A comparison of Crusoe Buildings (on the right, looking west) - with a circa 1900 view at the top and a contemporary view below. Not much changed? On closer inspection the Crusoe Buildings have undergone a fair amount of remodelling over the last 120 years, with significant changes to the window arrangement and an attic conversion. It was modernised and reconstructed in 1936 according to the newspaper archives. Recent years have seen further renovation. Happily, the statue is unchanged - although it did enjoy a holiday in Glasgow in the 1980s.

Capturing this view without cars featuring in it, is impossible today and no longer does the road feature physical evidence of horses. A new window has appeared in the gable end of neighbouring number 97. The church bellcote has gone and indeed the church building is no longer in use as a church. 

​Below some small details are picked out. Note the child at the door of the former 'Very Crafty' shop. The buildings once housed a Barber's Shop (see announcement from 13 June 1912 Leven Advertiser further below).
​

Before you read any further - any idea where this Lundin Links butcher was located?



This particular butcher shop predates the building of the Leven Road shops.



The proprietor pictured (with a tool of the trade in hand) was Andrew Robertson. He was born in Leven in 1849 and that is where the story begins.  Below is an extract from the 1862 Westwood's Parochial Directory for the counties of Fife and Kinross, showing the bakers in Scoonie. At 4 Forth Street is master baker Andrew Robertson. He and his wife Ann Scott were the parents of the Andrew Robertson pictured above. Another baker in Leven at the time was Andrew Thomson - a man who would, soon after the Westwood's listing was published, relocate his business to Lundin Mill. 

The Thomsons and Robertsons were close and when Andrew Thomson moved his bakery to Emsdorf Street around 1865, the eldest son of Andrew Robertson the Forth Street baker (Robert Robertson) took over Thomson's vacated premises on Leven High Street. Robert Robertson's remained a thriving business there for decades and is pictured below circa 1908. So the with eldest son of Andrew Robertson senior following in his father's footsteps, the younger sons followed different career paths. One became a joiner, while Andrew junior trained as a flesher. 

Andrew junior started out in the butcher business in Inverkeithing where he was based for several years.  In 1870 Andrew Robertson married ​Elizabeth Douglas of Lundin Mill, daughter of linen weaver James Douglas and his wife Isabella Peebles. They were married in Lundin Mill by Largo minister William Davidson. There seems a strong possibility that they met through Andrew Thomson the baker now located in Lundin Mill, a community predominantly of hand loom weavers.

By the census of 1881, Andrew and Isabella had moved from Inverkeithing to Dunfermline and had four children. Ten years later they were still running a butcher in Dunfermline and their family had grown. By 1901, their son Andrew had joined the butcher trade and they remained running the business in Dunfermline. Meanwhile in Lundin Mill the butcher was David Simpson. He had a house, shop and slaughterhouse on Hillhead Street. However, in 1895 he fell to his death from the railway viaduct at Lower Largo, aged 49. His wife Janet continued the business until 1907, when she retired. The notice below from the 18 September 1907 Leven Advertiser shows both her message of thanks to the inhabitants of the district for their support and Andrew Robertson's announcement that he would be taking over the butcher from 24th September. Furthermore, Mrs Simpson auctioned off some of the contents of her home (Croft House, Hillhead Street) including a talking parrot.

So, the photograph at the very top of this post was taken on the west side of HIllhead Street at Croft House (number 5). The photograph dates to very soon after Andrew Robertson had taken over from Mrs Simpson. He ran the business for a number of years before retiring. Once retired he still owned the business but let it to Thomas Henderson, butcher. On 18 May 1916, Andrew Robertson died aged 65. This prompted the demise of the Hillhead Street butcher business and Thomas Henderson sold off the plant, fittings and other belongings of the shop (see foot of this post). Thereafter the village was served by G.W. Douglas the butcher on Leven Road (who also had a branch on Leven's Forth Street, which is where this story began).

Update 27/01/2020:

To clarify the location of Robert Anderson's Butcher Shop, see 1893 O.S. map below. It was adjacent to the slaughterhouse on Hillhead Street. This street was once (surprisingly) considered the main area for shopping:

https://lundinlinks.weebly.com/blog/hillhead

The above photograph was taken by the late Robert Carswell Paxton of Homelands. It may have been taken around 1902 when the Paxtons settled in Largo (initially staying at Drum Lodge). This is still in the days of the wooden footbridge (see left of image) which preceded the building of the road bridge. Incidentally, the photograph of the first car crossing the road bridge is also thought to have been taken by Robert Paxton, who must have been quite a keen amateur photographer.

