Ceres, High Street. View of front of building, with jougs to right of door.

Description Ceres, High Street. View of front of building, with jougs to right of door.

Date 1889

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

Catalogue Number SC 747780

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of F 1900

Scope and Content Weigh-house, Ceres, Fife (now part of Fife Folk Museum) Ceres, a pretty village that developed as a small rural burgh of barony in 1620, lies south of Cupar in the heart of Fife's rich agricultural farmland. The old village weigh-house, dating from the early 18th century, was photographed in 1889 by Erskine Beveridge. This small, single-storeyed, rubble-built building has a single door and window, both boarded up and covered in contemporary posters advertising local entertainments. The roof is of stone slate, and the sloping stones which top the south gable wall end in a scrolled skewput (top left). The carved panel above the door shows a balance or tron, with a weight on one side and a bale on the other, and an inscription which reads: 'God Bless the Just'. Attached to the wall to the right of the door is a set of 'jougs', an iron collar attached to a short chain that was used as a form of punishment. The weigh-house was used for storing the standard weights and measures that each burgh kept for local use. It also served as the burgh prison, with a cell in the basement. The set of 'jougs' (Scots) was used as a humiliating form of punishment for relatively minor offences, such as drunkenness or swearing. The culprit was fastened with the collar round his neck, and forced to stand for a long period of time while being subjected to ridicule and abuse, and even being pelted with rotten fruit and eggs, by the onlookers. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/747780

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap