years before the Reformation, which has been unjustly charged with many ruthless deeds of this kind. The site of the church, which formed part of the Abbey buildings cannot now be traced but several very interesting stained floor-tiles, seemingly connected with it, have been dug up in the adjoining fields, along with a finely carved font.

The Abbey Farm lands surrounded the convent and during the laying of the railway line in 1848 workmen came upon two stone cists on the farmland. Measuring a little more than four feet in length, each contained a human skeleton. In one of them an iron sword and dagger lay together and at the sides of the skeletons in both cists were urns of rough grey ware. Also in the neighbourhood was found several remarkable relics of mediaeval pottery and leaden pipes of considerable extent, which were used to draw water from higher ground to the convent. Several tobacco-pipes were also discovered , the heads of which were much smaller and thicker than common tobacco-pipes, probably used for smoking native herbs. The practice of smoking seems to have been common long before tobacco was known in Europe.

There are two roads remaining from those times which lead from the beach directly to the Abbey Farm. Ware Road 'ware' meaning seaweed, which was extensively used as a fertiliser and the other is the path crossing the west putting green over Beach Road through West End Place to Abbey Road which leads to the Nungate or the nun's road. Seaweed was harvested in February and spread on the land in spring as a manure for such crops as corn, barley and later potatoes. Tangle was also used especially for cabbage, while brown kelp was used as a general fertiliser.

The grain from Abbey Farm was milled at the Glen, where the ruins of the three Kintreath Mills (which were occupied until the 1840s) can be seen today. Letters inscribed on the doorpost of the middle mill suggest either 1321 or 1621 as the date of construction. There was a large dam situated at the entrance to the Glen where the culvert now passes under Dunbar Road. The water was controlled by a sluice gate and water lades provided overshot power for the mill wheels. The water then flowed into the Mill Sea, hence the name Milsey Bay. The Abbey was entitled to a percentage of all grain milled and was also known for it's wool, a staple export of North Berwick in mediaeval times. The wool from the Nunnery was known in Italy in the 13th century.

Following the reformation the mills were the property of the Barons of North Berwick. In 1739 Sir Hew Dalrymple with the permission of the Town Council built a kiln on the burgh land. He also arranged for the construction of a waulkmill for the weavers who worked the looms at Horse Crook.

The wool was exported to Bruges in Flanders where the Scots had a special agreement with the merchants of Bruges who gained a monopoly on all Scottish wool and in return the Scots paid lower custom duties. During the 15th century Bruges was the centre of the wool trade and merchants came from all over Europe to purchase their goods, so Scottish wool had a ready market. The wool was woven into fine materials for clothes, tapestries and Flemish cloth.

The most famous person connected with the Scottish trade in Flanders was Anselm Adornes, governor of the Scottish privileges in Bruges. He became ambassador of James III to the Low Countries, but when King James got into trouble with his nobles, Adornes took the flak and was murdered near North Berwick in 1483. Fortunately trade with Europe continued and during the 16th century, Veere in Flanders became its centre after the river to Bruges silted up. The port of Leith dominated the Scottish trade and the merchants of Edinburgh became very wealthy.

Farming came to East Lothian during the period from 1050 to 1250 through Northern Europe where the monks helped train local communities in agricultural skills. The district climate favoured arable farming which flourished until the 17th century when land was devastated during the wars with the English. In the 1690s there had been five years of famine when two Scots in every ten died of hunger. The parliament was weak and the customs and excise system notoriously corrupt. Scotland's only manufactured export was linen. The Act of Union in 1707 opened up access to markets in England but the only beneficiaries were the landlords who profited from free export of grain and cattle.

Within ten years of the Union, Scottish grain exported to England had increased to unprecedented levels. But these successes produced much suffering for ordinary Scots as grain and beef supplies either ran out in Scottish markets or prices rose dramatically. In the winter of 1719, the markets along the east coast of Scotland were looking empty and ordinary people feared there would be a return to the famine. This led to enormous unrest and great bitterness among the Scots with riots, seizures of grain, burning of ricks and sabotage of landlords water supplies. Gradually the situation stabilised and during the Napoleonic wars there was more land under the plough than at any other time in history.

The Prioress at North Berwick Abbey was also the owner of the tidal island where the ruins of the Auld Kirk of St Andrew are situated. Two walls from the original Romanesque church can still be seen, made up of small stones and constructed facing east to west, typical of the Celtic churches of the period. In the 13th century the church was substantially enlarged with a bell-tower added. The Auld Kirk and graveyard extended to a considerable distance eastwards but the sea gradually nibbled it away until a violent storm in 1656 reduced the buildings to ruins.

During the excavation of the Auld Kirk Green in 1951 an upright slab bearing a cross on both sides was discovered which may have been a marker to indicate the church's right of sanctuary. This was important to protect those fleeing their pursuers till the due process of law could be brought into effect.

