Culross

The Palace Garden

The Painted Chamber

Old Culross

Culross

Visit Culross

An attractive example of an old Scottish burgh in W Fife, situated on the River Forth 7 miles (11 km) west of Dunfermline. ( Map of this area )

Created a royal burgh in 1588, Culross was the legendary birthplace of St Kentigern (or St Mungo). An abbey was founded here in 1217 by Malcolm, 7th earl of Fife, and during the 17th century salt panning, coal mining, weaving and trade with the Low Countries from the foreshore port of Sandhaven were developed, chiefly by the enterprising local merchant Sir George Bruce. Another famous product of the town at that time was the iron baking girdle.

The town is rich in 17th and 18th century cobbled lanes and buildings, many of which have been restored by the National Trust for Scotland. Amongst the main historic landmarks are: The Palace, built by Sir George Bruce in the 16th century; 13th-century Culross Abbey, a Cistercian foundation; the Town House (1626); and The Study (1633) with its corbelled top storey.

Crown of the Kingdom

Culross might justifiably be described as the Crown of the Kingdom, although it is a new acquisition to the Kingdom, having been seized from Perthshire as recently as the end of last century.

A lovely acquisition indeed. It is the very essence of Scotland, a living and carefully preserved picture of a Scottish burgh of the 16th and 17th centuries. Let us visit it on a sunny day and see it in all its colours. For it needs the sun to be seen at its best. Then it is like a drawing in crayon: a drawing in rich colour of a village with crow-stepped gables and with cobbled streets which fall incredibly steeply down high cliffy banks. The pantile roofs glow like garnets, the dormer windows glint blue above colour-washed, bulging walls. It was built in the good days of Scottish building, this burgh of Culross. Then suddenly the wealth that had created it moved away and left it, so that today Culross is preserved for us hardly scarred by the less sympathetic building of later days. The little cottages-those pretty, humble homes piled so precipitously up the curled streets-endear the town to us. Perhaps they appeal more to us than do the massive towers of the abbey high on the hill above the town, or the famous "Palace" of Sir George Bruce and the "Study" popularly attributed to Bishop Leighton.

As the streets and houses of Culross are the essence of Scotland's building, so is the town's history the essence of the history of Scotland from earliest times. St Palladius, on a mission from Rome to convert the Scots in the year 424, found already established there St Serf. The memory of St Serf was honoured by the inhabitants of Culross. For many centuries on his day, 1st July, they walked in pro-cession through the streets carrying green boughs. It is only within the last century that the importance of Culross as a commercial town has subsided. Even in the Middle Ages there was industry at Culross. The monks of its Cistercian monastery were its first miners. The town grew in importance. It conducted at one time so great a trade in salt and coal that sometimes as many as 170 foreign vessels lay off it in the Firth waiting for the produce of its pans and pits. One of its most famous products was its girdles-the round iron baking-plates-and by royal charter James IV granted a monopoly in the manufacture of girdles to the smiths of Culross, and the old saying "I'll gar yer lugs ring like a Culross girdle" shows how highly thought of were these notable products.

The colliery at Culross, once abandoned, was reopened again when Sir George Bruce of Carnock introduced machinery to drain it, and the colliery became one of the wonders of the time, for the workings stretched for a mile under the waters of the Forth.

This colliery is the scene of an unkind story told of James VI. The story goes that on a visit to Culross in 1617 James expressed a wish to visit the colliery. He was taken underground. He had no idea he was passing under the Forth. He was led up one of the shafts which opened on to an island in mid-channel. When he reached daylight and found himself surrounded by water he at once suspected a plot on his life. "Treason! treason!" he yelled, but Sir George hastily explained the position and drew the scared monarch's attention to a boat standing by to take him back to the shore.

Of old the approach to the Mercat Cross at Culross was over what was and is to this day known as "the Croun o' the Causey". The crown of the causeway was reserved for the "quality": the dirty sides of the street were to be used by the less exalted. There is only one other surviving example in Scotland today-in Cromarty-of this early type of thoroughfare that allowed the few to travel dryshod.

