Fife Pilgrim Way - Part 1A
After the success of the
Fife Coastal Path, opened in 2002, a new long distance walking path has been created in Fife. The
Fife Pilgrim Way opened in 2019. It follows a 64 mile (104km) route that medieval pilgrims would have taken from North Queensferry or from Culross, via Dunfermline Abbey and onwards to St Andrews.
By connecting existing paths, upgrading others and creating some new tracks the Fife Pilgrim Way can be used as a sign-posted route for day-trips around Fife, or could be taken on as a relaxing walk over several days. I have divided it up into several short runs which I plan to undertake over the Autumn and Winter months of 2019. The route goes through some of Fife's medieval and religious sites, but inevitably also passes many of the industrial sites from the days when coal was king in this part of the world.
Culross to Dunfermline
Since at least AD 965 until
St Andrews Cathedral was destroyed in
the Reformation in 1559, people came across to Fife to make a pilgrimage to see relics of
St Andrew in the town that took his name. Many of these travelers would have arrived at North Queensferry, but the Fife Pilgrim Way gives you a choice of following the route from there, or from Culross, to Dunfermline. As a Glaswegian, I started from the town where the patron saint of my hometown,
St Mungo, was born. Culross
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| 17th century house in Culross, with the Greek inscription "God provides and will provide" above the window |
Culross was once the fourth largest port in Scotland, trading with the Low Countries and Scandinavia. Rich coal seams under the Forth and a monopoly on 16th century Scottish iron girdle pan manufacture (eh?) created its wealth. However the town's origins were as a religious centre. The ruins of a Cistercian abbey founded in 1217 still stand on the hillside above the waterfront, with a 19th century church in one corner of this area. However its religious roots go back to St Serf who established a community here about 500 years earlier in the era of early Celtic Christianity.
Saint Serf
As his life story was written down half a millennium after his death, and was rather designed to add to his prestige, it is impossible to separate fact from fiction in his story. What is certainly true is that he was born in Alexandria in Egypt, crossed the Alps, later went to Rome and became Pope and arrived in Scotland to do missionary work. Throwing his staff across the River Forth, it landed among prickly bushes in what is now Culross, where miraculous fruit trees sprouted and he set up a monastery at this spot. He later debated with the devil in a cave at Dysart, turned water into wine and slayed a dragon with his staff. Alternatively, he may have been a Gaelic speaking monk with associations in the Ochil Hills who established several religious settlements here and hereabouts, but most notably at Culross, or Cuileann Ros, the holly point/promontory.
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| Culross Abbey |
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| Stained glass window in Culross Abbey Church, with St Serf and St Kentigern |
Saint Mungo/ Saint Kentigern
Kentigern, also known by his nickname Mungo,
possibly derived from the Gaelic Mo Choë, taken to mean "My Dear". He was believed to have been taught by St Serf. The illegitimate son of pagan royalty his mother, Teneu (later St Enoch), was washed ashore at Culross and taken in by the monastery where Kentigern was raised. He later traveled west to the banks of the River Clyde to spread his religious teachings. The spot where he established his first church may be where Glasgow cathedral now stands nearly 1500 years later.
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| Culross pier |
Before starting the route I took the chance to have a quick look about the picture postcard pretty village of Culross. The village as it stands today is largely the 17th century appearance. The town was being threatened with demolition in the 1930s when the National Trust for Scotland bought the whole village and slowly restored the crumbling buildings. The contrast between the village, which has been used repeatedly as a film and TV set (it seems that half of
Outlander is filmed here), and the petro-chemical plant at
Grangemouth across the River Forth is striking. The coal fired power station at
Longannet just a couple of miles east of the village no longer has a permanent plume of smoke billowing from it after it
closed in 2016. You have to wonder how much of a future Grangemouth has if Scotland is to achieve its
net-zero carbon emissions by 2045.
