A cobbled street in Crail.

A house near the harbour at Crail, Lobsters were sold here.

Managed a trip to Crail Today, Grabbed some lovely views of the Harbour.


Crail is a former royal burgh in the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland.

Crail probably dates from at least as far back as the Pictish period, as the place-name includes the Pictish/Brythonic element caer, ‘fort’, and there is a Dark Age cross-slab preserved in the parish kirk, itself dedicated to the early holy man St. Maelrubha.

Built around a harbour, it has a particular wealth of vernacular buildings from the 17th to early 19th centuries, many restored by the National Trust for Scotland, and is a favourite subject for artists. The most notable building in the town is the 13th century parish church. Though much altered, this is one of Scotland’s most beautiful ancient churches, with a fine western tower with small spire, and a double arcade of round pillars of variegated red sandstone in the nave. The side walls were rebuilt in Regency times, and the large pointed windows, filled with panes of clear glass held by astragals rather than leads, allow light to flood into the interior. The unaisled chancel, now housing a huge organ, has been shortened. The church retains some 17th century woodwork, and there is an early Christian cross-slab of unusual form (perhaps 10th century), formerly set in the floor, on display.

The large kirkyard surrounding the building has a fine collection of mural monuments dating from the late 16th century on.

Other historic buildings in Crail are the tollbooth, with a tower dating from about 1600, whch stands on its own in the large marketplace, and the doo’cot (Scots for dovecot) of the town’s otherwise vanished Franciscan Friary.

Crail once had a royal castle above the harbour (perhaps this was the site of the ‘fort’). The site is still visible as an open garden, but little or nothing of the structure survives above ground. A Victorian ‘turret’ jutting out from the garden wall recalls the Castle (visible in the photograph reprduced above).

On the beach beside the harbour, there are fossilised trees, dating back to the carboniferous geological period.

The Crail Golfing Society is the seventh oldest in the world. Their oldest course, Balcomie, was formally laid out by Tom Morris Sr. in 1894, but competitions had been played there since the 1850s.

Crail Aerodrome, to the north of the town, started life as a naval air station during the First World War. In the runup to the Second World War it became HMS Jackdaw. Planes from the airbase took part in the final attack on the Tirpitz in 1944.

Polish soldiers stationed at Crail during the Second World War helped the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh purchase the disused United Presbyterian Church (built 1859). In 1942, it become Most Holy Trinity Church. The Church has recently been renovated and contains an icon to Our Lady of Poland painted by one of the Polish soldiers.

After the war, the airbase was taken over by the Royal Navy and renamed HMS Bruce. Between 1956 and 1958, the airfield was used by the Joint Services School for Linguists to train linguists in Russian.

The airfield site now is home to Crail Raceway. It hosts events every second Sunday of the month, and lets amateur drivers compete with their own adapted vehicles.

A Panoramic view from the cliffs above the East Sands in St Andrews.

A view of the river tay, with the mist appearing over Dundee

The outer harbour at St Andrews.

Some Fishing boats basking in the sunshine at Pittenweem Harbour.

A view back along the pier at Pittenweem, thi
s time with a filter called Orton applied to the image.

Pittenweem is a small and secluded fishing village tucked in the corner of Fife on the east coast of Scotland. According to the 2006 estimate, the village has a population of 1,600.[1]

The name derives from Pictish and Scottish Gaelic. “Pit-” represents Pictish pett ‘place, portion of land’, and “-enweem” is Gaelic na h-Uaimh, ‘of the Caves’ in Gaelic, so “The Place of the Caves”. The name is rendered Baile na h-Uaimh in modern Gaelic, with baile, ‘town, settlement’, substituted for the Pictish prefix. The cave in question is almost certainly St Fillan’s cave, although there are many indentations along the rocky shores that could have influenced the name.
Until 1975 Pittenweem was a royal burgh, being awarded the status by King James V (1513–42) in 1541. Founded as a fishing village around a probably early Christian religious settlement, it grew along the shoreline from the west where the sheltered beaches provided safe places for fishermen to draw their boats up out of the water. In due course a breakwater was built, extending out from one of the rocky skerries that jut out south-west into the Firth of Forth like fingers. This allowed boats to rest at anchor rather than being beached, providing a means for larger vessels to use the port. A new breakwater further to the east has been developed over the years into a deep, safe harbour with a covered fish market. As the herring disappeared from local waters and the fishing fleet shrank, this harbour and attendant facilities led Pittenweem to become the main harbour for the fishermen of the East Neuk of Fife.

The white houses with red roofs shown in the above picture “Pittenweem from the outer harbour wall” illustrate the classic East Neuk building style, influenced by trade with the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands). The East Neuk offered natural trading ports for Dutch and Belgian captains as they sailed up past the east coast of England. These ships brought red pantiles as ballast and the locals soon found them to be excellent roofing material. It is just possible to make out the “crow step [Scots: corbie-steppit] gable”, where the gable ends rise in steps rather than the more normal smooth angled line – an architectural feature imported from the Low Countries. These and other vernacular features are common throughout the small town, which has one of Scotland’s best-preserved and most attractive townscapes, with many historic buildings (some restored by the National Trust for Scotland). The ‘organic’ layout of the town centre, which grew up piecemeal over several centuries, with numerous winding streets and alleys, is one of its particular charms. Few Scottish towns have so well preserved their ancient character.

At the shore end of the outer harbour wall, some of the paving stones have numbers engraved in them. The numbers are now randomly scattered, but once were vital to the smooth operation of the fish market. Before the pier was re-surfaced, the stones were placed in numerical order at the quayside running outwards from the shore. The first fishing boat to return with its catch placed its haul alongside stone number one, the second boat at stone two and so on. When the market opened, the fish was sold in strict order of landing.

In 1779 John Paul Jones (otherwise known as the founder of the American Navy) anchored half-a-mile off Pittenweem in the USS Bonhomme Richard. Despite bombarding Anstruther, Jones did not attack Pittenweem, but did make off with the town’s pilot who had sailed out to meet Jones’ squadron.