Culross, Fife
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Culross is one of those villages where you almost feel like you have stepped back in time. As you walk into the village from the car park you come to the Town House, originally constructed in 1626, although the clock tower was added in 1783. The Town House was the former centre of local government with the ground floor was used as a prison and suspected witches were kept separately in the attic. Outside the Town House is the Tron, the official burgh weighing beam.
Culross Town House
Culross Palace is close by, resplendent in ochre. It was built in the late 16th century as as home to Sir George Bruce, a wealthy local merchant. The palace and garden have been carefully restored. The garden contains plants which would have been grown in the 17th century, root vegatables such as skirret (a water parsnip), and scorzonera (black salisfy) and fruit trees such as medlar (a small brown apple like fruit, only edible when partly decayed) and quince (a cross between an apple and a pear usually make into jams and jelly). There are lovely views over the garden and palace and out over the Forth Estuary from the top terrace. Sir Bruce stood up on this terrace to observe activity in the harbour, seeing his fortune ever increasing from the export of coal and salt to the Low Countries and the Baltic.
View from Culross Palace garden terrace
Much of Sir Bruce’s wealth derived from the Moat Pit dug to extract coal from under the estuary, the first time that coal was mined from under the sea. A mine shaft was dug from an artifical island created in the water, where ships could dock to immediately transport the coal. The seawater was extracted by a horse driven chain of buckets. Some of the coal was used locally to evaporate water from large salt pans, measuring more than 5.5 metres across, to produce salt. It took 16 tons of coal to produce one ton of salt.
Culross Abbey
Sir Bruce was not the first to mine coal in Culross. The Cistercian monks of Culross Abbey, founded in 1217 started the industry. The monks also produced illuminated manuscripts.
Many of the streets in the village are still cobbled. It’s a short walk uphill to the Study, built in 1610 used by visiting clergy. Opposite the Study is the Mercat Cross, dating from 1588, the site of trading and public announcements.
It’s rather strange but I suppose fitting that when you stand at the sea front in Culross with this well preserved 16th century village behind you and look east that you can see the chimneys of the oil refinery at Grangemouth and the giant Longannet coal fired power station.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:50 am
[...] like to add a couple of my own suggestions for days out from Edinburgh, the historic villages of Culross, Ceres and Falkland in Fife for which you’d need a car or a trip to Stirling, accessible by [...]