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| Grangemouth petro-chemical works on the south bank of the Forth |
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| Longannet power station near Culross, now closed but soon to become a train making factory |
As well as being a centre of monastic communities, Fife also has a history of religious leaders pursuing women for supposed witchcraft. Although we may be familiar with witchcraft trials in
Salem in Massachusetts, Scotland also persecuted many people for this "crime", mostly women. Between 1563 and 1736 more than 3800 men and women were documented as being accused of witchcraft, with at least two thirds of these people executed. Fife was a particular hotbed of witch trials. In the 1640s the
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland passed several acts "for the suppression of witches" and many women were imprisoned, executed or even lynched in Inverkeithing, Pittenweem, Kirkcaldy and St Andrews over this era. In Culross the Townhouse which sits on the main street with its distinctive clock tower was the place where the court sat. Women accused of witchcraft were allegedly held prisoner in the tower awaiting trial (the ground floor rooms were more usually used as the cells here.
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| Culross Townhouse |
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| "The study" at Culross market place |
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| The medieval Mercat Cross |
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| Views across the Culross chimneys to Grangemouth |
The
Fife Pilgrim Way starts from the west car park in Culross and follows the Fife Coastal Path for a couple of miles, zig-zagging across the train line here and passing behind the
Torry Bay Local Nature Reserve. The remains of
Preston Island salt pans lie off to your right.
King Coal
Before going any further I must mention one thing that I did NOT see between Culross and Dunfermline - evidence of the area's coal mining. The empty shell of Longannet is the only clue that there ever was a coal industry here, but in its heyday a century ago 20,000 miners were employed in producing 10,000,000 tons of coal per year. The first coal burnt in Fife was literally sticking out of the ground, pushed up by geological pressures. It could also be howked out from the sides of glens and valleys where it was often exposed. The first recorded authorisation to dig for coal was in 1291 when the Abbot of Dunfermline was granted permission to extract coal from Pittencrieff Glen. Until the Reformation the monasteries controlled coal extraction, but afterwards the landowners could profit from it. Near Culross in the 16th century coal was mined from under the Forth from an artificial island. The Moat Pit was abandonded when it flooded after being swamped in a storm in 1625.
Preston Island was reclaimed from the Forth in the 1800s and mines started for coal to sell on, and to fire the salt pans here, evaporating water to produce a valuable commodity, a common industry along both sides of the Forth here at that time in places where coal could be easily accessed. By the 1850s the industry itself evaporated in the face of cheap salt imports.
Valleyfield, just east of Culross, was the home to the Valleyfield pit, opened by the Fife Coal Board in 1908. It was well known for high methane levels, or "firedamp" which was actually pumped out to supply public gas. In October 1939 an underground explosion here left 35 men dead, the worst ever pit disaster in Fife. A
statue stands in High Valleyfield to commemorate those who died. When I was running the route I was unable to find it as it is not flagged up anywhere, but if you want to visit it, it stands at the junction of Woodhead Street and Valleyfield Avenue in Valleyfield. Valleyfield was still producing coal until 1978 when the pit was closed. At that time the workings connected under the Forth to pits at Bo'ness, west to the Longannet works and east to the Torry mine, which opened in 1950. Unbelievably a further
17 miners lost their lives at Valleyfield between 1942 and 1978, highlighting what a dangerous profession mining remained.
Torryburn
At
Torryburn, where the Fife Coastal Path turns right along the coast, the Pilgrim Way carries on along the main road through the town. You soon pass an old phone box, which although no longer in use the box has been adopted and maintained by the local community.
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| Torryburn |
One 18th century resident of Torryburn recently made
news headlines.
Lilias Adie died in prison in 1704 while awaiting trial for witchcraft. She is believed to have admitted under torture to having a "tryst with the devil". She faced being burned at the stake and her burial site by the shore at Torryburn is the only known grave in Scotland of a woman accused of witchcraft. As such plans are being drawn up to mark the spot, as a memorial to Lilias and the thousands of other women persecuted as supposed witches.
