Crail, Shoregate and harbour. View from south east.

Description Crail, Shoregate and harbour. View from south east.

Date c. 1890

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

Catalogue Number SC 739219

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of F 1989

Scope and Content Inner Harbour and Quayside, Crail, Fife Crail, a small fishing town with a tidal harbour, sits on the eastern tip of the Fife peninsula overlooking the North Sea. This picturesque port, with 17th- and 18th-century houses huddled around the quayside, was photographed c.1890 by the Scottish photographer, Erskine Beveridge, providing some of the oldest known photographic records of the town. The inner wall of the harbour, built with squared stones in vertical courses, dates from the late 15th or early 16th century. Vertical wooden ladders give access from the quayside to the moored fishing boats and, due to a shortage of berths, boats not in use have been hauled onto the quayside. The late 17th-century harled building with the notice board on the gable wall and the washing line strung across the angle is the harbour office. Crail, like other small towns that crowd the southern shore of the East Neuk of Fife, was a small, close-knit coastal community that developed and became prosperous through trade, largely with the Low Countries. The catch landed from its fleet of fishing boats (in the 1880s there were 34 boats) was sold by the women who travelled to nearby towns and into the surrounding countryside carrying heavy creels of fish for sale, and to barter for rural produce such as eggs, butter and cheese. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/739219

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap