Tayport
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Tayport | |
|---|---|
| Scots: | Tayport |
| Location | |
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| OS grid reference: | NO458287 |
| Statistics | |
| Population: | 3,847 |
| Administration | |
| Council area: | Fife |
| Constituent country: | Scotland |
| Sovereign state: | United Kingdom |
| Other | |
| Police force: | Fife Constabulary |
| Lieutenancy area: | Fife |
| Former county: | Fife |
| Post office and telephone | |
| Post town: | TAYPORT |
| Postal district: | DD6 |
| Dialling code: | 01382 |
| Politics | |
| Scottish Parliament: | North East Fife Mid Scotland and Fife |
| UK Parliament: | North East Fife |
| European Parliament: | Scotland |
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Tayport is located in Fife, Scotland. TE OPORTEST ALTE FERRI (motto of the Burgh of Tayport) - "It is encumbent, opportune on you to carry yourself high."
Tayport lies close to the north east tip of Fife. To the north it looks across the River Tay to Broughty Ferry and Broughty Castle. To its east is the vast Tentsmuir Nature Reserve, an area of forested dunes measuring some 3km from east to west and 6km from north to south and edged by wide sands that continue all the way round to the mouth of the River Eden.
Contents |
[edit] History
A ferry service across the Tay was already well established when the lands here were granted to the newly formed Arbroath Abbey in about 1180. The abbey constructed shelter and lodgings for pilgrims making the trip between St Andrews and Arbroath via the ferry and this formed the core of a settlement that steadily grew over the following centuries.
At the time a chapel was built here in the early 1200s, the settlement was called Partan Craig, Gaelic for "Crab Rock." Over the following two hundred years English eroded many Gaelic place names in eastern Scotland and Partan Craig had become known as Portincragge by 1415 and as Port-in-Craige by the end of that century. In 1598 the settlement received is burgh charter in the perfectly rational, but completely corrupted, name of Ferry-Port on Craig.
Ferry-Port on Craig saw a dramatic increase in population at the end of the 1700s when tenants displaced by agricultural improvement and clearance came to take advantage of jobs in the village's textile and shipbuilding industries. Leisure opportunities also increased. Golf came early to Ferry-Port on Craig, with a course laid out in 1817. And despite the efforts of the local farmer, who twice ploughed up the course in the 1800s, it was here to stay.
A road to Newport-on-Tay, just three miles to the east, and the less weather-prone and better used ferry service from there to Dundee meant that Ferry-Port on Craig was without a ferry for parts of the first half of the 1800s. But by the 1840s a steam ferry service had once more resumed to Broughty Ferry. This was acquired by the Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee Railway who used the route for a railway ferry service between what they chose to call Tayport and Broughty Ferry in 1851 as part of their rail service from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. The simpler name of Tayport stuck.
The rail ferry ceased operation in 1878 with the opening of the Tay Rail Bridge: only to resume operations the following year when the bridge collapsed. With the opening of the replacement rail bridge in 1887 Tayport returned to a passenger-only ferry, which continued to run to Broughty Ferry until 1920.
The opening of the Tay Road Bridge in 1966 put Tayport within a few minutes drive of the centre of Dundee. It has since evolved largely as a pleasant dormitory village for Scotland's fourth city. Some industry remains, but the harbour is now given over almost wholly to leisure craft, and attractive new housing has been built where once railway carriages were manoeuvered onto ferries.
But reminders of Tayport's earlier life and identity remain. In the centre of the village is Ferry-Port on Craig Church, established in 1607 and rebuilt in 1794 and 1825. Parish worship now takes place along the street at Tayport Parish Church, which was built in 1843 as Ferry-Port on Craig Free Church.
Local tourist amenities include local shops, a caravan park, tennis club, an 18-hole golf course (Scotscraig Golf Club) and large park areas, namely the East and West Common. The Canniepairt, Tayport is the home to both Tayport F.C. and to the famous Tayport Car Boot Sales. The car boot sales, which are held every second Sunday throughout the summer from April to September, are popular with locals and visitors alike and have even featured on TV.
| Historical populations | |
|---|---|
| Census year |
Population |
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| 1755 | 621 |
| 1801 | 920 |
| 1851 | 2238 |
| 1901 | 3445 |
| 1951 | 3326 |
| 2005 | 7922 |
[edit] Tentsmuir Forest
Tentsmuir is a popular, extensive pine forest planted on the sand dunes at the mouth of the River Tay. There is a wide variety of plants, wildlife and architectural heritage.
