Biel is a village in

East Lothian East Lothian (; sco, East Lowden; gd, Lodainn an Ear) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, as well as a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area. The county was called Haddingtonshire until 1921. In 1975, the hi ...

, Scotland, UK, to the south of

Dunbar Dunbar () is a town on the North Sea coast in East Lothian in the south-east of Scotland, approximately east of Edinburgh and from the English border north of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Dunbar is a former royal burgh, and gave its name to an ec ...

, off the B6370 road. It is situated on the Biel Estate, close to Biel House.

Placename

The word 'biel', 'beil' or 'bel' means "shelter", as in Belton, Belhaven,

Bilsdean Bilsdean is a village between Thorntonloch and Cockburnspath on the East Lothian East Lothian (; sco, East Lowden; gd, Lodainn an Ear) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, as well as a historic county, registration county and l ...

, or as in Robert Lauder of Beilmouth.

History

Archaeologists from

Glasgow University , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

found the remains of a small farmstead over 2000 years old, possibly with a palisade surrounding a roundhouse. The Biel estate was originally owned by the

Earls of Dunbar The title Earl of Dunbar, also called Earl of Lothian or Earl of March, was the head of a comital lordship in south-eastern Scotland between the early 12th century and the early 15th century. The first man to use the title of Earl in this earldom ...

, then by Robert Lauder of The Bass. Sir James Hamilton, Sheriff of

Lanark Lanark (; gd, Lannraig ; sco, Lanrik) is a town in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, located 20 kilometres to the south-east of Hamilton. The town lies on the River Clyde, at its confluence with Mouse Water. In 2016, the town had a population of 9 ...

, bought Biel in 1641. William Hamilton Nisbet succeeded to the Biel lands and made Biel House his residence. It is a 12th-century

tower house A tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation. Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountainous or limited access areas, in order to command and defend strate ...

, off the B6370, and a member of the

Historic Houses Association Historic Houses (formerly, and still for legal purposes, known as the Historic Houses Association or HHA) is a not-for-profit organisation that represents more than 1,650 privately owned historic country houses, castles and gardens throughout th ...

Biel House

The present Biel House is a 16th-century three-storey listed building, formerly owned by the Earls of Belhaven. William Atkinson extended it in 1814–1818, and in the early twentieth century, further interior alterations were made by R.R.Anderson. The grounds include a

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common typ ...

rock garden A rock garden, also known as a rockery and formerly as a rockwork, is a garden, or more often a part of a garden, with a landscaping framework of rocks, stones, and gravel, with planting appropriate to this setting. Usually these are small ...

doocot A dovecote or dovecot , doocot (Scots) or columbarium is a structure intended to house pigeons or doves. Dovecotes may be free-standing structures in a variety of shapes, or built into the end of a house or barn. They generally contain pigeo ...

, summerhouse, gatepiers, deer park,

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the '' plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (see ...

arboretum An arboretum (plural: arboreta) in a general sense is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees of a variety of species. Originally mostly created as a section in a larger garden or park for specimens of mostly non-local species, m ...

kitchen garden The traditional kitchen garden, vegetable garden, also known as a potager (from the French ) or in Scotland a kailyaird, is a space separate from the rest of the residential garden – the ornamental plants and lawn areas. It is used for grow ...

, glasshouses.

Biel Water (Biel Burn)

The Biel Water, locally known as the Biel Burn, flows through the Biel Estate, and Biel Mill is situated in a woodland. The Biel Burn Flood of 1948 is still remembered by local residents. The latest

flooding A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caus ...

incident occurred in 2007.

Photo gallery

Image:Biel Water mill.jpg Image:BielMillSign.jpg Image:BielMill.jpg Image:Biel Water.jpg

References

Historic Scotland - Architecture and Gardens of Biel House

External links

Canmore - Biel site recordCanmore - Fairy Knowe site record
Villages in East Lothian {{EastLothian-geo-stub