Fife and Scotland - the offbeat perspective

17th November Edition

Close proximity to Edinburgh, Dundee and Perth complimented by easy road and rail links to Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness make Fife an idyllic base for visitors intent on exploring the natural beauty of the Scottish nation. It's a region with quite a few hidden gems of its own but where the local residents are blessed with all the benefits of such close proximity to three of Scotland's major cities. It's a major factor offering many choices like live evening entertainment and includes nearby access to airports with International arrivals and destinations, main line rail links and splendid road communication. Fife has a regular ferry service sailing to and from Zeebrugge in Belgium.

Fife is a penisula reaching out from the heart of Scotland and jutting out into the North Sea with the Tay Estuary to the North and the Firth of Forth to the South. Such close proximity to the sea on three sides tends to mean that our local weather patterns are more moderate and far less extreme than most other parts of the United Kingdom.

Fife is still commonly referred to as a Kingdom because fifth century texts refer to the region as Fib and one of the seven Kingdoms of the Pictish tribes. Around the sixth century, the Gaelic language became popular in many parts of Scotland and where the region became known as Phyffe. This was later anglicised to the current name of Fife.

In current times, Fife is the smallest administrative region within the devolved Scottish Parliament of the United Kingdom and has a population of about 350,000 people. There are no cities in Fife but the region lies centrally between Edinburgh, Dundee and Perth.

Glenrothes is the region's newest town established in 1949. Located near the centre of Fife, Glenrothes is the administrative capital of the region. The table on the right offers a rough guide as regards distance from this centre to other locations in Scotland.

All three major towns in Fife are linked by the A92 regional road and which begins initially leading off Junction 3 of the M90 after crossing the Forth Road Bridge when travelling from the South. It's a dual carriageway road until venturing about three miles north of Glenrothes and where it resorts to a regular opposing two lane road ultimately leading across the Tay Bridge to Dundee. The only motorway in Fife is the M90, starting at the Forth Road Bridge then heading directly North towards the City of Perth. Most of the two thousand five hundred miles of roads in Fife are of the conventional two opposing lane type regularly employed throughout the United Kingdom.

Fife is perhaps best known as the 'home of golf' and where this popular sport began on the links of St Andrews. The third oldest golf course in the World is nearby at Crail and there are many other golf courses in Fife to choose from.

Fife is where the World's first Ro-Ro ferry service was introduced to carry railway waggons laden with coal from the town of Burntisland to Granton Harbour in Edinburgh. It remained in service until the iconic Forth Rail Bridge was opened in 1890.

Artwork by George Gastin

More than a century later, this iconic and unique cantilever steel structure performs sterling service as a vital part of the Eastern rail network starting at King's Cross station in London and terminating at Aberdeen. During World War Two, the German Luftwaffe tried to destroy it but failed. One hundred years after its construction, the bridge was adorned with an array of lights and laser beams to celebrate its longevity and remains as a monument to Scottish engineering and is instantly recognised on a global perspective. The logo for Fife Region includes this feature in graphical form.

The bridge was designed by Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker, and built by Sir William Arrol & Co. between 1883 and 1890. It was opened on 4th March 1890 and was the first British major structure to be entirely built of steel. During it's construction, over four hundred and fifty construction workers were injured and ninety-eight fatalities occurred. It required 64,800 tons of high grade steel using the recently developed Siemens-Martin process from two Scottish steel plants with additional supplies from a plant in Wales. Today, it stands as an instantly recogniseable feature of Scotland and a tribute to Scottish engineering.

Rail communications to, from and within Fife are good since the main rail line crosses through the centre of the region and forms a part of the national east coast line starting at Kings Cross station in London and terminating at Aberdeen. Express trains limit their stops in Fife but some local services starting from Edinburgh are more regular and stop at most smaller towns along the South coast with the service terminating at Kirkcaldy. Other services from Edinburgh terminate at Dundee and stop at the same destinations plus several in mid and Northern Fife.

There are four major airports in Scotland but Glasgow and Edinburgh are the main ones in terms of International and commercial flights with Edinburgh airport located just a short distance from Fife. The sea port of Rosyth, in Southern Fife, is where ferry services to and from Zeebrugge in Belgium operate on a regular basis.

For much of history and right up until the fifteenth century, most of Fife was was covered in dense forest of which little now remains. It also explains how one village came to be named 'Auchtermuchty' which means 'place of pigs' although the reference is actually about willd boar that used to roam through the great forest.

Falkland Palace, built between 1502 and 1541, was a country retreat and hunting lodge of eight Stuart monarchs including Mary, Queen of Scots. It's pictured at the top of this page and is a great place to visit.

The 'great forest' did much more than provide medieval gentry with a sport and meat on the table. Over the many centuries of its existence, fallen trees had been pressed deeply into the soil and pressurised to such extent as to form massive seams of coal and which became the lifeblood fuel of the industrial revolution.