There are many causeways, still bearing the name, leading to the square where stands the modern Mercat Cross on the ancient steps. In addition to the "Croun o' the Causey" are the "Wee Causey" and the "Mid Causey".

Twenty of the buildings in Culross are now the property of the National Trust. The finest of their properties is the building now known as "the Palace", the oldest portion of which was built by Sir George Bruce in 1597, before he was knighted. Later additions made by him in 1611 bear the initials S.G.B.-for Sir George Bruce. The interior is a wealth of painted barrel ceilings and 17th-century mural decorations. When the Trust began the restoration work more of these paintings were uncovered. The roof of the principal hall is arched and divided into panels on which are painted separate sub-jects, with a Latin motto and a quaint Scottish couplet below each one of them. There are eight panels. The first shows a female figure personifying Silence, laying a finger across her lips and with a hand resting on a closed book. "The spoken word is beyond recall," says the Latin motto, and the Scottish couplet is,

And he whose tongue before his wit dothe runne,
Oft speakie too soone, and grieves when he has done.

On the second a female figure holds a cup filled with wine illustrating the Latin "Luxury is a burden to me", and the third, signi-fying Security, shows a woman reclining with her head on her hand with a background of a mansion tottering and in flames. Exhorts the Scottish rhyme:

Awake from sleep secure when perrel doth apeir,
For if beginnings we withstand the les we neid to few.

The fourth has a symbolical picture of the Deity-a pair of wings issuing from an open eye. The principal characters in the other four are female figures, with backgrounds of lakes, swans, marble columns, palm trees and oaks. Each one points its moral. One shows four sirens luring infatuated mariners to destruction with the warning:

Men's pleasures fond do promeis only joys,
But he that yeldes at length himseife destroyes.

Much work has also been done in the restoring of the exterior of "the Palace", including the replanting and rebuilding of the attractive sloping gardens behind the house.

Near the Market Cross is the celebrated "Study" of Bishop Leighton, neighboured by other fine houses.

The Abbey above the Town

We will climb now the steep wynd of Tanhouse Brae to the shelf on which the abbey stands. From here we can look down to the waters of the Forth-and the drop is so steep that we must lean forward if we wish to see below us the red glow of the peaked and crowded roofs at the water's edge.

From the time of St Serf in the 5th century there has been some sort of religious building in Culross, almost certainly on the present site; and we may take it there was Druid worship here before that. In the burgh seal, reproduced in the East window of the present church, we have the artist's conception of St Servanus standing in front of a "church" probably of mud and wattles. Here, according to tradition, he received and baptized the infant Mungo or Kentigern, and nurtured and taught him, until, as a young man, the future patron saint of Glasgow went forth on his life work. Though records are practically non-existent of these dark centuries, it is believed that until 1217 there was at Culross a Culdee or Celtic Christian church, and it is interesting to note in this connection a cross shaft and base, the remains of a Celtic cross, on the left of the present church door and also at the south-east end of the graveyard. These are believed to be not later than the 10th century.

Until the Reformation, Culross Abbey was the Roman Catholic church of the monastery, when, like other buildings of its kind, it suffered considerably, both as to its fabric and its revenues. In 1633 by Act of Parliament the church of the monastery became the parish church of Culross. Previously this title had been applied to the old West Kirk of Culross-some half-a-mile north-west of the abbey- which had fallen into total disrepair before the Reformation and was no longer used as a place of worship. From 1649, when John Edmonstoun became "second minister", till 1926, when the charges were united, Culross Abbey was a collegiate charge.

