Edinburgh Castle’s gun salute is to be made quieter to stop it being silenced by health and safety rules.
The historic firing of the gun, which has happened at one o’clock in the afternoon every day – except Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas Day – since 1861, was in jeopardy on Easter Saturday after it was feared the noise was now too loud for the city.
Having originated as a way for ship captains to set their clocks while stationed at Leith Docks, the one o’clock gun has continued as a tradition that still draws crowds.
In recent months, discussions have been ongoing between the castle, Historic Environment Scotland, and the Ministry of Defence about noise concerns. A safety notice was issued following initial noise trials conducted by the Army Environmental Noise Team.
In December 2023, the cordon distance for the public watching the gun fired by the District Gunner from the British Army’s 105th Regiment Royal Artillery was increased, and some ear defenders were also made available.
However, concerns persisted regarding crowd management, with fears that the firing of the gun could be cancelled altogether. It is understood that Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, intervened owing to the gun’s “importance to military history to ensure that the tradition would continue even if rather muffled.
While the original gun used to make one o’clock was a 64-pounder, a 105mm field gun has been fired since 2001 from the Mills Mount Battery.
Now, a new, quieter ammunition is to be introduced in late June, although The Telegraph understands the exact ammunition is still being finalised.
Given that this news came out at the start of April, it would be pretty easy to think that this was some bizarre April Fool’s joke, but sadly, it is not. It is rather just another example of health and safety overreach.
The tradition has been a fixture in the city for 160 years, beloved by many residents and tourists, and has come to have great cultural significance. The ending of this daily ritual would be a great loss to the city and its history.
In the last few years, we have seen massive interference from health and safety rules encroaching on people’s lives and this country’s traditions. Recently, church bells that had rung out in a village for 150 years were silenced due to a single complaint, causing outrage in the local community. Still, health and safety legislation overruled their desire to keep the traditional bells ringing.
In 2016, the University of East Anglia asked its students to refrain from the tradition of throwing their mortar boards in the air to celebrate their graduation and instead mime the action and have a mortar board photo-shopped in later. A council in Yorkshire demanded that people living in high-rise apartment blocks remove doormats from their front doors as it appears the council thought they were a risk during a fire.
To many, these may seem like small and insignificant inconveniences. Still, they are just more examples of how the state and public organisations interfere in even the most minor aspects of people’s lives. Yes, we need a certain level of safety rules, but now it seems that this has gone too far, and people are being micromanaged and infantilised by the state.
