Newhaven Heritage Museum

Newhaven Heritage Museum stood in the old fish market beside Newhaven harbour on Edinburgh’s waterfront. The building had once supplied the village with fresh seafood and now housed displays about the place. Its exhibits traced Newhaven’s story from a royal shipyard founded in the early 1500s. The museum showed how Newhaven grew around fishing and shipbuilding over four centuries. Visitors saw models of the harbour’s 16th-century warships and learned about the herring boom of the 19th century. Artefacts included fishermen’s oilskins, lobster pots and photographs of the tight-knit community. Inside, the main room kept the market’s stone floor and timber beams. Cases held tools used by net menders and a scale model of the harbour as it looked in 1890. Outside, the quayside still carried the scent of salt and the cry of gulls.