The detail below shows a team of three painters working on the exterior walls on what appears to be a bright sunny day. Alexandra House (now the site of Lower Largo's one remaining shop) can be seen to the left of the Crusoe. Further below is detail showing Bridgend House, the Railway Inn and Belmont Temperance Hotel (in an elevated position to the right of the bridge over the railway line). Miss Mary Carswell was proprietor of the Belmont at the time of this photo. I wonder whether she may have been related to Robert Paxton's mother Janet Carswell. At the foot of this post is an advert from 1908 for the Belmont Hotel when the proprietors were the Misses Sawyer.

The previous post looked at the life of William Ritchie - founder of The Scotsman newspaper who was born in Lundin Mill. His elder brother John Ritchie was also involved in the newspaper from the beginning. Soon after William died in 1831,
John relinquished the haberdashery and drapery trade to fill his late brother's shoes, devoting his time, finances and efforts to the newspaper. Within a few years he acquired the shares held by others, and became sole proprietor of the ‘Scotsman.’ Under his direction, on 30 June 1855, the paper first appeared as a penny daily. 

However, it is John's early life which is of significance to those interested in Largo's past. John had been born in Kirkcaldy on 3 February 1778 but within a year or two the family had moved to Lundin Mill in connection with father James's occupation as a flax dresser. At the age of nine, John (pictured above) was sent to service on a small farm further north in Largo Parish. He appears to have been there for at least eight years, as by the age of 17, it is recorded that his pay there was £1 per annum in addition to his keep. Later in life he wrote extensively about his years on the land. His recollections provide a valuable insight to the life of an agricultural worker in Largo in the 1790s. What follows are excepts from a piece he published in The Scotsman of 8 April 1857, entitled "Scotch Farming and Farm Living Sixty-Five Years Ago" - some reminiscences of the life of men and beasts on a small farm in Fifeshire in the end of the last century.
​

The reminiscences relate to the small farm to which "at the age of nine years, I was sent for service". The farm was approximately 80 to 100 acres and "nearly entirely arable, in the neighbourhood of Largo, and within a mile and a half of the coast. The farm establishment consisted of the farmer, his wife, a lad about seventeen, a maid and a boy – to wit, myself.” The farm is unnamed but the 1775 Ainslie map above shows rural Largo Parish at the time. Ritchie continued:

“All worked and eat together, and all slept in the farmhouse which consisted of but one room and a kitchen. The stock consisted of three farm horses, four milk cows, six young cattle and a pig. My work was in summer to rise at five in the morning, take the cattle to field, bring them home again about eleven – when they remained for about three hours, during which time I had to clean the byre; then again to field, where we (that is, I and the cows) remained till eight o’clock, when I had to furnish my charge with supper and bedding.”

In terms of food, Ritchie informs us that:

"This was humble and varied little throughout the year. Generally everyone partook of food together and from the same dish. Breakfast was oatmeal porridge. Eggs were produced but only for selling and never consumed on the premises! Dinner was always barley broth with plenty of cabbage or green kail, sometimes a little pork or a salt herring being added….beef or mutton never being seen in the house.”

“We had bread in abundance; a healthy and substantial mixed bread of oat, pease and barley meal, baked in the house, flour bread from the baker’s never being thought of. At night we had again porridge, or in winter, potatoes and milk. On Sundays the master and mistress indulged themselves in a cup of tea. We were true teetotallers – I never saw or heard of spirits, wine or even beer in the house. We made our own candles but were more indebted in the dark nights to the splint coal.”

This description tallies with the records in the 1792 Old Statistical Account of Scotland where the extract below from Largo Parish also describes typical meals.
​

The seasonality of life was also chronicled by John. At harvest time, he explained “I might assist in “leading-in” the corn – building it on the cart and forking it from the cart to the stack – and taking up and carting home the potatoes." Meanwhile "the master took the heavy part of the outdoor work – ploughing, sowing, &c – the lad assisting in driving out manure and the like; in winter the lad was mainly employed in thrashing, while in summer he was much employed in pulling thistles from the fields in crop, which were used as food for the horses.” Crops consisted of oats, barley, potatoes, turnip and red clover. "Throughout the year the mistress and the maid were occupied in milking the cows, churning, making cheese, &c; hoeing and other outdoor work in summer; in harvest in shearing; in winter mainly in spinning, all the clothes of the family, woollen and linen, being spun by them. There was then no spinning of fine yarns by machinery."

