As given in a talk by Pat Oliver on 19th February 2025

In 1975 I came to live in Limekilns with my then husband and our two year old daughter. We lived in Overhaven, backing onto a small copse, for four years until we moved to a bigger home in Charlestown. We lived there until divorce brought me back to the village in 1998, so I have lived longer in Limekilns than anywhere else!

But let's go back to centuries past and explore the history of the village I call home.

It is a coastal village in Fife. In geological terms, it stands on raised beaches and blown sand, with carboniferous sedimentary rocks and parts of the coalfields built up during that period – coal seams can be seen in places in the villages.

There are early records of Lymekills, as it was known then, dating back to the 11th century, but mainly they date from the 14th century. It started as a safe landing place for pilgrims and supplies heading to the abbey and Royal Palace in Dunfermline.

However, most records date from the 16th century when it was a busy – and smelly – port with a lot of trades going on and many sailing ships bringing wood, wine, and glassware to the area from the Baltic and France, to depart with lime, salt, and coal. Lime production moved to Charlestown in 1750. In later times it was to become a stopping place for the steam ferries which plied both banks of the Forth – when there were no bridges!
On the eastern edge of the village stands the Old Rosyth churchyard. It contains the ruins of the 12th Century church, having previously been established by the monks of Inchcolm as a religious site. Isolated as it was, it became a place of interest for the early 19th-century bodysnatchers from Edinburgh! So, in 1825, after a local meeting was held, a very robust Mort House was built to house the bodies – 3 months in winter and 2 in summer – until they were of no interest to the snatchers as the bodies were mere skeletons and not useful to the Medical School in Edinburgh.

Above the village stands Broomhall and its estate. It is the home of the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine. In 1702, Alexander Bruce, later 4th Earl of Kincardine, built a new home there on land which the family had previously purchased in 1588. In 1760, Charles 5th Earl of Elgin and 9th Earl of Kincardine decided he wanted to extend his home and employed John Adam as the architect. However, his alterations were never done and eventually the house, pretty much as it is now, was enlarged by 1796. When we moved to Charlestown in 1979, the Earl was still our Feu Superior and we bought out the feu so had no further dues to pay.

We have two harbours – Brucehaven in the east and Limekilns towards the west – both built in the 18th century. Brucehaven was built by Forbes of Pittencrieff in 1728 mainly for the export of coal. Above it stands a harled and crow-stepped building currently used by the Forth Cruising Club who moor their boats in the harbour below.

In the bay heading east from the harbour were soap and rope works. The ropes were made from flax and were used in the ship-building and repairing which was carried out in the village. Limekilns Pier in its current form was built at the same time as the Promenade was built and is made of large blocks of stone. It replaced several earlier piers including one from 1362. The harbour is protected by a ridge of rocks called the Ghauts through which a channel was made for the entry of ships. The end of this pier is now crumbling away to such an extent that a fund has been set up to restore it.

You can purchase slabs with engravings to suit you to be laid in what is known as the Beacon Way. Your purchase covers the cost of the slab and engraving with a donation to the fund as well. As mentioned, there is now a beacon on the pier which is lit to mark important events.
As we move west from Brucehaven Harbour we pass where the Brucehaven brewery stood till 1870, using barley from the Broomhall estate. We then reach Red Row – a most industrious part of the village in times past. Salt was panned here until 1825 when production moved to Charlestown as shown in the naming of the road Saltpans where houses now stand at the entrance to the lower part of that village. Fish was also cured. Breck House stands here – it was formerly called the Ship Inn and features in R L Stevenson's Kidnapped, set in 1751. David Balfour and Alan Breck sailed by ferry from Bo'ness to Limekilns.

Let's look at some other buildings in the village. The present school stands opposite the tennis club. It was known as the Pierhead School when it stood on Limekilns Pier. The new school was built in 1911/12 by Ure & Beveridge (a well-known local name). It has entrances marked Boys and Girls – although only one entrance is used now by all the children. It used to have outside toilets till the 80s and now has a portacabin for the nursery.

The present church celebrates its 200 years this year having been built as the United Associated Chapel in 1825. Inside it has a gallery on three sides – this is not used now except for exceptionally well-attended funerals. The Elgins had their pew in the gallery and the church used to be well filled with all the workers from the estate. The pews were made from Baltic Pine – imported – and painted in a pale grey. The central pulpit dates from 1833 and there are 2 stained glass windows, one of which depicts the three Marys. The manse next door was built in 1841. The church was recently refurbished and reopened in 2018. During the refurbishment, services were held in the church hall. The pews were removed, underfloor heating installed, and free-seating chairs purchased. It is now available for all sorts of uses – parties, concerts, the Christmas bazaar and of course the weekly Wednesday Tearoom which is visited by folk from far and wide.

In behind the church is the Old Orchard – once the walled garden of the estate. In the centre of the current houses is the Gardener's Cottage built in the late 17th century. On the lintel above the door are pictured the tools of trade of a gravedigger including a shovel, pick and rake. It is believed that this lintel was removed from the churchyard by the estate gardener who lived in the cottage and thought the tools represented his trade too! Until recently this was the home of Lady Martha Bruce, the sister of the present Earl. She was an exceptional lady who finished her working life as the Governor of Corton Vale women's prison. Behind the house stands a doocot from 1697 in the shape of a lectern.

