TRANENT, police burgh of East Lothian, Scotland. Pop. 4,526. It lies 91 m. E. of Edinburgh by road and I m. S.E. of Prestonpans station on the L.N.E. railway. The town possesses the oldest coal-mining charter (1202-18) in Great Brit ain, and the mines in the neighbourhood provide the staple indus try. A fragment of a parish church, said to have been built in the n th century, still stands. The palace of the Setons was demol ished towards the close of the 18th century and a modern mansion was erected on its site.
In the neighbouring village of Ormiston, in 1885, a granite obe lisk was erected in memory of Robert Moffat (1795-1883), a native, the South African missionary and father-in-law of Living stone. At Ormiston Hall, a seat of the marquess of Linlithgow, there is a yew tree, beneath which the reformer George Wishart (1513-1546) used to preach. Hard by is the village of Pencait land, divided into an eastern and a western portion by the Tyne. The parish church in eastern Pencaitland probably dates from the 13th century. The aisle may belong to the original building, but the rest is of the 16th century, excepting the small belfry of the I7th century. The old house of Pencaitland stands in the grounds of Winton Castle, which was erected by the 3rd earl of Winton in 162o but forfeited by the 5th earl, who was involved in the Jacobite rising of 1715. Five miles south-east of Tranent is the village of Salton (or Saltown), where Gilbert Burnet, afterwards bishop of Salisbury, had his first charge (1665). At his death he
bequeathed the parish 20,000 marks for the clothing and educating of poor children. He was tutor to Andrew Fletcher, who was born. at Salton in 1655 and buried there in 1716. At Fletcher's insti gation James Meikle, a neighbouring millwright, went to Holland to learn the construction of the iron-work of barley mills, and the mill which he erected at Salton after his return not only gave Salton barley a strong hold on the market but was also for forty years the only mill of its kind in the British Isles. Meikle's son Andrew (I7i9-ISI 1), inventor of the threshing machine, carried on his trade of millwright at Houston Mill near Dunbar. Andrew Fletcher, also of Salton (1692-1766), nephew of the elder Andrew, became lord justice clerk in 1735 under the style of Lord Milton. By his mother's energy the art of weaving and dressing Holland linen was introduced into the village. She travelled in Holland with two skilled mechanics who contrived to learn the secrets of the craft. The British Linen Company laid down their first bleach field at Salton under Lord Milton's patronage. Salton also lays claim to having been the birthplace of the poet William Dunbar.