Torryburn Church, built in 1800 has an interesting collection of much older gravestones in the churchyard, many illustrating the trades of the deceased. Many of these date from the time of the first church on this site, built in 1616.
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| One of the nearby Tuilyies standing stones |
A slight detour to the north could have taken in the
Tuilyies standing stones that lie beside the A985 nearby, showing that centuries before weaving and coal mining brought people here, it was a sacred Bronze Age site.
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| Torryburn Church |
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| Gravestone at Torryburn |
Cairneyhill
Following the signposted route along paths and pavements leads you into
Cairneyhill, a former weavers village. The main road will take you across "
conscience bridge" over the Torry Burn. Allegedly the bridge gets its name from a murderer who was caught here, confessed his crime and hanged himself. After Cairneyhill the path veers off to the left then turns right towards Dunfermline. The first views of
Dunfermline Abbey lie ahead.
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| Row of cottages passed on leaving Cairneyhill |
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| The path towards Dunfermline, the Abbey in the distance |
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| The path as it approaches the edge of Dunfermline |
Dunfermline
Dunfermline was made into a royal residence by
King Malcolm III. After Malcolm's father, Duncan, was killed by Macbeth, he fled to England at the court of Edward the Confessor. He returned north after 17 years and after the death of Macbeth and his stepson Lulach, became king of Scotland around 1058. He moved the royal residence to Dunfermline, which remained a royal residence for the monarchs of Scotland for hundreds of years.
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| Steam train sitting in Pittencreiff Park, Dunfermline |
It was Malcolm's second wife, Margaret of Wessex, who changed the face of religious practice in Scotland, and in Dunfermline this can be see in the remains of the Benedictine Dunfermline Abbey that she established. The abbey is at the heart of Dunfermline's "
heritage quarter". The abbey itself became the burial ground of many kings and queens of Scotland, most notably King Robert the Bruce (although his heart is buried in Melrose). Much of the ancient abbey is in ruins but is well worth a visit. The
Dunfermline Abbey Church was built here in 1820 and is still an active church. It's distinctive "KING ROBERT THE BRUCE" stonework at the top of the tower is a decidedly modern-looking adornment for a place of worship.
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| Dunfermline abbey church |
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| The nave of the former abbey |
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| Dunfermline abbey |
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| On a sunnier day, early this summer |
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| Dunfermline heritage quarter |
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| Standing on the former site of Queen Margaret/ Saint Margaret's tomb which became a shrine, looking towards the "Abbot's House" |
As well as monks and royalty, Dunfermline was also home to one of the 19th century's wealthiest men.
Andrew Carnegie was born in 1835, in a weaver's cottage which still stands in the town as a museum to him. His father was a handloom weaver and as work fell away to the rapidly industrialising industry, Andrew was aged 13 when his family emigrated to America. From humble beginnings he made his fortune in the steel industry, and made his name with philanthropy. With a mixture of his family's Chartist and Presbyterian beliefs he truly seemed to live his life by the famous quote attributed to him, that "
The man who dies thus rich, dies disgraced.". During his lifetime he gave away approximately 90% of his wealth. His money built 3000 libraries around the world (including most of
Glasgow's Victorian libraries that I first borrowed books from), music halls, educational buildings, the Carnegie Trust fund to be shared by the 4 Scottish universities, and even a vast telescope in America. In Dunfermline he built baths, libraries and bought
Pittencrieff Park and endowed it to his hometown, with funds to maintain it and ensure it was free for all to use (he had been banned from entering it as a child by an official due to his family's political views). I have not been able to discover if Carnegie's philanthropy extended to the wages and working conditions he gave his employees, the people who made him his billions, but we can only hope so.
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| Carnegie's birthplace museum |
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| Carnegie's birthplace museum |
Fife Pilgrim Way - Part 1B
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