The Main Street became a one-way street when the Promenade was built in 1931 on reclaimed land. Its building necessitated the demolition of small jetties, buildings and ponds. Before that the river lapped the grass outside the Bruce Arms which was built in 1899. The most notable building off the street in Academy Square is the King's Barn or Cellar as it is more commonly referred to. Originally built in 1362, the current cellar was built into the hillside in the early 16th century. It was used as a warehouse for wine and supplies for the Abbey and Palace, stored in two barrel-vaulted rooms. Above the doorway at the top of the outside staircase is a panel (inserted at a later date) depicting the Pitcairn Arms and the date 1581. It currently is used by Lodge Elgin 1077 for masonic meetings on the upper floor and various social events on the lower level – the sailing club used to hold Burns' suppers there and it was very atmospheric with the candle light and water drip through the walls from the hill above!

Also behind the street is a rubble tower, now incorporated into a new house, which was a malt kiln and was also used at one time for fish curing. You can see many old houses, some with outside staircases in this part of the village. One such is the Sundial cafe (see the sundial on the wall outside) which was converted from a near ruin into a small, intimate cafe on two floors with a spiral staircase to an upper office space. In the 70s there was a butcher's shop in Main Street, a general store with a PO in it and a flower shop cum gift shop. The butcher and PO are gone, converted into housing and the flower shop is now a dog grooming business. At the far end is the building which once housed the Cooperative Society grocery and butcher shops and now houses the Coorie restaurant and hotel. When we came to the village it housed a hairdresser and a tearoom which went through various guises – an Indian restaurant, a fish and chip shop and Il Pescatore (fish restaurant).

Passing Limekilns Pier we enter Halketts Hall (named after a local family who owned the saltworks) and at no 13 we see a marriage lintel dated 1774. The current Ship Inn was built in 1828. The village officially ends at the War Memorial and set into the wall below you can see a blue stone which marks the boundary between the two villages.

I have mentioned sailing and tennis – now it is golf's turn. In 1912 a course was built on what is now the continuation of Charles Way. When we came to the village it was known as the Cow Field and was used in summer for grazing and in winter as a superb sledging field if you avoided the wall at the bottom! The course closed in 1939 and sand (from those raised beaches) was extracted for making the concrete to floor the aviation fuel tanks at the dockyard. There was also a curling club and, when weather permitted, the brick works pond on the estate was used.

Shops were many and varied over the centuries, as were the pubs! At one time there was a tearoom on the pierhead run by a family called Seath! I have already mentioned those in the Main Street, all closed except the dog parlour. Just up from the church on the other side of the street there used to be a greengrocer and an antique shop which also did clock repairs. There was also a ladies' dress shop in Red Row. We still have fish vans which call round weekly, but the coal merchant has gone. The doctors' surgery moved from beside the manse to its new position at the top of Charlestown Brae. With no Post Office in the villages, we now have a van which spends an hour or so at the green outside The Bruce on a Tuesday – that is if it is not in the garage for repairs! We have an hourly no. 6 bus service into Dunfermline with no service on a Sunday. There are no services east to Rosyth or Inverkeithing for trains or buses except one very early (7ish) and a late one.

Housing. The oldest houses are in the Main Street and in Red Row with those behind it in Sandilands. Council houses were built in Upper Wellheads in the 1930s, mainly for folk coming to work in the dockyard. Most of these have now been purchased. Over the 70s and 80s many naval families spent two to three years in the village, swelling numbers in the school. This was also a time when middle management in industry and commerce moved more often so it was a time of changing population. Now it is a more permanent and aging population. My present house, a bungalow, was built speculatively by the Elgin Estate in 1964. The fireplace has an under mantel which is a casting of a frieze from the Elgin marbles! After my house, a gap was left to build flats for single men – never built and later filled with two larger bungalows in the 80s. Several more bungalows were built further up the street plus a V-shaped development across the road of the same timber-clad bungalows. The house in Overhaven was part of a development started in the very early 70s (we followed the original owners, a naval family). Those houses furthest from the hill down into the village were built first and then others nearer to the hill. So we lived in a building site for some time. Later Charles Way was extended in a loop towards the shore with large, expensive homes and the Cow Field was gone for good.

The oldest houses in the village had no gardens so allotments were allowed in the Loanheads above the Wellheads.
The Council purchased the land from the estate and it is now the park and playpark, across the stream from the rear of my house. In 1791 the population of the village was 658 and in 1812 it had grown to 921 with around 200 seamen and their families living mainly in Red Row and Sandilands. By 1881, with the decline in many of its industries, it had dropped to 677 and by 1951 combined with Charlestown it was only 830. Many sea captains lived in the village, including in the Hollies to the right of the start of the Main Street – you can still see a telescope in its upper bow window! The population is now 1450 in Limekilns alone.

Notable forlk. The King and Queen visited Limekilns in 1923 and a guard of honour was made up of Girl Guides. George Thomson, publisher of Scottish folk songs, was born in Limekilns in 1757 and died in Leith in 1851. He set these songs to classical music tunes and these were not well received in some quarters. His granddaughter married Charles Dickens. William Walker, 1st Baron Wavertree of Delamere, a Conservative politician and racehorse breeder was born in the Hollies in 1856 and in 1926 he produced a book about Limekilns.

Despite living here for 50 years, I am still an incomer! There are many folk who were born and brought up here and some of the earlier names persist as in Halkett's Hall. Names like Meldrum, Roxburgh and Livingstone can still be found. And of course many of the streets carry a name relating to features (Wellheads) or connected to the Bruce family (Brucehaven Crescent and Charles Way).