Founded by Earl of Fife

The monastery was founded by Malcolm, sixth Earl of Fife, in 1217, in the reign of Alexander II. The "white monks"-of the Cistercian Order-were a colony from the Priory of Kinloss in Morayshire. The first abbot was Abbot Hugh, and among his suc-cessors was Abbot Andrew Masoun, who built the immense four-storeyed tower about 1500. Abbot James Inglis, appointed in 1527, was murdered on 1st March, 1531, by his neighbour, John Black-adder, Baron ofTulliallan at Kincardine, and by William Louthian, a monk of Culross, who were beheaded for the crime. Abbot Inglis had been Secretary to Queen Margaret, Chaplain to James V and was the author of many ballads, farces and plays. The monks of Culross were famed throughout the world for their writing, and in the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh is a specimen of their work, the Culross Psalter.

The western wall of the present vestibule is the old rood screen of the original church, and the eastern wall of the vestibule is the old pulpitum. Culross and Inchcolm are the only places in Britain where the two stone screens or partitions are both preserved, and we can still see the built-up side doors of the rood screen and the middle door of the pulpitum. In the vestibule are two stone coffins, one empty and the other still containing bones. In the walls of the present manse can be seen the doors of the old nave, and also, near the church door, the graves of the old nave. The altar for the lay brothers was where the present door stands, and the piscina, in which the sacred vessels were washed, can be seen in the recess near the door.

In the vestibule are some of the oldest remains of the monastery. There are some original parts in the present church, but it is largely rebuilt, and the existing windows are not earlier than the 15th century. The archways leading to the south transept were recon-structed about 1300.

In the north transept is the Argyll Tomb. For many years before the Reformation the Argyll family-with their seat at Castle Camp-bell, near Dollar-were the lay overlords of Culross Abbey. Their tomb dates to the middle of the 15th century.

A unique and precious tomb is that of the Bruces of Carnoch, ancestors of the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine. Lying on the tomb are effigies of Sir George Bruce and his wife, and at the base of the tomb are eight kneeling figures, their children, tenderly carved in alabaster and in an excellent state of preservation.

The vault also contains, as is shown on a brass, surmounted by "Fuimus" the motto of the Bruces, a silver casket holding the heart of Edward, second Lord Bruce of Kinloss, who was slain in a duel in 1613 in Holland.

At the entrance to the south transept is the de Quenci tomb. From a coat-of-arms above the tomb it is believed that the de Quenci whom it commemorates died towards the end of the 13th century and was a relative of the Earl of Winchester, Lord High Constable of Scotland.

There are traces of holy-water cavities in the wall at the east end of the church. The present pulpit, over which is an ornamental oak "sounding-board", was for many years used as the precentor's box.

The "Witches' Chamber"

Above the vestibule, in the second storey of the tower, is the "witches' chamber", in which witches were imprisoned when the cell at the old Tolbooth was filled. The tower's third storey is the bell and clock chamber, with bells and clock of the 17th century. The leaded flat roof with battlemented tower replaced the old Noah's Ark top at the restoration of the church in 1824.

Little remains of the monastery buildings, but what is there is sufficient to present a ground-plan of the establishment. The garden of the manse covers what was the cloister court. The refectory was to the south of the cloister court. West of the cloister court, where can be seen traces of the great sewer of the monastery, was the cellarium, the dormitory of the lay brothers and the kitchen. All traces of the Abbot's House have gone, but it is believed to have stood at the extreme south-east, near to the Cedar of Lebanon, which, tradition says, was brought from Palestine as a sapling and planted here on the dedication of the abbey.

Adjoining the abbey grounds is the ruined mansion Culross Abbey House. Here Edward Lord Bruce of Kinloss built his home in 1608, but the greater part of that building was demolished in 1830 and the present structure was erected.

West of the abbey, on the same high ground above the burgh, is Dunimarle Castle, a fake castle trimmed out with tower and battle-ments, said to occupy the site of the castle in which Lady Macduff and her children were murdered-a claim also made for Castle Hill at Cupar. The building-left by Mrs Sharp-Erskine as a residence for the incumbent of the Episcopal church which she built on the estate- contains a valuable collection of paintings and porcelain and curios. Among the many treasures are much Sevres china and Bohemian glass, gilt furniture associated with Napoleon, and much jewellery.

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