BEAUTIFULLY RESTORED CULROSS (NATIONAL TRUST FOR SCOTLAND)
REVIVES A ONCE SPLENDID 16TH CENTURY ROYAL BURG.
Little
Fife inches out stubbornly into the North Sea — in truth a
promontory of flatlands between the Firth of Forth to the south, the
Firth of Tay to the north — but looking on a map, more than anything,
like the profile of an aggressive little Scots terrier, with the M90
motorway its blue collar; Dunferm-line, Rosyth and North Queens ferry
its metal address tag, St Andrews its little blue eye, Fife Ness its
nose, the sands beyond Tayport its ears and Earlsferry the point of
its chin.
Dunfermline was the country’s capital back in the 11th c.
and Abernethy, just across the border in Tayside was once the Pictish
capital. Until the Tay Road Bridge was built in 1966, there was little
inclination to pass through. Going there was just enough. Yet the Kingdom
almost lost its identity as recently as 1975 when only fierce local
opposition prevented a proposal to remove it from maps, giving one half
to Tayside’s administration, the other to Lothian’s.
Fife’s south coast, from Kincardine in the west, to Aberdour in
the east, is a mix of small resort and industrial towns, the former
serving the latter in the beach-crowded summer months.
Culross (pronounced Ku-ross), once a splendid Royal Burgh in
the 16th and 17th centuries, has been most attractively restored by
the National Trust for Scotland over the last 50 years in a scheme which
has preserved the charm of the vernacular architecture, whilst losing
only just a smidgin of the original vigour of the place.
