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Agriculture.- Agriculture has been of importance
since early times. The dry sunny climate and the long open
season in this coastal parish render it favourable for the
production of fruit and vegetables, especially on the fertile
soils of the 100 foot raised beach.
Formerly orchards of apple, pear, and plum, with goose-
berry and raspberry bushes and strawberry breaks stretched
all the way from the edge of Prestonpans village south to
the railway station, and in the sheltered walled garden
of derelict Preston House even apricots were regularly produced
and asparagus in its open spaces. Carrots were grown year
after year in the coastal area, and for a long time vast
quantities of cabbage and other vegetable plants were grown
to sell for transplanting all over the country. There are
now no com- mercial orchards and only an acre or two of
small fruit. There seems little doubt that the import of
bananas and Canadian apples and their effect on the taste
of the public were the chief cause of the disappearance
of the orchards. The large-scale production of carrots came
to an end with the development of carrot growing in England
and elsewhere, and the sale of young plants has shrunk to
very small dimensions due to lack of labour for pulling
the plants carefully, tying them in bundles, and packing
them for transit.
The chief concentration now is on the production of a variety
of vegetables for sale in Edinburgh and Glasgow, see Chapter
4. Apart from several playing fields and parks, the Royal
Musselburgh Golf Course in the grounds of Preston- grange
House, and the large intensively cultivated farm of Dolphingston
in the south, on which vegetables and early potatoes are
grown in rotation with cereals and other farm crops, the
land of the parish is given over to market gardens. At one
time there were a considerable number of small gardens,
but now these have been combined under some six larger growers.
This intensive use of the land requires many workers, and
farms and market gardens rank about equal to the Prestonpans
Co-operative Society in the numbers regularly employed.
According to the agricultural returns taken on 4th June
1946, there were 107 regular workers, 40 men of 21 years
and over, 29 younger males, and 38 women and
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