For many years the Auld Kirk was used by pilgrims on their journey to St Andrews, but by the 16th century the public belief in pilgrimages had declined due to the pressures of the Reformation throughout Europe and by 1692 there were no ferries at North Berwick. The last Prioress before the reformation was Margaret Home in 1578.

The Auld Kirk remained in the patronage of the nuns until the Reformation and was acquired with all their possessions in the 17th century by Lord President Dalrymple in the hands of whose lineal descendants it remained until the Act of the Abolition of Patronage came into operation at 1st January 1875. The Auld Kirk Green was an island until the end of the 18th century when the road to the harbour was made up.

In February 2000, during the construction of the Seabird Centre over 30 skeletons were discovered on the site of the Auld Kirk graveyard. The skeletons ranged from a new born to an elderly woman and were in a remarkable state of preservation, the oldest is thought to date back to the 7th century. The density of the burials with the coffins laid inches above each other and intercutting made it a complex archaeological project. The unearthed graves, sited on the eastern portion of the old graveyard date from mediaeval times. It was not until the 17th century that the church authorities insisted that all future burials should be on the north side, as interments on the east and south were exposed to storm damage and ground erosion. The last burial at the Auld Kirk was between 1649-1656 when the church fell into ruin.

The Douglas and Lauder families are believed to be buried at the Auld Kirk. In a vault in 1788, a stone coffin was found containing a metallic seal with the legend 'Sigillum Williehmi de Douglas' marking the grave of Lord Douglas who lived about the year 1353. A large flat stone lying in the centre of the green enclosed by the Kirk buildings is said to mark the burying place of Lauder of the Bass. The skeleton on the left is over 500 years old.

The Witches Coven

During the 16th century there was reputedly a witches coven practising in the town and a well publicised trial of the North Berwick Witches took place in 1595. Accused of conspiring to do damage to King, James VI during his voyage from Denmark with his new bride. Their ship was caught in a terrible tempest and although the royal couple escaped, the storm was later blamed on a group of witches who met in North Berwick.

The town's connection with the plot to shipwreck the king seems to have begun with a poor maidservant from Tranent, Gelie Duncan. Employed in the house of a wealthy local man, Chamberlain David Seton. Gelie Duncan had an exceptional gift for healing and comforting the sick. In an atmosphere of fear and misgiving it was not long before her skills aroused suspicion and fearing that she possessed supernatural powers, her master put her to torture, using the 'pinniewinks' thumbscrews, designed to extract quick confessions from suspects. When Gelie Duncan kept her silence, Seton had her body examined for marks of the devil, a popular method of identifying witches. As the devil's signs were identified on her throat, she confessed and was thrown into prison.

Under torture and interrogation, Gelie Duncan claimed that she was one of 200 witches, who at the behest of the Earl of Bothwell, one of James's greatest enemies, had tried to overshadow the king. Some of their most extraordinary plotting she said took place in North Berwick. At Hallowe'en in 1590, Gelie Duncan revealed, the witches sailed to North Berwick and gathered at the Kirk. On a dark and stormy night the devil appeared to them in the church. Surrounded by black candles dripping wax, he had preached them a sermon from the pulpit. While in the churchyard, Gelie Duncan played a Jew's harp and the throng danced wildly, singing all the while.

The king had everyone named by Gelie brought before him. Among those put to death were Agnes Sampson from Humbie and John Fian, a Prestonpans schoolmaster. Both were 'convicted of divers pyntis of witchcraft and brynt'.

Historians dismiss the witchcraft at the Auld Kirk as a myth, the story being tortured out of poor servant girl Gelie Duncan and in the end she was burnt as a witch on Castle Hill, near what is now the castle esplanade in Edinburgh. Few cases were recorded after 1690, the last witches to be sentenced to death in East Lothian came from Spott and were burnt on the top of Spott Loan. To this day, an unmarked stone by the side of the road commemorates their shocking fate.

Research suggests that the trials were brought about by the efforts of the minister of Haddington, James Carmichael, working in consort with James VI and David Seton of Tranent. Basically, it was a royal and clerical outrage that was committed against ordinary people, which furthered their own political and clerical ends. There had been witch hunts before these trials, but they had the effect of unleashing a national terror that lasted until the repeal of Witchcraft Act in 1735.

The victims were tortured in the most terrible ways until they said what their inquisitors desired. Bothwell was the one they implicated, not as the devil, but as one who attended their 'conventions'. This happened at a time when Elizabeth of England had asked James VI to deal with Bothwell, only a few years after she had his mother executed. Bothwell stood trial in 1593 and was found not guilty. There were no conventions, pacts with the devil, or witchcraft practises, just ordinary people trying to survive in an age of unbelievable horror - caused by the kirk and crown.