Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Some 8,314 people live in this town, in East Lothian, Scotland.
Pupils here do better than most: school leavers’ results beat 96% of Scottish towns. Housing is expensive: a typical home costs £390,600 and rent runs £1,507 a month. 98 listed buildings, 6 of them in the top category. A Band D home pays £1,698 in council tax.
Figures: prices, HM Land Registry, the last three years. Police Scotland publishes no street-level crime, which leaves North Berwick without a Safety Grade or an overall grade. Its other subjects still get grades, below.
The 3 things North Berwick does most differently from other towns.
Each subject compared with the 2,160 UK towns with an overall grade (schools within Scotland), ordered by how far North Berwick is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Police Scotland publishes no street-level crime, which leaves North Berwick without a Safety Grade or an overall grade. Its other subjects still get grades, below.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Historic Environment Scotland lists 98 buildings inside North Berwick’s locality, 6 of them in the top category, and 5 scheduled monuments.
The archive holds 3 old photos and postcards going back to 1903.
Museums, castles, gardens and days out in and near North Berwick. Best known first.
Castle · Historic Environment ScotlandTantallon Castle2.6 km outside town, to the east · 31K visitors a year (2009)
Castle · Historic Environment ScotlandDirleton Castle1.6 km outside town, to the west
CastleFenton Tower1.6 km outside town, to the south
CastleBass Castle3.8 km outside town, to the northeastMuseumMuseumScottish Seabird Centrein townPhotos: each place’s Wikidata image, from Wikimedia Commons under the licence below (our copy, resized).
Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in North Berwick.
Scotland’s Census was taken on 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census; 42% of workers were mainly at home, and shares here are of those who travelled.
In 2026, 1.5% of 16 to 64s were claiming unemployment benefits. 62% of commuters drove, below East Lothian’s towns (70%) and Scotland’s towns (70%) alike. For nearly a third of commuters, work was under 5 km away. Work in town: 27% of resident commuters.
Scotland’s Census 2022 (NRS), method of travel and distance to work · DWP claimant count · OGL
North Berwick High School’s results beat 93% of schools in Scotland like it. Its two schools are below. Between them, one primary and one secondary teach 1,656 pupils locally.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Law Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 606 | – |
| North Berwick High SchoolLargest secondary schoolSecondary | Secondary | 1,050 | A |
14% live in social housing, lower than both East Lothian’s towns (23%) and Scotland’s towns (24%). The private rented sector houses 8% of households. 427 sales in North Berwick’s data zones from 2023 to 2025 make up the median of £390,600.
Registers of Scotland data-zone sale prices · Scottish Government council tax · Scotland’s Census 2022 tenure · OGL · The Scottish median is our estimate from data-zone sales, brought to early-2025 prices.
Men in North Berwick can expect to live to 82.2, women to 85.2 (2020–24). 4.8% of residents described their health as bad or very bad, below East Lothian’s towns (5.9%) and Scotland’s towns (7.2%) alike. Disability touches just over a fifth of the town’s population.
| Census 2022 | North Berwick | East Lothian | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 84% | 81% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 4.8% | 5.9% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 21% | 23% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL · The census answers take no account of age, so a young town looks healthier; the Health Grade relies on age-adjusted measures, life expectancy and early deaths among them.
The heritage lists give each building’s grade but not its age, so we don’t say which is oldest.
For its size, North Berwick has 118 listed buildings per 10,000 residents, above both East Lothian’s towns (76) and Scotland’s towns (22). The town’s listed buildings include Grange Road, The Grange, Garden Walls and Gateway, Category A. The top grade, Category A, goes to 6 of them.
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
8.3% of the population is aged 15 to 24, below East Lothian’s towns (10%) and Scotland’s towns (12%) alike. The 65-and-over age group makes up 28% of residents. Line up the people of North Berwick by age and the one in the middle is 50.8. Children are 17% of the town.
