Letter to The Scotsman in March 1922 from Charles SS Johnston, a local architect who, along with many other Edinburgh residents, was actively involved in the campaign to save Granton Castle itself back in the 1920s
… the Town Council, the Cockburn Association and many distinguished citizens and lovers of Edinburgh from all over the country … have allowed one of the most charming and valuable of all its natural features and attractions, to the citizens themselves at least, to be almost irretrievably ruined – namely, its onetime enchanting seashore on the Firth of Forth from Leith to Cramond, which required no artificial nor expensive improvements to preserve its natural beauties, but simply to be left alone………
A boy from the Orkney islands, though accustomed to wild and romantic scenery, was so transported by his first sight of Granton shore in 1866 with its winding, sandy bays, and the trees and ivy hanging over the sea, that he still vividly remembers it as a glimpse of Paradise.
We are, in this so-called ‘enlightened’ twentieth century, actually allowing a private contractor to pull down the artistic remains of the ancient castle that was built in the 16th to the 17th century, and is the only medieval building in the whole district, and to quarry even its ideal rocky site on the seashore for the purpose of making road metal and concrete, as if there were not enough rock in any other quarry hole that would serve that purpose.
It is not too late even yet to stop this destruction of one of the finest of all Edinburgh’s assets in scenery and amenity and future development…….
… although the massive and artistic old arched gateway and courtyard walls and the gable of the old vaulted kitchen have already been taken down, together with a large part of the rock on which they stood, all these could still be restored with care; and in any case the main buildings of the castle and its old-time garden walls and gateways are still intact and require no other outlay than to be bought from their present owner and left alone.
And, if the Ancient Monuments Department of H.M. Board of Works … cannot manage this much for us now, there are surely hundreds if not thousands of our citizens outside the Town Council and Cockburn Association who would readily subscribe the thousand pounds or so that would do this.
I am etc
Charles S S Johnston