Crail. View from north of Marketgate including Tolbooth.

Description Crail. View from north of Marketgate including Tolbooth.

Date c. 1890

Collection Papers of Erskine Beveridge, antiquarian, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland

Catalogue Number SC 739288

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of F 1930

Scope and Content Marketgate, Crail, Fife, looking west Marketgate, a broad thoroughfare that runs parallel to the shore, is one of Crail's oldest streets, and once formed one of the largest medieval market-places in Europe. The Scottish photographer, Erskine Beveridge, photographed Marketgate on a visit to Crail c.1885. The street is rough and unsurfaced, with a roadway lined with young trees running down the centre. The south side (left) is lined with 18th and 19th century houses, and at the far end, standing out from the building line, is the 19th century tollbooth (town hall) whose large first-floor windows light the council chamber. Adjacent is the tollbooth's 18th century tower, crowned with a two-tiered slated hat like a malt-kiln, and in the distance, the whitewashed frontage of the Golf Hotel, an early 18th-century coaching inn. In 1310, King Robert the Bruce granted the royal burgh of Crail the right to hold markets on a Sunday. After the Reformation in the 1560s, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland tried in vain to change the market to a weekday, and finally, in 1587, the Scottish Parliament ordered the day to be changed to a Saturday. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/739288

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap