Tour Scotland travel video of the harbour on ancestry, history visit and trip to St Monans, East Neuk of Fife. St Monans, often spelt St Monance, is a village and parish in the East Neuk of Fife and is named after the legendary Saint Monan. Situated approximately 3 miles west of Anstruther, this small community, whose inhabitants formerly made their living mainly from fishing, is now a tourist destination situated on the Fife Coastal Walking Path. Like other small East Neuk towns, St Monans is rich in vernacular fisher and merchant houses of the 17th to early 19th centuries, with characteristic old Scots features, e.g. forestairs, crow-stepped gables, datestones, pantiled roofs. The original settlement was, according to early sources, known as Inverin, Invery, Inverie, Finvirie, Inweerie, Inverry or even elsewhere Innerny and possibly derived from the Gaelic for at the mouth of a stream. The origin of the present name, St Monans, although similarly there were other spellings St Monance persisting until quite recently, is derived from a 6th century Irish abbot bishop, St Moinenn, from Clonfert who died in 571. One tradition is that he was killed by Vikings there nearby on the Isle of May, and another is that his relics came over with the Scots monks when they originally settled in St Monans circa 870
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