Crail. View from north east of Marketgate including Mercat Cross and Tolbooth.

Description Crail. View from north east of Marketgate including Mercat Cross and Tolbooth.

Date c. 1890

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

Catalogue Number F 1929

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 739283

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.1890. The street is rough and unsurfaced with a roadway lined with young trees running down the centre. At the far end, on an island site in the south-west corner, is the tolbooth, a 19th-century town hall with an 18th-century tower crowned with a distinctive pagoda-like slated spire. To the south (left) is the market cross which utilises a 17th-century shaft with a 19th-century capital, unicorn finial and stepped base. The market (or mercat) cross was the symbol of the burgh's authority, and was normally situated close to the tolbooth in a prominent position in relation to the whole market area. It is not known where the original cross stood, but the present cross, re-erected on the south side of Marketgate on Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887, is probably faithful to its original design. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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