Crail, Marketgate. View from west.

Description Crail, Marketgate. View from west.

Date c. 1885

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

Catalogue Number SC 739302

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of F 1932

Scope and Content Nos 42-4 Marketgate, Crail, Fife, from the 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. Nos 42-4, an interesting example of 18th-century vernacular housing, was photographed by Erskine Beveridge c.1885. Nos 42-4 (left) is a tall house divided into an upper and lower flat, the upper flat being entered by a forestair in the west re-entrant angle. It is a built to a T-plan, with a two-windowed crowstepped gable to the street forming the long leg of the 'T'. The roof is pantiled with the lower part or eaves course covered with slates, and the walls are harled over rough rubble, with painted margins round the windows. Fife, which had no natural source of slate, imported slates as a roofing material for its more important buildings such as farmhouses and larger houses. Pantiles, made in the brick and tile works which exploited local deposits of clay, were used for cottages and farm byres, barns and mills, their distinctive red colour corresponding well with the soft colour of the east coast landscape. The old custom of covering the first few rows along the eaves of a pantiled roof with the more costly slate to form a skirt or easing course, covered the vulnerable wall-head, and gave extra protection against wind and rain. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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