Spring Inner Harbour Anstruther East Neuk Of Fife Scotland

Tour Scotland Spring 4K travel video of the inner harbour on visit to Anstruther on the coast of the East Neuk of Fife, on the north shore of the Firth of Forth. This is where I was raised on the coast of Fife. By the 19th century Anstruther held tanning, shipbuilding, and fish curing establishments, as well as a coastal trade. The Board of Fisheries constructed a new harbour in the 1870s which was completed by 1877 at a cost of £80,000. Cod liver oil was also being produced. Herring fishing remained a feature of the area until the middle of the 20th century when, after a record catch in 1936, the shoals mysteriously declined until the industry effectively disappeared by 1947. Its main industry is now tourism. The Fife Coastal Path goes through Anstruther and runs from the Forth Estuary in the south, to the Tay Estuary in the north and stretches for 117 miles.

Anstruther Captains were famed for their seafaring skills and later in the 19th Century a number were actively involved in trade across the oceans, several in particular played a major role in the China tea trade. During the 19th century as trading ships got larger Anstruther increasingly turned to the fishing and the North Sea herring industry. Whole families would be involved with men at sea or mending nets and the women salting and packing the herring into barrels. Anstruther landed herring was particularly popular in Poland and the fishing fleet would follow the Herring run down the North Sea as far as Lowestoft, England.

Though I now live in Perthshire, I was raised in Anstruther and Cellardyke.

All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

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