Creatives of Fife

But scratch the surface and you’ll find an edgier side. The East Neuk of Fife is also home to a growing community of creatives, experimental musicians and an innovative food scene. Fife is not just quaint, it’s cool.

On Comielaw Farm on the Balcaskie Estate near Crail, forward-thinking owner Toby Anstruther has been instrumental in creating a nurturing environment for a group of artists and designers, converting an old steading complex into bespoke studio spaces. In a separate steading just outside the coastal village of St Monans, he founded a monthly, weekend-long artisan food market called Bowhouse. This site is also the base of Futtle, an organic microbrewery, bar and bottle shop, as well as indie record label, Triassic Tusk, which hosts an eclectic programme of indie music nights and events. 

This sleepy rural backwater has become home to a group of creatives whose influence spirals out beyond this bucolic corner. People such as knitwear designer Di Gilpin. 

Charting her journey from ruined croft to hand-knit couture, Di Gilpin pitched up on the Isle of Skye in 1983 with a tent, wool and her knitting needles, establishing a knitwear studio and working with a number of leading fashion designers. Now bedded down in comely Fife, she has developed her own yarn label, Lalland with wool from the Outer Hebrides. “Our American knitters want to know the names of all the sheep,” she smiles, “but British knitters are interested in provenance too. We are all about slow fashion.”

Along with collections for Glasgow-Paris label La Fetiche, founded by April Crichton and Orely Forestier as well as Paul Smith and Nike, she has just co-authored a book with colleague Sheila Greenwell, on the traditional fishermen’s jumper, the Gansey, from her new design studio. Before the pandemic she also held regular workshops and retreats here. 

Sitting at the worktable in the bright two-storey steading, surrounded by skeins of yarn, she pulls out a dramatic Shetland lace kimono. “Christina Strutt (Cabbages & Roses) got in touch after seeing this on the catwalk to discuss a Scottish themed collection,” she tells me. 

She’s currently working with Knitwise, an initiative set up by The Prince’s Foundation and the Joseph Ettedgui Foundation, to create a knitted art installation at Dumfries House in Ayrshire. The project, which will feature five giant works wrapped around trees on the estate, celebrates knitting as a craft form around the world, as well as highlighting its mental health benefits. 

“Knitting and knitting in groups is therapeutic – it’s good for the mind and spirit. People still have such clichéd ideas about knitting,” says Di. The exhibition will then go on the road, travelling from arboretum to urban environment. 

Two doors down is another artisan maker with a wideangled view. Luthier (a maker of stringed instruments) Rory Dowling went from whittling to furniture design before finding his true calling.

“You can sit on a chair, but a guitar has the power to move people,” says Rory. 

Each year in his workshop in the farm’s renovated dairy, infused with the warm scent of wood, he makes between 11 and 13 guitars, and five mandolins. 

Musicians from around the world seek out his workshop to commission one of his bespoke handcrafted instruments. He describes the various woods with their individual characteristic as a giant recipe book, from which he can create unique tonal palettes. The soundboards are made from European spruce from the Alps, while Scottish sycamore and reclaimed mahogany can form part of the body and neck. He points out a huge piece of walnut, the tree blown down on the nearby Balcarres Estate, before handing me a weighty slab of African black wood.

“It’s incredibly heavy so gives great depth and power,” he says. 

The name, Taran Guitars, comes from the Gaelic word for thunder and from Taran Mhor, a hill on Harris in the Outer Hebrides, which rises almost vertically out of Loch Resort, and has always fascinated him. “Every day she has a tale to sing.” 

Across the courtyard is East Neuk Glass. Keny Drew trained as a photographer at the Glasgow College of Building and Printing, but working next door to a stained glass studio, he became increasingly interested in the process. He started producing glass negatives and experimenting with techniques, fusing screen-printing, photography and stained glass into a series of distinctive works. 

His studio on the farm, where he held classes until lockdown, has an ancient rural vibe and rough-hewn walls – the pieces hanging from the rafters have an ethereal quality. 

“They’re shot digitally then transferred onto glass, to create Victorian-style images. They have a negative ghostly feel. It takes photography back to being an object.”

