Gaps in the records
Falkland is very rich in historic and interesting buildings. Very many of them are Listed Buildings – buildings listed by Historic Environment Scotland for their special architectural or historic interest. But it's not easy to find out about the buildings or even where they are. Many of the buildings are listed in the HES records by names that bear no relation to their current addresses. Will you help us document our history and our heritage?
The survey
During August 2020 we delivered a leaflet to every listed property within the Falkland Conservation area, asking residents to tell us about their house, giving details such as any previous names the building was known by, and who lived there before 1970 (a 50-year cut-off to protect the privacy of current residents).
Thanks to everyone who completed the form: if you didn’t take part at the time we would still like to hear from you: Just download the form (PDF format), and return it to us filled in.
We're also interested in any special features of the building, for instance date stone, marriage stone, original doors or windows, bread ovens, etc., and any other buildings or structures in the curtilage.
Publicising the results
Weve created a Wiki, or online datasbase, hosted within our new historicfalkland.scot website but organised along similar lines to Wikipedia, to hold the results of the survey, together with information from other sources such as published works and old census returns. We aim to gradually build up a comprehensive archive of Falkland's historic buildings. Explore the Wiki.
Were concentrating initially on the Conservation Area, but we won’t exclude other significant buildings - a logical cut-off would be the historic parish of Falkland.
We also need photographs
Wikipedia has an article called ‘List of listed buildings in Falkland, Fife’: it lists over 100 buildings in the old Parish of Falkland, but has pictues for only nine of them. There was a project about 20 years ago to photograph every listed building in England; Falkland would be leading the way for a similar project in Scotland.
Photographing Falkland today
On World Photography Day, 19 August 2020, a number of us gathered on Brunton Green to start the photographic part of the Listed Buildings Survey. Throughout August and beyond, volunteers took photographs of buildings throughout the town, and entered them in a competition.
The competition is finished, but you are still invited to help us by taking your own photographs (as seen from the street: please don't go into private yards or gardens) and sending them to us.
Individual owners will be invited to photograph - or permit our volunteers to photograph - any interesting internal features that can’t be seen from the street.
Pictures from yesterday
We're also looking for photographs or images of Falkland in previous generations. Please get in touch if you have interesting photographs: we will arrange if necessary to borrow them, have them scanned, and return them to you.
An online photographic record
We want to be able to use the photographs very widely, for instance on Wikimedia Commons and WIkipedia and Flickr as well as on our own online Listed Buildings Survey database. So it will will be a condition of taking part that you agree io release your images under a Creative Commons licence - this will allow other people to make free use of the images, while still identifying you (unless you prefer to be anonymous) as the photographer.