One Love: Haile Selassie and The Biarritz of The North
Official portrait of Emperor Haile Selassie I, 1970
Officially, it was the second day of spring. 24 hours earlier it had been warm enough to sit outside in the garden, idly dreaming of the long hot summer that lies ahead. The forecast had been good and as I walked through the Meadows on the way to Waverley Station, I thought I might have overdressed for the day out in North Berwick.
I know, I know: if it’s not how I accidentally became an accountant, or the Alfred Hitchcock films I haven’t seen, or Dexys Bloody Midnight Runners, it’s North Berwick. It was Mark Twain who offered up the advice to write what you know. Without meaning to, I’ve interpreted that mantra by writing not so much about what I know, but repeatedly about the same subjects.
But then, why not? I’ve known North Berwick for over half a century, but I certainly don’t know everything about it. Spain, Morocco and Turkey are now the favourite holiday destinations for us Scots, but this is far from being the seaside town they forgot to close down. On the contrary, it is a jewel of a resort on East Lothian’s coast which continues to give me pleasure and remains as popular today as a holiday destination as it has done since arrival of the railway in 1850. This enabled visitors who previously would have been unable to travel to the Biarritz of the North to do so for the weekend or even for the day. On the Easter weekend of 1895, it was estimated that there were 3000 visitors in North Berwick, 1500 of them day-trippers arriving on Easter Monday. This was at a time when the town’s permanent inhabitants themselves numbered little over 1500.
Disembarking the 10:40 train from Edinburgh last Thursday I was met with a bitterly cold wind whipping in off the Firth of Forth. How many times have visited North Berwick? What on earth made me think I wouldn’t need a jacket in the middle of March? Never cast a clout till May be out.
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Xmas at the Outdoor Pool North Berwick, artist unknown
A friend of mine who has (literally) carved a career for himself creating public art sent me a photograph of an old painting of North Berwick’s outdoor swimming pool together with this message:
“My Mum had an Uncle who was the Bank Manager in North Berwick during the 1940s, she used to holiday there. She told me once about Haile Selassie living for a while in the same street. One love.”
There’s a lot packed into those three short sentences. In many ways, part of the appeal of North Berwick is that it remains largely unchanged, a throwback to a more innocent age. But North Berwick’s one remaining bank, the Bank of Scotland, is set to close its doors in April, the - allegedly heated - outdoor swimming pool closed almost 30 years ago, and Haile Selassie - Ethiopia’s last Emperor - was overthrown by a coup d'état in 1974.
That reference to Haile Selassie was intriguing though. It seemed unlikely but a memory so specific that it there had to be some truth in it.
Haile Selassie was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930. Five years later, Benito Mussolini invaded his country, massacring 400,000 Ethiopians in the process. Despite Selassie’s impassioned plea to the League of Nations - “It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.” - the world ignored Ethiopia, and, with his family, the Emperor was forced to abandon Addis Ababa. Fleeing to England, initially they stayed in London but his presence there caused the British government embarrassment and so he moved to Fairfield House in Bath.
Although he involved himself in life in-&-around Bath, Selassie did a fair bit of traveling while in Britain and visited Brighton on at least one occasion, there’s a photo of him sitting on a deckchair on the Palace Pier there. If you didn’t know he was the Emperor of Ethiopia, you’d think he was an English gent wrapped up against the cold in a plush double-breasted coat, a smart Fedora hat on his head, holding a book, staring out to sea, perhaps waiting for someone. The photograph was taken in 1938, by which time Ethiopia was completely under Italian control, so it’s likely - or at least possible - that the wistful look in his face is a look of concern and his thoughts were elsewhere when the image was captured.
Haile Selassie on Brighton’s Palace Pier, April 1938
But we now have visual evidence that the Emperor of Ethiopia was not averse to sitting on a seaside pier in bitterly cold conditions. Circumstantial evidence I grant you, but at this stage, I’m taking anything, and that‘s one small step to placing him in North Berwick in the 1940s.
Selassie was also a frequent visitor to Weston-super-Mare’s Tropicana, an outdoor swimming pool that opened in 1937. Only a short journey from Fairfield House, here he would refuse the offer of VIP entry and queue with everyone else for an invigorating swim. So, another small step; if he enjoyed swimming in the open air off the coast of North Somerset, who’s to say that he wouldn’t do likewise in North Berwick where there had been an open-air pool since the turn of the 20th century?
Front page of the Daily Record, 22 June 1936
Another photograph, this one of some historical significance. On Monday 22 June 1936 the Daily Record became the first newspaper to print a colour photograph to accompany a news article. The photograph is of Haile Selassie accompanied by his youngest daughter Princess Tsehai on the occasion of them visiting Wemyss Castle as guests of Lord Inverclyde. Sadly, the news story is more concerned with the breakthrough in printing technology - ‘Today, colour photography of a news event marks another revolution in newspaper achievement.’ But, in closing, it does mention that the Emperor ‘spent a delightful weekend on the Firth of Clyde, and expressed himself charmed with everything.’ By modern standards the photograph isn’t that great and could have been taken anywhere, but Pathé News footage shows Selassie arriving at Glasgow City Chambers prior to him travelling to Wemyss Bay, and we see crowds of excited onlookers lining the streets to catch a glimpse of him and his family.
We’ve seen the Negusa Nagast sitting on a seaside pier, have reliable evidence that he frequently took to the waters in an outdoor pool, and to this day an Ethiopian ceremonial sword hangs in the Isle of Purbeck golf club house, a memento of when Selassie played there. These are all activities associated with North Berwick and now … now he’s actually in Scotland, it’s just he’s in the wrong place, 70 miles west of where we want him to be. It’s frustrating.