One of his recent commissions was to design a series of contemporary stained glass windows for Futtle at Bowhouse. There’s a lot of creative cross-pollination around here. Prepandemic he also ran ‘Jamp’ art, film and music nights at Futtle. Artists and musicians would come together bringing their unfinished works. With Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote, he created an experimental work, KY10 “about the sea and slowing down and the rush of life.” 

Futtle’s founders Stephen Marshall and Lucy Hine are also experimenters - brewers, distillers, foragers and fermenters. No two batches of beer are ever the same as they brew with seasonal foraged ingredients, the recipe never replicated. They have just started wild brewing (using yeast from the atmosphere) and are constantly distilling, macerating and fermenting - before lockdown they created an organic foraged cocktail menu for the bar. 

Futtle is a cool, ever-evolving space with an eclectic programme of events - from DJ sets such as Disco Nouveau (celebrating the annual release of Beaujolais Nouveau) to knitting evenings with Di Gilpin.

“They’re real community get-togethers,” Lucy explains, “creative people sharing what they do, making things together - whether it’s music or knitting.” 

“We’ve lots of gigs coming up such as James Yorkston who lives locally and King Creosote will do a residency this summer.” 

In June they’re putting on a festival celebrating all things organic with chefs such as James Ferguson from Kinneuchar Inn and in September there are plans for a cider festival with Jaye and Grant Hutchison (the drummer of indie rock back band Frightened Rabbit) who founded Aeble, an artisan cider store in nearby Anstruther. 

Kinneuchar Inn in the village of Kilconquhar is another Balcaskie Estate renovation – after lying empty for years. The pared-back aesthetic has Scandinavian meets Scottish vernacular overtones. The restaurant’s white-raftered church ceiling, dark-blue tongue-and-groove woodwork, grey tweed benches, and chairs crafted from local wood have an almost Shaker-style simplicity.

James Ferguson (his CV includes stints at The Connaught with Angela Hartnett and the Rochelle Canteen), and his partner Alethea Palmer took over this 17th century inn in 2019, upping the foodie credentials of the East Neuk even further. 

They have an on-site butchery and make their own charcuterie – think fat-threaded spiced coppa strips, delicate luminescent white slivers of guanciale, or cured pork jowl, earthy chilli, black pepper and fennel salami. 

A few miles away on the coast, another outpost combining creativity in and out of the kitchen is restaurant and art gallery The Dory on pretty Pittenweem harbour, which was set up by marine artist Malcolm Cheape and his partner - University of St Andrews geologist-turned-chef, Ruth Robinson. 

I tuck into a plate of langoustines fresh from the boat beneath one of his giant canvases as he explains: “People who like good food like good art.” One couple’s dinner bill came to £6,500…

Inspirational couples making their mark on this corner of Fife also include Graham and Rachel Bucknall, who revamped the Ship Inn in Elie (famous for its beach cricket in summer) turning it into a seaside-chic retreat. They’ve recently taken on another faded hotel, The Crusoe in Lower Largo, one of Fife’s ancient fishing villages and the birthplace of Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. The first refurbished rooms opened in spring. The Largo Suite - a sweeping open-plan room on the corner - has its own balcony, old wooden oars on the wall, glass buoys in rope nets strung from hooks, and a freestanding tub right by the window. A scented-salts soak as seagulls wheel outside the window and the waves crash on the shore far below is almost enough to transport you to a desert island – if only there wasn’t so much going on in Fife…

Creatives & businesses featured: 

Di Gilpin 

digilpin.com 
Instagram: @digilpinknitwear 

Keny Drew East Neuk Glass 

eastneukglass.co.uk 
Instagram: @eastneukglass 

Malcolm Cheape 

thedory.co.uk 

Rory Dowling Taran Guitars 

taranguitars.co.uk 
Instagram:@taranguitars 

Stephen and Lucy – Futtle 

futtle.com 
Instagram: @futtleorganic 

Aeble 

aeble.co.uk 
Instagram: @aeble_cidershop 

Alethea Palmer and James Ferguson, Kinneuchar Inn 

kinneucharinn.com 
Instagram: @kinneucharinn 

Ship Inn, Elie 

shipinn.scot 
Instagram: @elieshipinn 

The Crusoe, Lower Largo Doubles from £110 

thecrusoe.com 
Instagram: @thecrusoelargo