County in Scotland
Fife
Fife is the Kingdom that gave the world golf's spiritual home, a sea-battered fishing coast, and a university where a future king met his bride.
Key information
- County
- Fife
- Nation
- Scotland
- Population
- About 374,000 (2021 estimate)
- Known for
- St Andrews and the Old Course, the East Neuk fishing villages, the Forth bridges, Dunfermline's royal past
- What locals are called
- Fifers
- Famous people
- Adam Smith, Andrew Carnegie, Gordon Brown, Kate Middleton's university friends at St Andrews (Prince William studied there)
- Football clubs
- Raith Rovers, Dunfermline Athletic, East Fife, Cowdenbeath, St Andrews-area amateur sides
About Fife
Why a whole county calls itself a kingdom
Fife is nicknamed the Kingdom, and the title is not just swagger. It is thought to trace back to the Pictish realm of Fib, one of the old regions of early Scotland, and the name stuck through the centuries. The royal credentials are real too. Dunfermline was a favoured seat of Scottish kings, and the abbey there holds the remains of Robert the Bruce. Malcolm III and his queen, Margaret, are tied to the town as well, and Margaret was later made a saint. Dunfermline was Scotland's capital in the eleventh century, and in 2022 it was granted city status as part of the Platinum Jubilee honours. Fifers will tell you it was simply getting back what it had earlier.
Where golf grew up
St Andrews is the most famous golfing town on the planet. Golf has been played on its links since at least the fifteenth century, and the Old Course is among the oldest in the world. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club, founded in 1754, became one of the game's rule-making authorities. The Old Course has a well-known quirk: a stretch of grass, the Swilcan Burn, and the Swilcan Bridge, a small stone span crossed by golfing legends for generations. Photographers queue for it. The town is also home to Scotland's oldest university, founded in the early fifteenth century. Prince William studied there and met Catherine Middleton, which brought St Andrews a fresh wave of fame.
Crab pots, pantiles and the East Neuk
Along the south-east coast, the East Neuk of Fife strings together fishing villages such as Crail, Anstruther, Pittenweem and St Monans. Red pantile roofs and crow-stepped gables show the trading links across the North Sea with the Low Countries, which supplied the roof tiles as ballast on returning ships. Anstruther is home to the Scottish Fisheries Museum, and its fish-and-chip shop has a reputation reaching far beyond Fife. Crail is known for its harbour and its lobster and crab, often landed just yards from where they are sold. The Fife Coastal Path runs for around 117 miles from the Forth to the Tay, past beaches, castles and seabird cliffs.
The bridges, the coal and the big names
Fife sits between two great estuaries, and bridges define its edge. The Forth Bridge, the red cantilever railway giant opened in 1890, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has become shorthand for a job that never ends. Beside it stand the Forth Road Bridge and the cable-stayed Queensferry Crossing, opened in 2017. Fife was a coal-mining area for generations, and the fortunes of towns such as Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy were bound up with pits and, in Kirkcaldy's case, linoleum. Kirkcaldy, the Lang Toun, is named for its long main street and was the birthplace of economist Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations. Dunfermline produced Andrew Carnegie, the weaver's son who became one of the richest men in the world and gave away much of his fortune, funding libraries across the globe. Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister, grew up in Kirkcaldy.
Football, folklore and the smell of Kirkcaldy
Fife is a football-mad county with plenty of clubs for its size: Raith Rovers in Kirkcaldy, Dunfermline Athletic, East Fife in Methil, and Cowdenbeath. Raith Rovers famously won the League Cup in 1994, beating Celtic on penalties. St Andrews has its own student traditions, including the Raisin Weekend, when older students adopt first-years as academic children and give them a ceremonial receipt in Latin for a pound of raisins. Another is the May Dip, when students run into the North Sea at dawn on 1 May. And in Kirkcaldy, linoleum left its mark on the air. The floor covering was invented in England by Frederick Walton, who patented it in 1863, but Kirkcaldy became a major centre of its manufacture, and the industry's distinctive smell became associated with the town.