I was looking for a cheap day out on the bus and took a direct service to St Andrews in the northeast of Fife. The ancient university town is known worldwide as the home of golf and draws visitors from far and wide. It also played a major role in the spread of Christianity throughout Scotland and was a destination for pilgrims. I had two museums on my hit-list today, one of which was new to me and the other I hadn't been inside for many years. Both offered free entry. A journey of an hour and three quarters brought me to the bus terminus, located next to the former railway station site (now a car park).
It was a short walk to Kinburn Park, where St Andrews Museum is located within an attractive Victorian neo-Tudor mansion, built in 1854. The house and grounds were acquired by the local council in 1920 and the site used for various purposes over the decades, functioning as a telephone exchange during WW2 and later being leased by St Andrews University. The museum opened in 1991 and charts the history of the old seaside town. The surrounding land contains a bowling green, tennis courts and a children's play area. The main exhibition is structured around an A to Z theme, with each letter presenting objects and images from the collection. And what better place to start than with St Andrew himself! One of the 12 apostles, some of his bones were allegedly brought to the town in the early Middle Ages. The presence of Andrew's relics at a shrine within the cathedral prompted many pilgrims to make the journey on foot. A modern walking trail - the Fife Pilgrim Way - traces the approximate route they would have taken after crossing the Firth of Forth. St Andrews Cathedral was consecrated in 1318 and was the largest church in Scotland. King Robert the Bruce attended the ceremony and reputedly rode his horse down the main aisle! The building was ransacked during the Reformation and fell into ruin. Parts of the structure can be viewed today, although the fate of Andrew's bones remains unknown. A carved wooden panel bearing the town's coat of arms was on display. It featured a wild boar, at one time a common animal in this area. A famous St Andrews man is David Wilkie. Not the recently-deceased Scottish swimmer who won a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics, but the painter known for depicting ordinary people engaged in common activities. Wilkie (1785 - 1841) gained a strong local reputation before moving to London. He travelled extensively overseas and was eventually appointed as painter to King William IV, being knighted in the process. Wilkie's death on a voyage home from India was commemorated by the Turner oil painting Peace - Burial at Sea. A copy of a town map from John Geddy (circa 1580) showed the medieval street pattern that has changed little over the years. Most of the houses in the historic town centre date from the 16th to the early 18th century. The municipal boundaries expanded in Victorian times as the population increased and the erection of council-owned housing estates began in the 1920s. I disputed the museum's claim that St Andrews once boasted Scotland's oldest purpose-built movie theatre. The Cinema House opened in 1913 (running until 1979) but the Hippodrome in Bo'ness, West Lothian, began life in 1912 and was successfully re-opened in 2009. Unfortunately the Cinema House was demolished in the 1980s but the New Picture House (directly across the street) is still trading, although its future hangs in the balance. An entertainments company - owned by golfer Tiger Woods and singer Justin Timberlake - provoked a public outcry by announcing plans to turn the 1930 A-listed building into a sports bar.
More than 12,000 people signed a petition against the proposal, forcing the company to backtrack and rethink the concept. Fife Council are currently considering an application to retain some cinema space and convert the remainder to alternative leisure use. The town achieved a sporting success in 1960 when St Andrews United Football Club lifted the Scottish Junior Club - a tournament for teams in the regional leagues. The lads defeated Greenock 3-1 in front of 35,000 fans at Hampden Park, Glasgow. To date, only a handful of Fife sides have ever won the long-running trophy and my dad was one of the spectators on that day. He also attended the semi-final when an incredible 20,000 people turned up to see St Andrews defeat local rivals Thornton Hibs at Stark's Park, Kirkcaldy. Another significant event of the 60s was the calling of the final train at St Andrews Station. The town was once connected to a Fife coastal rail loop but this arrangement was dismantled in 1965 - a great shame as it would be a popular scenic run today. A stump was left in place between St Andrews and Leuchars (on the East Coast Main Line) but British Rail closed the link in 1969 and removed the tracks. There has been strong campaigning in recent years for the town to be reconnected to the national network by reinstating the five-mile Leuchars spur. Feasibility studies have been undertaken but as yet the government has been unwilling to commit hard cash to the project. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Leven sat at the southern tip of the coast loop and basically suffered an identical railway fate to St Andrews. At the time of writing, new passenger services to Leven are expected to commence imminently, following the rebuilding of the link to the trunk route after an absence of more than half a century. Let's hope the transport authorities now turn their gaze to the north of Fife. There are many points in favour of bringing trains back to St Andrews. A large population of students, most of whom don't own cars. The high-profile golf tournaments and general tourism market. The fact that many people who work in the town cannot afford to live there. The St Andrews rail proposal is a different business case to the Leven reopening (which was based on economic regeneration), but it's just as deserving. Golf is inextricably linked to St Andrews - which features six courses (three of them designated as championship standard) on the seaside links and another on the east side of town. All are owned by a trust and open to the general public, although you do have to prove your golfing credentials in order to play the prestigious Old Course, and availability is decided by ballot at peak times of the year. The Royal & Ancient Golf Club is based in St Andrews. It is a strictly members-only institution (founded 1754) which has its headquarters by the first tee on the Old Course. For many years it was closely involved in the governance of the game, although since 2004 that function has been performed by a professional body.
