Tour Scotland Video Winter Morning Drive To Pittenweem East Neuk Of Fife

Tour Scotland video of a Winter morning drive to the old fishing village of Pittenweem on ancestry visit to the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland. Until 1975 Pittenweem was a royal burgh, having been awarded the status by King James V in 1541. Founded as a fishing village around a probably early Christian religious settlement, it grew along the shoreline from the west where the sheltered beaches were safe places for fishermen to draw their boats up out of the water. Later a breakwater was built, extending out from one of the rocky skerries that jut out south west into the Firth of Forth like fingers. This allowed boats to rest at anchor rather than being beached, enabling larger vessels to use the port.

Sir Walter Watson Hughes was born in Pittenweem on 22 August 1803. He was a pastoralist, public benefactor and founder of the University of Adelaide, South Australia. He was the third son of Thomas Hughes and his wife Eliza, née Anderson. Hughes attended school in Crail and was apprenticed to a cooper for a short time, he then entered the merchant service and became a master, including whaling in the Arctic for several years. After hearing of opportunities for trade in Asia, Hughes purchased a brig, Hero, in Calcutta and traded opium in the Indian Ocean and seas of China having to contend with pirates. Hughes emigrated to South Australia in 1840, started business with Bunce & Thomson and took up land. Hughes suspected the land on which he kept sheep contained mineral deposits and informed his shepherds to look for minerals. In 1860 the Wallaroo copper mine was discovered on his property, and in 1861 the even more important Moonta mine was discovered nearby. Hughes secured the largest interest in both mines and became wealthy, despite paying several thousand pounds to rival claimants. Hughes subsequently returned to England, bought the Fancourt estate in Chertsey, Surrey, and died there on 1 January 1887 after a long illness. Hughes married in 1841 Sophia, daughter of James Henry Richman, who died in June 1885.

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