Tantalisingly, in King of Kings, Asfa-Wossen Asserate’s kaleidoscopic 2014 biography of Selassie, there is a passing reference to the Emperor receiving “invitations from English aristocrats to come and stay in their country houses - for example … the Earl of Wemyss in East Lothian.” This would have been at Charteris family seat, Gosford House set on the south side of the Firth of Forth near Longniddry, about 9 miles shy of North Berwick. It’s as close as we’re ever going get to placing the Lion of Judah in the Biarritz of the North.
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Park House is not as grand as Fairfield House but is typical of the handful of large Victorian villas that stretch along the north side of North Berwick’s Westgate. The gardens at the rear of these houses extend to Beach Road which, as that name suggests, backs on to the putting green and West Bay Beach. The views to the beach, out over the sea to the Kingdom of Fife are among the most sought after in the town. Certainly the properties now command more than the £3,500 that the Commercial Bank of Scotland paid Dr John Crombie in 1923 for the premises at number 12 Westgate, known then as Park House.
After ‘certain alterations [were made] to the rooms without fatally damaging the amenity of the villa’ the new bank opened on 7 November 1923 under the stewardship of Robert Howard Scroggie. This was my friend’s Great Uncle Howie Scroggie with whom his mother used to stay during the school holidays in the 1940s. An Ordnance Survey map dated 1938 shows that the house next door, number 14 Westgate - substantially larger than Park House - was then the Blenheim House Hotel. If Haile Selassie once lived in the same street, then this is where he would have stayed.
Ordnance & Survey map of North Berwick, 1938
But I’m pretty sure he never did. By June 1940, Italy had entered the Second World War as an ally of Hitler’s Germany, the mood of the British political establishment towards Ethiopia had changed and Selassie returned to liberate his homeland from Mussolini’s fascist occupation. However, it is very possible that a member of Haile Selassie’s family did stay in the Blenheim House Hotel.
Under the headline “Looking After A Prince”, the Berwickshire News of 19 October 1949 reported:
Under the charge of his nurse, 54-year-old Miss Helen Wood, of Musselburgh, who was for twelve years with Sir Christopher and Lady Furness at Netherbyres, Ayton, Prince Paul Wossen-Seged Makonnen Haile Selassie, two-year-old grandson of the Emperor of Abyssinia, has taken up residence at a children’s hotel at North Berwick. The infant Prince, who is the son of the second son of Haile Selassie, is to be brought up in this country. Miss Wood left Netherbyres, Ayton, two years ago to join the Abyssinian Royal household. Prince Paul and his nurse travelled in the Emperor’s private plane from Addis Abba.
Other newspapers and magazines carried photographs of the Prince, including Tatler which showed him playing golf. The Sunday Post reported that their stay in Scotland is “indefinite” although, if the North Berwick climate does not suit the Prince, they will probably move inland. It can often be well above 20 ºC in Addis Ababa during October, so there was no danger he was going to be too warm.
Prince Paul Wossen-Seged Makonnen, North Berwick, October 1949
Quite how Helen (“Nellie”) Wood ended up working for the Royal Court of Ethiopia is unclear, but it seems she had some influence with Haile Selassie, telling him that “no child should be brought up without spending his holidays in North Berwick.” Likewise, where Nellie Wood and the young Prince stayed is not altogether clear
One newspaper report mentions a large house called Kaimend on Hamilton Road, which may to this day still be a hotel, it’s hard to tell from their website. And of course, there’s no reason to suppose that on first arriving in North Berwick they didn’t stay a couple of nights in the Blenheim House Hotel. I mean why else would my friend’s Great Uncle have a memory of Haile Selassie “living for a while in the same street.” OK, it was his grandson, but 75 years on, that really is a trivial detail, it’s still a great story.
No, there’s a clue in that Berwickshire News report: that gruesome sounding reference to a “children’s hotel”.
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The couple walking behind me evidently think I’m casing the houses, which I sort of am, although not with a view to breaking and entering. To be fair it probably doesn’t help that I’m stopping at every second house to take a photo or make notes. They could, if they wanted to, easily get past me but this is a neighbourhood watch area and these two seem to be taking their duties very seriously.
This is York Road and I’m trying to establish for definite that the house that I saw 10 minutes earlier, when I was walking along the edge of the West Links, is St Anns. It was built in 1882 and although at that stage absolutely massive, was extended further in 1903. However, in the 1940s it was bought by the owners of the Marine Hotel and converted into a hotel where families, presumably wealthy families, could send their children accompanied by their nannies for holidays.
My minders have given up on me, pushing on ahead and with one final backward glance, get into their car and drive off. Perhaps they were just concerned that I wasn’t wearing a jacket, it is after all, barely 9 ºC.
I’m fairly sure that the house I saw earlier was St Anns, it was just that the north boundary wall, which looked like it had also been extended, was too high to enable me to see over. But rounding the corner from York Road and viewing the house from the west I can now see for definite that it is. To seal the deal - and with a degree of horror - I catch a glimpse of the grotesque statues bordering the garden steps which match the only photograph I have been able to find of when the hotel was operational.
And it was here at St Anns, in the autumn of 1949, that the grandson of Haile Selassie I, the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, Tafari Makonnen spent a few weeks. And it is here that my journey ends. North Berwick continues to reveal new secrets and never ceases to surprise.
Entrance to St Anns, March 2025
In memory of Betty Mackie. She embraced the present but her recollection from childhood holidays spent in North Berwick sent me on a journey of discovery to Ethiopia via Brighton, Weston-super-Mare, Wemyss Bay, and - once again - back to the scene of my own childhood holidays.