The Old Course can trace its origins back to 1552 and evolved naturally over the centuries without being subject to formal design, although some changes were implemented by head greenkeeper and professional golf pioneer (Old) Tom Morris in the late 1800s. Morris won the Open Championship four times and is also regarded as the father of modern greenkeeping, serving in this capacity at St Andrews for 39 years. His son - also Tom Morris - was golf's first prodigy, winning the Open on four consecutive occasions by the age of 21. He passed away suddenly just three years later and both men are buried in the churchyard of St Andrews Cathedral. Today, the Open Championship is one of golf's four "major" tournaments and St Andrews hosts the event every few years. My favourite memory is Costantino Rocca sinking a monster putt at the final hole (after duffing his approach shot) to force a play-off. Jack Niklaus - widely regarded as the greatest golfer of all time - twice won the Open at St Andrews and brought down the curtain on his major tournament career here in 2005. The location on the North Sea enabled St Andrews to develop as a port and it was once a centre for fishing and trade with the Baltic States, the Low Countries and France. Activity began to decline in the early 19th century with the introduction of larger vessels unsuited to shallow tidal harbours. Commercial creel fishing for crab and lobster continues today and the town also attracts leisure craft. The Victorian period saw the area grow as a tourist destination, aided by the opening of the railway in 1852. Two golf courses (the New and Jubilee) were laid out in the 1890s and the amenities for visitors multiplied. I reached the end of the exhibition and in case you were wondering what was represented by the letter Z, no it wasn't a Roman zither buried under the golden sands, rather a reminder that some artefacts are pu-ZZ-ling when first discovered. Upstairs was a special display detailing the history of the Fife linoleum industry but I'd already seen this installation at the Kirkcaldy Museum and Galleries. I wandered along to the town centre, grabbed a bite to eat then strolled down to the Scores - a lengthy street that tracks the coastline and contains many university buildings.
I arrived here as a chemistry student in 1989 but swiftly decided it wasn't for me. The university of course featured in the town museum but I was now heading for a permanent exhibition dedicated solely to this ancient centre of learning. The Wardlaw Museum contains four thematic galleries and is named after the university's founder and first chancellor, Bishop Henry Wardlaw. Opening in 1413, the institution is Scotland's oldest university and the third-oldest in the English-speaking world (behind Oxford and Cambridge). Already home to a large cathedral with an extensive library, St Andrews attracted scholars before the university was formally founded. Bishop Wardlaw and King James I of Scotland secured permission from the Pope to open the new educational facility, which until the Reformation came under the authority of the Catholic Church. A large map in the first gallery depicted ancient universities around Europe. Bologna was the first to be established, in 1088. Universities - like all major public projects - have their ups and downs. In 1883, St Andrews was on the brink of closure with low student numbers. Change was required and women were admitted for the first time. Halls of Residence were constructed and the Students' Union opened for business. These developments took place in the 1890s and paved the way towards the modern university we know today. A display of six ceremonial maces contained examples fashioned between 1418 and 2014. A painting from the 1700s (artist unknown) showed students wearing the traditional red gown, proving the academic apparel dates back to at least this period. A small statue of Peter Pan was gifted to the university by the character's creator, JM Barrie, when he became rector in 1922. I proceeded into the galleries showcasing objects from the university's long tradition of teaching science and the arts. My eye was drawn to a set of Napier's Bones - an array of interchangeable calculating rods that used the principal of logarithms to vastly reduce the time required to multiply and divide large numbers. A forerunner of the engineer's slide rule (in regular use until the 1970s). Edinburgh-born mathematician John Napier studied at St Andrews in the 1560s and published his discovery of logarithms in 1614, releasing the "bones" device three years later, shortly before his death. He is also credited with making the use of the decimal point commonplace in arithmetic. Napier now has a university in Edinburgh named after him. The advent of mechanical calculating machines and, eventually, electronic computers rendered the large-scale manual application of logarithms obsolete but Higher Maths candidates must still learn how the process works. I moved on to the display about the work of Sir James Black (1924 - 2010), a Nobel Prize winner with whom I share both educational and social heritage.
Born into a mining family in Lanarkshire, Black grew up in Cowdenbeath, Fife and was educated at Beath High School (my alma mater). At the age of 15, he won a scholarship to the University of St Andrews where he studied medicine. Deciding against a career as a medical practitioner, Black entered the world of academia and research. Picking up many awards over the years, his moment of glory came in 1988 when he received the Nobel Prize for Medicine, along with with Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings, for their work on drug development. Black had been instrumental in creating beta blockers, which greatly reduce the risk of heart attacks by slowing down a patient's heart rate. Mr Black spoke at my high school prizegiving ceremony that same year and a street in Lochgelly bears his name. The Wardlaw Museum also has a temporary exhibition gallery but the current display on Iranian art didn't appeal to me today. Instead, I headed up to the roof terrace which offered a fine view along the rugged coast. The museum is certainly worth visiting but probably best done as part of a day out in St Andrews when you also have other plans. I had a final stroll around the centre of town and went to catch my bus home. With the old railway station site being little more than spitting distance away and the trackbed still extant, a travel interchange could easily be set up here. Let's get it done!
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