(gentle music)
- Hello, and welcome to Trinity House.
This was the headquarters of Masters Mariners of Leith.
A seafaring fraternal organization
established to provide help to sailors, to the widows
and to the seafaring community here in the Port of Leith.
This house, this organization, was established in 1380
but there was a previous house built on the same site
which was built in 1555, in 16th century.
The building which you can see today was handed over
to Historic Environment Scotland in 2004.
We tend not to change anything in the house
and just to show the visitors how it looked like
in the olden days and we welcome the public to visit
the house and to see our amazing collections.
I'm standing now in the Trinity House vaults.
These vaults and the walls outside
are the only remaining parts
of the old house built in the 16th century.
Actually, we think there was even an older building built
on this site before, but this was destroyed
by the English raids in the 1540s
when much of the Port of Leith was demolished as well.
Not much is known about the old 16th century house.
The only thing we know it was a thatched house
and built of stone.
The old house served as an almshouse and a hospital.
Six widows could live in the house
and they would be given food, candles and a room.
These vaults had many different uses.
It's purpose would change over the ages.
Just to mention a few.
When Oliver Cromwell came to Scotland
his troops would occupy much of the Port of Leith
and at this time he seized the land of Trinity House
and also the South Leith Parish Church
which stand opposite of this site here.
Another thing, later on these vaults were used as a school.
Young boys were taught mathematics here and navigation.
This is one of the earliest places in Scotland
where young boys could be taught navigation.
Another thing later on actually,
this area was used as a storage and you can see
just behind me these cubbyholes actually,
they were used for storage
and they would keep here flax and wine.
We are now in the Masters Room.
This room is full of old books, documents and paintings
as we can see around,
and this was the meeting room
for the Masters Mariners of Leith
and in fact, the current captains still meet in the room.
They have monthly meetings and quarterly meetings.
And I have to say this room hasn't changed
too much since 2004.
Besides the old paintings, old documents and books
there is also a strong room in the room
and this is where the Prime Gilt was kept.
The Prime Gilt was a tax of 12 pennies on every uploaded
and loaded Scottish ship coming to the Port of Leith.
Port of Leith was a very busy port dealing mainly
with north Europe and the Baltic countries.
And the Prime Gilt funded the activity of this organization.
I'm now in the Convening Room.
The space and the greatness of this room shows you
the importance of the organization,
Masters Mariners of Leith.
When they built this house in 1817
they had hundreds of members so they needed some large space
for their special gatherings.
And just right behind me, you can see this big table
with the chairs, the table, and the chairs were commissioned
to the Trinity House to hold special meetings
and as you can imagine
there will be plenty of people sitting around the table.
The last addition to the Convening Room
was this beautiful ceiling.
The ceiling was made by John Dow.
He was hired by the Trinity House Masters
and they paid 50 Guinness to make the ceiling.
And you can see many maritime features here.
You can see Neptune, you can see dolphins,
you can see anchors and globes,
it's really a rather beautiful ceiling.
This room was left much as it was
since Historic Environment Scotland took over
the house in 2004.
The exhibition here is very eclectic.
The Master Mariners of Leith gathered
all of these objects over the years
and some of the objects were brought from their voyages
and some objects were donated to Trinity House.
We have navigation instruments here,
we have globes, we have nature exhibits here as well
and first of all we have lots of paintings hanging
from our walls.
Most of the paintings are
of people associated with Trinity House.
We have four Henry Raeburn paintings here in this room.
So again, it shows you how important this organization was
in the golden age.
I hope you have enjoyed this virtual tour of Trinity House.
We would like to welcome you to visit our house
and to see our wonderful collections.
If you want to find out how to visit us
please go to our web page.
You can see all the details on the screen.
Thank you.