The meagerness of personal possessions was also conveyed by Ritchie: 

"My master’s best coat served him for the whole of his nineteen year’s lease of the farm. The winter evening’s were spent in the kitchen, mainly by the light of the fire, helped by parrot coal….While the women span, the master knitted stockings, the man-servant mended his shoes or stockings or any other like work, while I usually read aloud for the general benefit. Our stock of literature was scanty, consisting, besides the Bible, of some old sermons, a copy of Boston’s Fourfold State, Hervey’s 'Meditations among the Tombs'* and an ample stock of old stories and ballads – the latter being the joint property of the maid-servant and myself.”

“We had family worship every evening, the hour of which, as well as that of bedtime, was a little uncertain, owing to there being no watch or clock in the house. In the winter nights we could only judge the passing of time by the quantity of yarn spun by the mistress of maid, or by the length added to the stocking which the master was employed in making – which was rather an unreliable standard as he sometimes took a nap. When the weather permitted we regulated ourselves by the progress the “seven stars” made over the pent stack. For summer, I constructed a sun-dial by a rather unscientific process. Getting a loan of a tailor’s watch, I drew a line across a large whinstone by the shadow of the sun every hour from seven in the morning to eight at night, which answered the purpose remarkably well.”

*James Hervey (1714-58) was a writer of devotional texts. His popular 'Meditations Among the Tombs' was published in 1746 and it was often reprinted. The subject of the book is death, and the author dwells particularly on the grief caused by early death, and on the eventual re-uniting of the parted in heaven. Below is an illustration from this book.

After several year working on the farm at Largo, John Ritchie returned to the place of his birth, Kirkcaldy, to become a handloom weaver. This led to his eventual move to Edinburgh around 1800 to set up as a draper and haberdasher. By the time that The Scotsman newspaper was established in 1817, he had a flourishing business. John Ritchie (shown below as a young man) spent 53 years at the newspaper. ​He lost his wife in 1831 (the same year that he lost his brother) and never remarried. He entered the town council of Edinburgh in 1844, and was a magistrate of the city from 1845 to 1847. In 1849–50 he was chairman of the Chamber of Commerce. He was one of the founders of the United Industrial School. He died on 21 December 1870, at the age of 92. ​

His obituary in the 22 December Scotsman stated that he maintained associations with Largo Parish throughout his life "to the benefit of the poor of the place to the end of his life, long after all other links of connection had been snapped". He certainly bequeathed to us a graphic pen-picture of conditions on a small Largo farm over two hundred years ago - in doing so demonstrating that he had great powers of observation from an early age.

Above is the nameplate of the original Scotsman newspaper, taken from its very first edition published on 25 January 1817. It's a publication that we are all very familiar with. A lesser known fact is that it was all started by a man born in 1781 in Lundin Mill. Initially a weekly newspaper, it was launched by William Ritchie and Charles MacLaren. Born out of frustration with, and as an alternative to, the existing papers, The Scotsman set out to offer impartiality, independence from the establishment and to stand against privilege and corruption.

William Ritchie (pictured in the portrait below) was the son of a flax dresser named James Ritchie, who had moved from Kirkcaldy to Lundin Mill shortly before William's birth. Following a childhood in Lundin Mill, William moved to Edinburgh aged 19 and became a solicitor. In addition, from the age of 17, William had written short pieces for various publications including the Scots Magazine. In Edinburgh he was a member of 3 different debating societies where he displayed characteristics of "nerve, directness and simplicity, facility of elocution, great promptitude of thought, frequent appeals to general principles, and an ardour, which sometimes rose to transient bursts of passion."

Although a city dweller for most of his life, Ritchie greatly appreciated the rural landscape, as MacLaren also remarked "I never knew an individual who loved the beauties of nature with so intense a feeling. Fine scenery operated on him like an enchantment". Ritchie was also a philanthropist who took a particular interest in improving the police system in Edinburgh and who campaigned for the reform of prison conditions. He took a particular interest in debtors prisons. The piece below from the 25 Jan 1917 Scotsman helps to explain why this was an issue that he felt strongly about. 

Does anyone remember welcoming in 1975 at The Law? This advert from the East Fife Mail tells us that Jimmy Spowart played the organ there every night during the festive season....

Back on the first day of 1896, the "time-honoured custom" of the Largo Brass and Silver Band playing around the three villages was still being observed (East of Fife Observer 3 January). That year the band (led by George Houison) made a special visit to the home of Johnny Laidlay at Strathairly. The Laidlays entertained their tradespeople, servants and friends to a Christmas treat that same festive season. Thomas and Sarah Wishart were likely guests at that event, as they met at this time while both working on the estate. 
​