Leith Links

Leith Links (Scottish Gaelic: Fìghdean Lìte) is the principal open space within Leith, the docks district of Edinburgh, Scotland. This public park extends to 18.5 hectares (46 acres). In its current form it is divided into two main areas, a western section and an eastern section, by Links Gardens both being largely flat expanses of grass bordered by mature trees. Historically it covered a wider area extending north as far as the shoreline of the Firth of Forth. This area of grass and sand-dunes was formerly used as a golf links.

The west section of the park contains children's play areas, football pitches and, in the north-west corner, three public bowling greens and new tennis and petanque courts. In the east section an informal cricket pitch has existed since 1826. It is used by Leith Franklin Academicals Beige cricket club which, taking its name from Benjamin Franklin, was established in 1852 as the Leith Franklin cricket club. The club has a clubhouse outside, but adjacent to, the park next to the Seafield Bowling Club's enclosed lawn bowls bowling green (from 1860) and clubhouse also outwith the park. In the first week of June, Leith Festival Gala Day is held here. The Edinburgh Mela (since 2010) is held on the Links in late August

Historically the park contained a Victorian bandstand, a pond for model yachts, and was used for annual events such as pageants. Leith Races were held on Leith Sands at the edge of the original links.

During the Scottish Reformation, on 25 July 1559, the Protestant Lords of the Congregation made a truce with the Catholic Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, at the Links, who agreed to vacate Holyroodhouse and leave Edinburgh. At the subsequent Siege of Leith in 1560, English and Scottish troops made use of the area to create siege trenches. Two mounds on Leith Links, known as "Giant's Brae" and "Lady Fyfe's Brae", identified on later maps as Somerset's Battery and Pelham's Battery respectively, are Scheduled monuments as artillery mounds created for the siege in April 1560. However, the historian Stuart Harris is of the opinion, based largely on the contemporary Petworth map, that Pelham's Battery was built on the slope to the south of Leith Links and Somerset's Battery was located adjacent to the present Pilrig House. He notes that the "tradition" that these batteries were situated on Leith Links is spurious, going no further back than Campbell's "History of Leith" published in 1827. Lent authority by the Ordnance Survey 1852, this attribution saved the mounds when several other hillocks on the Links were removed in 1888.

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