The land ( 3,700 acres, or 12 square miles ) was acquired by the Forestry Commission in the 1920s and planted predominantly with Scots and Corsican pine. In addition to commercial forestry, careful management has created an interesting mixture of open spaces, ponds, trees, and sand dunes that are rich in wildlife including three species of roosting bat.
Several forest walks begin at the Kinshaldy car park and picnic site, and of special interest is the 19th-century ice house and pond built to keep locally-caught salmon fresh.
The area of Tentsmuir Point is included as one of Scotland's 73 National Nature Reserves, which are areas of land set aside for nature, where the main purpose of management is the conservation of habitats and species of national and international significance.
This large area of sand dunes and beach at the mouth of the Tay Estuary forms an important roosting and feeding area for huge congregations of seaduck, waders and wildfowl, as well as a haul-out area for over 2,000 both common and grey seals. The reserve’s grassland and dunes are especially favoured by a wide variety of colourful butterflies.
Facilities include a car park and picnic facilities at Kinshaldy, with information panels, trails, and access to extensive beach frontage. Toilets. Parking charge is £1.00 for cars and £15.00 for coaches.
The Kinshaldy beach area includes a former icehouse and WW2 fortifications. Extensive views out over sand dunes to the North Sea and St. Andrews. The beach area, known as Tentsmuir Sands, was included in the Marine Conservation Society's Good Beach Guide 2003. This means that our local beach is included in the Charity's list of Scotland's 32 cleanest beaches.
In prehistoric times, the district around Tayport was inhabited by Neolithic Settlers, whose clay pottery and finely-wrought stone arrowheads have been found in considerable quantities on Tentsmuir, once an area of heath and moorland, which is now owned by the Forestry Commission.
These settlers had not learned how to use metals and did not practise agriculture, but lived by hunting and fishing. The sites of some of the early settlements have been located by large collections of shells and, although nothing remains of their homes – probably primitive turf huts – one of their boats, a hollowed-out tree trunk, has been found in a sandbank near Newburgh, further up the Tay. Dundee Museum keeps a good collection of Neolithic artefacts.
Tentsmuir has also been the site of dozens of exiting Bronze Age finds – implements and ornaments made by the Celtic invaders who settled in the district, have been discovered near the remains of iron-smelting sites.
[edit] Tayport F.C.
For over a century the game of football has been a major influence in most communities in Scotland. Tayport, a small former burgh of just under 4,000 inhabitants, situated on Fife’s most northern extremity on the south bank of the River Tay, is no exception.
From Victorian times, through to the Second World War, the town has always had at least one football club.
Information from those days is sketchy, but we do know that Tayport had a Junior club pre-First World War, winning the East of Fife Cup in 1905, for example. The Great War in 1914 effectively signalled the demise of Junior football in the town for seventy five years.
Throughout the twenties and thirties, there were various amateurs clubs in the town, but success was fleeting and there is little recorded history.
After the Second World War and the second half of the 20th Century beckoning, The town’s football club was Tayport Violet. In 1947 a new club emerged as rivals to Violet when Tayport Amateurs was formed by local lads who had been playing friendlies together as a Senior (Boy) Scouts team. This was the birth of the club we know today.
These local lads entered the Amateurs team in the Midlands Amateurs’ Alliance League, a league which was essentially for clubs’ reserve XI’s. Local rivals Violet played in the Midlands’ top division.
By 1950, the Midlands Amateur Football Association was expanding and in the reorganised leagues, both the Violet and the Amateurs found themselves in Division Two.
Promotion was swift and the two teams finished the season in 1st and 2nd spots respectively. 1952/53 saw Violet and the Amateurs finish second and third in the first division behind the champions, YM Anchorage. YM Anchorage, incidentally, had won every title since 1933.
Then, suddenly, Violet were gone. Despite finishing runners-up, it was their last season.
There were contrasting fortunes for the Amateurs during the 50s and 60s, but despite experiencing some quite often desperate times, the club managed to survive. That survival was important and a significant factor in the success the club was to enjoy during the latter part of the century.
A new, young committee emerged in the late 1960s and the 1970s was a reasonably successful era, with the club establishing itself as a major force in the amateur game.
The club, which had always played its football on the East Common, required more modern accommodation and, at the invitation of Tayport Town Council, in 1975, moved across the factory burn from the East Common to The Canniepairt.
This was formerly poor farming land which had been allowed to go to waste but which had recently been used by the Army for its Polex 70 Exercise. Clubrooms were constructed and, like the ground, were subjected to various upgrades in order to provide the accommodation which the club, and indeed, the community, now enjoys.
