Emsdorf
Emsdorf LAR S NO413027 1 25m
village of Emsdorf 1802 Sasines no. 6334
Emsdorph 1828 SGF
Emsdorf 1855 OS 6 inch 1st edn
en Emsdorf
The name is still in use in the street-names Emsdorf Road, Emsdorf Place, Emsdorf Crescent and Emsdorf Street in Lundin Links,[156] west of the Keil Burn. According to OS Name Book the name ‘applies to the southern portion of the village of Lundin Mill’, and has an inn and a school (97, 23). The name must commemorate in some way the battle of Emsdorf, Hessia, Germany, fought in 1760 during the Seven-Years War, when the British, under Colonel Augustus Elliot, later governor of Gibraltar, and the Germans, under the Erbprinz of Hesse-Kassel defeated a French force. The British regiment involved was the recently raised British 15th Light Dragoons, and thereafter they were ordered to wear the word Emsdorf on their helmets in recognition of their involvement in what was regarded at the time as a sensational victory.
Under Emsdorf School, built in 1821 at the expense of General Durham, then proprietor of Largo estate, the OS Name Book states that it was named by him ‘in commemoration of some victory gained by him at Emsdorf about the time the school was built’ (97, 88). This is patently incorrect on various counts, not least because General James Durham was only six years old at the time of the battle (1760), and that the earliest mention of the name in Largo is in 1802, almost 20 years before the building of the school.
As to the coining of the name, there is no reason to doubt that it was General Durham who was responsible: Durham was a member of the Light Dragoons, though not in the same regiment as fought at the battle of Emsdorf (1760). However, as stated above, Emsdorf was seen as one of the great triumphs of the Light Dragoons in general.[157]
This place-name appeared in printed volume 2