The claim
A corner bar and dining room on the Shore in Leith, where the Water of Leith meets the docks, named for the royal arsenal that stood here. Stone walls, bare boards and a kitchen that leans on Scottish fish and game. It keeps pub hours and fills at the weekend with Leith regulars.
What the records show
The bar takes its name and its date from the King's Wark, the royal arsenal and storehouse James I of Scotland began building on the Shore in 1434. That complex is documented in the royal accounts through the 15th and 16th centuries, was burnt by the English army in 1544 and its tower, drawn by Slezer in 1693, has since been demolished. Drink enters the record in 1613: James VI's grant of the Wark to Bernard Lindsay, his chamber child, licensed four taverns within the buildings alongside the tennis court, and the place was used that way until Edinburgh's magistrates took it over as a weigh-house in 1649. An inn on the site is separately documented in 1623. So 1434 dates a royal building rather than a house of drink, and the taverns follow nearly two centuries later. Historians of Leith writing in the 19th century could not say which part of the complex Lindsay's taverns occupied, so the date belongs to the ground rather than to the corner house standing on it now. The national designations, which this page had not consulted, say the same thing from the other end. Historic Environment Scotland lists the corner Category A as 36 and 37 Shore and 59-61 Bernard Street, added in December 1970 with the record updated in 2022, and dates it early in the 18th century, possibly incorporating earlier remains: a two-storey and attic gabled corner tenement, harled with sandstone margins, with the public house at ground floor and a restoration by Robert Hurd & Partners between 1972 and 1978. Its statement of interest calls these among the few early buildings in Leith to have survived, and says they occupy, and formed part of, the site of the King's Wark. The nearest dated stone is next door: a doorpiece at No. 37 Shore with a swan-neck pediment and a cartouche dated 1711, taken into Waterview House when that was built about 2004. The register therefore ties the ground to the royal complex and the walls to the century after Lindsay's taverns.
| Year | What | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1434 | Claimed founding | The pub |
| 1613 | First record of a drinking house here | Historic Environment Scotland |
What to look for inside
- Named for the royal arsenal begun by James I of Scotland in 1434
- An inn on the site is documented in 1623
- Bernard Street next door is named after the innkeeper Bernard Lindsay
Visiting
The King's Wark is in Edinburgh, Scotland, at 36 The Shore, Leith, Edinburgh. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.
Sources
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Wark
- www.thekingswarkpub.com/about/
- camra.org.uk/pubs/kings-wark-edinburgh-150755
- archive.org/details/cassellsoldnewed03granuoft
- portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB27890
- ratings.food.gov.uk/business/662922
- find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC643097
Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Sept 2026
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