In 1980, the club which, since 1953 had run an Alliance, or Reserve XI, started a third team – the Fife XI - which was to enjoy eleven successful seasons in the East Fife Amateur Association and for one season, the Kingdom Caledonian League.
As the club’s standing in the game developed, the committee felt the time was right to take a further step and, in 1990, the club’s Junior team was launched and the name of the club became, quite simply, ‘Tayport Football Club’, a name which could embrace both amateur and junior grades.
Sadly the enthusiasm for amateur football in the town waned and, through a lack of local players, season 2000/2001 was to be the club’s last in the Amateurs Leagues.
Since the club joined the Junior ranks, the success which the club has enjoyed has been phenomenal and is unsurpassed in 120 years’ history of the Junior game. Virtually every honour the game has to offer, has come Tayport’s way, culminating in five Scottish Junior Cup Final appearances, with three wins - 1996, 2003 and 2005.
Six live TV appearances and sustained media spotlight has raised the profile of the previously unknown former harbour and railway town to a hitherto unknown level.
[edit] Scotscraig Golf Club
Scotscraig Golf Club is the 13th oldest golf club in the world [1] and is steeped in fascinating history.
It was towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) that some of the members of the St Andrews Society of Golfers - later to become the Royal and Ancient Golf Club - began to feel they would like more golf than the Society's infrequent meetings afforded.
Amongst them was Mr William Dalgleish of Scotscraig, whose lands included an area known as the Garpit, around part of which ran a racecourse (although there is no record of any racing that was done there, the course is carefully marked out on the first ordnance survey maps). In the centre of this racecourse, golf was played over six holes, long before a club was thought of.
Scotscraig golf club was founded one August evening in 1817, as William Dalgleish entertained some friends in Scotscraig House.
The original rules of the club, adopted at the first formal annual meeting in Scotscraig House in October 1818, dictated that a uniform would be worn - a red coat with a green velvet collar and a badge on the left breast. This was not merely fashion but was an order - if anyone appeared without it, he did so under a penalty of two bottles of port!
An annual competition for gold and silver medals was held until 1834, when the club was closed down, as disaster struck the club when the course was ploughed by the owner, a farmer, who took a distinct dislike to the game. The club went into eclipse for the next 52 years, the lack of a course proving too much of a handicap for the sporadic efforts to revive it. But it was around this time that Scotscraig Estate, on which the club was situated, passed into the hands of the Dougalls, and modern golfers have reason to be grateful that Admiral Maitland Dougall was so keen on the game - but for him Scotscraig might not exist today.
In 1887 he instigated its revival, restored the trophies and helped secure a course; it was reopened for play the following year, and by 1890 it had been laid out as a nine-hole course. The club house was erected in 1896.
In 1904 more land was acquired, and an 18-hole course was laid out, incorporating the original nine holes. It is considered a particular advantage of the course that the ninth hole is hear the clubhouse, so that elderly players and those who cannot spare the time for the full round of 18 holes can play on either half.
The grounds were aquired by the club in 1923.
[edit] Scott & Fyfe
At the foot of Nelson Street there is a factory which was erected by Messrs Scott & Fyfe about the same time as the spinning mill (~1864). The cloth woven was chiefly of jute, but at one time linen goods were also made. This factory has been extended many times and gave a considerable amount of work to the female inhabitants of the town.
The machinery consisted of 140 looms of various breadths, with complete equipment for winding, preparing, dressing, and cropping operations.
Today, the industrial textile industry has evolved to become a high technology global market place that covers all areas of commerce, leisure and lifestyle - textiles touch our personal and business lives at every point.
Scott & Fyfe's client list reads like a who's who of global manufacturing with names such as 3M, Boeing, BMW, Ford, Interfloor, NASA and Textron Automotive.
[edit] Tayport Primary School
In the early part of the 19th Century, there were four small schools in Tayport. Two were run by males and two by females. When the Education Act came into force, a school had to be built which could accommodate all the children in the community so the present buildings were opened in 1875. Later, the building was extended as the population increased.
Initially the school ran both a primary and secondary programme of education, although the infant children were accommodated at the building which is now Ferryport Nursery on William Street.
In 1967, when Junior Secondary schools were closed, Tayport became a Primary school and the older pupils were sent to Madras College in St. Andrews or Bell Baxter High School in Cupar.
On May 7th, 1975, the School held an open evening to celebrate its centenary. They borrowed an exhibition called ‘Grandfather’s School days’ from the Dundee Museum, and displayed many old photographs and momentos loaned to the School by former pupils. The School headmistress at the time was Robina Eagles.