Many towns and villages in Fife and especially towards the South began as mining communities and where local ports regularly exported coal to the Balkan or countries of Northern Europe. It's only in the last thirty years that the scale of mining operations have been scaled down to a much smaller industry than it previously was. At its height, mining was the largest employment in Fife and provided thousands of jobs either directly or else in the coastal ports.

Agriculture is the traditional economic wealth creator in North Fife.

Before Britain joined the European Economic Union (EEC), British farmers had been some of the better investors of their industry in Europe and had already suffered a number of setbacks. Traditionally, sugar had been extracted from beet but in the face of cheaper imports from sugar cane grown in the Carribean, the only sugar beet processing facility in Scotland and based in Cupar closed in 1972. Fife farmers tried growing peas for a while but this was dependent on the Fife Cold storage facility in Glenrothes but when this closed, the farmers switched to oil seed rape and other commercially viable crops. In terms of employment, and largely due to increased mechanisation, the actual numer of employees working on the land has declined. Dairy products such as milk used to be a part of most Fife farms but is now far less since the cost of production is often less than most supermarkets are willing to pay. Dairy farms have declined sharply in the UK as a consequence with several going bankrupt every week. Animal husbandry is now relatively rare on Fife farms but far more common in the Highland and other regions of Scotland.

It can't be any great surprise to learn that a peninsula largely surrounded by seawater had a well established fishing industry. In the 1930s, fishing from harbours of the East Neuk (shown in bright green in the map above) was the largest employment sector in this part of Fife. It was said that, at that time, one could walk dryshod across several boats from one side of Anstruther's large harbour to the other side; a feat that is impossible to conceive let alone accomplish in present times. Although Scottish fishing was already in decline by the 1970s, the process was accelerated when the United Kingdom joined with the European Economic Union in the 1970s. Today, the Scottish fishing fleet is far smaller than it was and where some seafood, caught off the shores of Scotland, is whisked away to China for processing before being returned to British supermarket shelves and legitimately sold as Scottish seafood! The Scottish Fisheries Museum and Chapel is located in Anstruther.

The rise of manufacturing and oil related industries became a major part of the Fife economy in the latter part of the twentieth century and with substantial inward investment from the United States of America and Europe. In large part, Fife became a part of Scotland often called 'Silicon Glen' and in comparative reference to the much larger 'Silicon Valley' high technology area where one third of US venture capital for high technology products is still expended. Scotland became the computer manufacturing capital of the World and where exports far exceeded that of whisky! Fife had many computer related companies making everything from disc drives, memory chips and even fully assembled computers. Electronics manufacture ranged from microchips to fully completed solid state telephone exchanges and much more. Companies like Cessna of Witicha, Kansas, established their European base in Fife, and where they manufactured high precision hydraulic components for notable clients such as John Brown of Canada. Beckman, Canon and others had factories in Fife before the lure of cheaper wages exported jobs to the Far East.

Indigenous companies of note during this revolution include Nelbarden of Kirkcaldy which had a global reputaion for swimwear prior to its demise. Today, the factory site has been reduced to that of a car sales lot. Thomas Salter Toys might not have the most enchanting gifts at Christmas with chemistry sets capable of making 'stink bombs' and other products like their carpentry set limited to usage of balsa wood for safety reasons but in an age before Nintendo, such educational toys were exported to many countries. Nairns was a world leader in linoluem flooring products yet what remains is a much smaller company making 'marmoleum' flooring and on a much smaller scale. Sarah Coventry jewellery used materials found on local beaches.

In closing this page and lest it go on forever, it's fair to say Fife suffered more than its fair share of job losses and factory closures over many years and at a time when traditional industries like coal mining has been virtually destroyed, fishing fleets have been decimated and agriculture has shifted towards production of industrial raw materials. Today, about 80% of all food we eat in the United Kingdom is imported! If that had been the situation during World War Two then this page would be written in German rather than English! Fife and Scotland have largely re-invented themselves to meet the new challenges of the twenty-first century and especially since the introduction of the Scottish Parliament.

We're ready to invite others to see how our small nation compares with others in Europe; ready to show how much we value our Celtic historical past and how we're ready to illustrate and demonstrate our commitment to a future of high-technology renewable energy generation technologies. Already, Scottish and Fife companies have won orders of great value for similar projects far from our shores. Despite being an oil producing nation, we're looking further and farther beyond!

Visit Fife and Scotland and see how the our past has evolved towards the present and is evolving towards foundations of a lasting frame of the future. Keep an open mind and prepare to be surprised!

Finally, the FifeServe Project is an independent website operated and updated on a 'spare time' and intermittent basis. Our remit is to present Scotland and Fife in a different way often lacking on other web sites and where we're apt to demonstrate aspects of history in a different and more realistic way while showing sites of interest that might escape interest on other web sites. Consequently, it may appear that some articles are sporadic or unrelated yet later link together in coherent fashion. It just takes time before the links come together. Naturally, we're interested in feedback and future contributions and contact information will be provided in the near future.

We look forward to hearing from you!