Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland

BURNTISLAND
pany. Up to 1881 it was managed as part of the burgh
property by the town council, but by the latest Act it is
vested in 8 commissioners, 4 of them appointed by that
company, and 4 by the town council. The wet dock,
opened on 1 Dec. 1876, covers 5$ acres, and has about
630 yards of quayage, a depth of from 19J to 22f feet,
an entrance 50 feet wide, railway connections, and several
hydraulic loading machines ; the sea-wall, starting from
the island at the S end of Cromwell Dyke, is thence
carried in a westerly and a northerly direction, includ-
ing several acres of the foreshore. How great has been
the effect of the improvements, may be seen in the
growth of the harbour revenue from £197 in 1860 to
£16,194 in 1891. Coal is the principal article of escort.
Since the opening of the Forth Bridge the ferry traffic
has ceased, and the prosperity of the port has consequently
been greatly affected. It is still the headquarters of the
custom-house business for the district, which embraces
the line of coast from Aberdour to Anstruther.
Seal of Burntisland.
The railway station adjoins the steamboat pier, and
combines elegance of architecture with commodiousness
of arrangement ; whilst the neighbouring Forth Hotel is
a handsome edifice, with all the convenience of a city esta-
blishment. The railway between the sea and the town
passes first through deep rock-cuts, and next along a beach
devoted to bathing. A little way down the line is a large
railway-carriage and engine depot. Encroachments by
the sea have been made and are menaced to the E of the
railway works ; and Sibbald's History of Fife (1710) says
that towns-folk not long dead ' did remember the grassy
Links reach to the Black Craigs, near a mile into the sea
now.'
In 1656 Burntisland had 7 vessels of from 12 to 150
tons ; like other ports of Fife, it is said to have stiffered
greatly from the Union. The boats of the Forth and
East Coast fisheries long made its harbour their prin-
cipal rendezvous, but were eventually drawn to An-
struther and other places. A herring fishery, with
Burntisland for its headquarters, began about 1793, was
vigorously prosecuted for many years, and produced
from 16,000 to 18,000 barrels annually ; but even that
declined into little more than curing and coopering the
cargoes of boats from other ports. Whale fishing sent
out two vessels of respectively 311 and 377 tons in 1830
and some following years ; but that likewise failed and
was relinquished. The town has a post office, with
money order, savings' bank, and insurance departments,
a railway telegraph office, branches of the Commercial
and National Banks, a savings' bank, and a fair on the
third Friday of July. New waterworks, costing £25,000,
were opened in 1878. The distributing reservoir at Kil-
mundy lies, 1 mile NW of the town, at 200 feet above
sea-level ; the principal reservoir is at Cullalo, 1J mile
NE of Aberdour, and covers 40 acres ; and the total
storage capacity is 100,000,000 gallons, or 140 days'
supply, at the rate a day of 70 gallons per head of the
BURNTISLAND
present population. Another great improvement was
effected in 1880, by granolithic paving at the East End, a
handsome and almost unbroken promenade being formed
thus of 2020 feet.
Burntisland belonged anciently to Dunfermline Abbey,
and was exchanged by James V., in 1541, for some
lands in the neighbourhood, that he might erect it into
a royal burgh. It dates as a royal burgh from that
year, and it got new charters in 1587 and 1632. It is
now governed by a provost, 2 bailies, a dean of guild,
a treasurer, and 7 councillors ; and it unites with Kirk-
caldy, Kinghorn, and Dysart, in sending a member to
parliament. Its police affairs are managed by the magis-
trates and town council as commissioners of police ;
and its municipal, police, and parliamentary boundaries
were made identical in 1876. The corporation revenue
in 1865 was £548, in 1891 £2526. The annual value
of real property— £8846 in 1843— was £27,266 in 1891,
inclusive of the railway. The parliamentary constituency
in 1891 was 729; the municipal 859. Pop. of burgh
(1831) 1873, (1841) 1959, (1861) 3143, (1871) 3265,
(1881) 4096, (1891) 4692. Houses (1891) inhabited 990,
vacant 59.
Agricola, the Roman general, on crossing the Forth
into Fife (83 a.d. ), is thought, by some writers, to have
landed at Burntisland, and to have encamped his army
on Dunearn Hill, 2 miles to the NN¥. On its summit is
a plateau, surrounded with an immense number of loose
stones, and known as Agricola's Garrison. In 1563, at
Kossend Castle, where Queen Mary was spending the
night on her way to St Andrews, the hapless Chastelard
burst into her chamber — the offence for which he was
brought to the block. A meeting of the General As-
sembly was held in the parish church in 1601, being
summoned from Edinburgh by James VI., who durst not
trust himself to the stormy Firth, and who here re-swore
the Solemn League and Covenant, and suggested to the
Assembly the propriety of revising the English transla-
tion of the Scriptures. In April 1615, the serving by
the Queen's chamberlain of certain writs gave rise to an
eviction riot of ' a multitude of women, above ane
hundred, of the bangster Amazon kind, who maist un-
courteously dung him [the Earl of Dunfermline] off his
feet and his witnesses with him, they all hurt and
blooded, all his letters and precepts reft fra him, riven,
and cast away, and sae stoned and chased out of the
town.' The minister, Master Watson, a man of no
calm port, would seem to have roused the townsfolk's hot
humours, and the bailie's wife was leader of the Amazons.
The inhabitants of Burntisland were zealous Covenan-
ters, and made a powerful stand against Cromwell ;
eventually compelled to surrender the town to him, they
exacted from him the stipulation that he would repair
its streets and harbour. A letter of 29 July 1651,
from the Protector to the Speaker of the House of
Commons, describes the town as ' well seated, pretty
strong, but marvellous capable of further improvement
in that respect without great charge ; ' the harbour as
' near a fathom deeper than at Leith at a high spring-
tide, and not commanded by any ground without the
town.' In April 1667, a fleet of 30 Dutch sail appeared
at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, and some of the
Burntisland privateers taking their cannon ashore, and
raising a battery to defend the harbour, the Dutch ships
lashed out with their ordnance against the town, and
knocked a few chimneys down, but did no further harm.
The town was occupied, in 1715, by the Earl of Mar's
troops ; and a spot adjacent to it was the camping
ground, in 1746, of a large body of Hessians. Lord
Burntisland was a life-title conferred in 1672 on Sir
Jas. Wemyss of Caskieberry, husband of Margaret,
Countess of Wemyss.
The parish of Burntisland, originally called Wester
Kinghorn, is bounded N and E by Kinghorn, S by the
Firth of Forth, and W by Aberdour. Its length from E
to W varies between 1| and 2f miles ; its greatest
breadth from N to S is 2| miles ; and its area is 2950J
acres, of which 386 are foreshore. The coast, inclusive
of sinuosities, is 3J miles long, the shore being sandy
203