53% women, 47% men
About 90 men for every 100 women. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women. Women live longer than men, so towns with many older residents have more women.
| North Berwick | East Lothian | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 17% | 17% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 8.3% | 10% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 17% | 24% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 30% | 28% | 27% |
| 65+ | 28% | 21% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 9.5% | 15% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 5.2% | 8.5% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 10% | 11% | 11% |
| Degree level | 52% | 33% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · East Lothian and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
98 listed buildings in North Berwick, 6 of them in the top category.
North Berwick, Abbotsford Road, Westerdunes with Summer House, Garden Screen, Garden Sculpture, Terrace and Boundary Walls, Gates and Gatepiers: Photo: Anne Burgess · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Geograph · St Andrew's Kirk, Kirk Ports, North Berwick: Photo: Linkogecko · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 1 High Street, Council Chambers: Photo: Richard Sutcliffe · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Castle Hill,castle,East Links: Photo: Richard West · CC BY-SA 2.0
21 notable people were born in North Berwick.
Willie Anderson: "Westward Ho!" of American Golfer, Inc., Public domain · Dorothy Campbell: American Golfer, Inc., Public domain · Fred McLeod: Stuyvesant Company, Public domain · Andrew Walker: Unknown photographer, Public domain · Isobelle Ann Dods-Withers: W. Crooke, Edinburgh, Public domain
The nearest towns and villages, from National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities. See them on the map →
| Town | People | Miles | Overall | Cost | Safety | Health |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Berwick | 8,314 | — | — | C | — | B+ |
| Gullane | 2,897 | 4.1 | — | C− | — | B− |
| Haddington | 11,364 | 7.2 | — | B | — | C− |
| Longniddry | 2,598 | 8.7 | — | C− | — | B |
| Dunbar | 10,746 | 8.9 | — | B | — | C |
| Cockenzie | 5,237 | 11 | — | B+ | — | C |
| Tranent | 12,235 | 12 | — | B+ | — | C− |
| Anstruther | 3,943 | 12 | — | B+ | — | C− |
No Scottish town has a Safety Grade or an overall grade yet: Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime. People: Census 2022. Miles: centre to centre.
GCSE results beat 96% of towns in England (Department for Education, Attainment 8). North Berwick has 2 state schools; places are handled by the local council.
That is 4.8 times the typical town in England and Wales for its size. Its Category A buildings include Grange Road, The Grange, Garden Walls and Gateway. It also has 5 scheduled monuments.
Homes cost more than in most UK towns: the median sale over three years was £390,600, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 292nd most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
Town in East Lothian, Scotland
North Berwick is a locality of 8,314 people, in the East Lothian council area. TownRatings uses National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities as Scotland’s towns: the physical town, as people mean the word, rather than a council area, so its figures cover the town itself. Localities split the big settlements into their towns, as ONS’s 2022 boundaries split conurbations in England and Wales.
Built from NRS geography and Census 2022
Sources: Scotland’s Census 2022 (National Records of Scotland), output areas summed to the NRS 2022 locality · Registers of Scotland house price statistics, medians and quartiles of residential sales by 2022 data zone, 2004 to 2025 (the 2023 to 2025 headline brought to early-2025 prices with each council’s medians) · Scottish Government, Council Tax by band 2026-27; Scottish Water charges 2026-27 · Scottish Government, Recorded Crime in Scotland (crimes, offences and clear-up rates by council area, 2016-17 to 2025-26); Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020v2 crime domain and SIMD crime indicators (2014/15, 2017/18), 2011 data zones with Census 2022 residents · ONS gross disposable household income by council (2022), scaled to household income on England and Wales’s councils, with Scotland’s Census 2022 households · DWP / ONS Claimant Count via Nomis (2022 data zones, January to August 2026), over residents aged 16 to 64 at Scotland’s Census 2022; council series since 2015 · Scottish Government school contact list (31 July 2026) and school summary statistics (pupil census, September 2025); School Information Dashboard leavers’ attainment by school, 2022-23 to 2024-25 (data.gov.scot) · TownRatings grades: our own summary of the data, ranked against UK towns only. All under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (ONS boundaries). Northern Ireland: Source: NISRA; contains Land & Property Services data and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland information, © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scotland: contains National Records of Scotland data, Registers of Scotland data and SEPA data, © Crown copyright / © SEPA 2025, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.