The History of Queensferry – told plainly, without polish, by someone who grew up on these streets.
Most guides skim the Ferry from the surface. This one doesn’t. I’ve spent years digging through parish records, old maps, harbour logs, school archives, census notes, forgotten council reports, and stories passed down by families who’ve lived here for generations. I’ve walked every lane in every season, checking details against historical sources that never make it into commercial guidebooks.
This companion is built from local evidence, firsthand knowledge, and the kind of research only someone rooted in Queensferry can do — giving you an account of the town’s past you won’t find anywhere else.
Queensferry History: A Town Shaped by Weather, Work and the Crossing
Queensferry never grew out of comfort. It grew because the Forth forced people to stop here — soldiers, saints, shipmasters, refugees, engineers. Most passed through. Some stayed. Every one of them left a mark on this narrow strip of rock and tide.
A Local’s History of a Harbour Town
You don’t understand Queensferry by walking it on a sunny day. To know the place, you picture it stripped back — wind pushing up the Forth, gulls cutting the air, stone sweating in the haar. The bridge draws the eye now, sure, but the town was here long before the engineers arrived with steel, rivets, and plans.
This shoreline has seen Romans, pilgrims, monks, traders, kings, witch-hunters, shipmasters, soldiers, and locals just trying to get through another winter without losing the roof. Every few centuries, someone shows up convinced they’re dragging the place into a new era. Some did. Most didn’t.
What you’re holding here isn’t a polite museum tour. It’s the Ferry’s life in order – the rough edges, the gaps, the bits the council leaflets leave out. The truth is simpler: people clung to this strip of rock because the crossing mattered. The rest – the houses, the lanes, the stories – grew out of that single need.
So start at the beginning, before the bridges, before the ferries, before Saint Margaret set foot on the Binks. Start when Queensferry was barely even a name.
Picture of Queensferry Crest: Haythere, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.