The diligent hitchhiker will have learnt of the curious habit the inhabitants of this planet have of burning fossils to provide propulsion for a variety of vehicles. Among the few positive consequences of this odd predilection are bridges, often graceful and triumphant ones. When touring Scotland you will no doubt be inclined to inspect at close hand the spectacular bridges across the Firth of Forth. As you fly West in whatever craft you have cadged your lift¹ along the north bank of the Firth of Forth, and pass those two splendid examples of Scottish engineering and the sprawl of what was the Rosyth naval dockyard, you will espy a curious sight. A village, just inland from a small harbour, seems to be laid out in the form of two initials, 'CE.' ² This is Charlestown, and your eyes were not deceived. The original terraces of small squat white single storey cottages are indeed laid out to commemorate one Charles Elgin³.

Benevolent bosses or a captive workforce?

There are many towns and villages throughout the UK built by industrialists to house their workers. Port Sunlight on Merseyside is perhaps the largest, originally built for the workforce at the soap factory. Bourneville in Birmingham may be the best known. New Lanark in Scotland is another, and the most complete and salubrious may be Saltaire, near Bradford, built by Titus Salt with a patriarchal attention to his workers needs.

Well before any of the above and not long after the 1745 uprising, the young Charles, the fifth Earl of Elgin, was on the Italian leg of his 'Grand Tour'⁴ and had met up with Robert Adam, an idealistic young architect. Pondering the future of his small estate south of Dunfermline, the earl came up with a solution that brought together many local resources - he decided to produce lime. He had huge, easily-exploitable limestone bluffs on the estate and a local tradition of lime production. He also had coal, from the nearby coalfields, for which he could trade his lime with the landowners who owned not just the mines but the agricultural land above. Most importantly, he had easy access to markets from the nearby riverside. All that was lacking was a workforce to quarry the lime and fire the kilns. And so he decided to build a village, to attract and retain his workers. In tune with the feeling of social responsibility abroad at the time, and, perhaps, encouraged by his discussions with Adam, he decided that his village would be a 'model village' and included a shop, a hall/school, a laundry, and proper sanitary arrangements ⁵.

So it was that on his return to the family seat, and in the face of fierce opposition from his mother, he vigourously set about his plan. A range of kilns was built in the cliff face overlooking the harbour, which was much enlarged, the village was built, the quarries started and tricky negotiations commenced to bring coal to the kilns on wooden railed wagonways. Before long, it was a great success, and spawned a number of ancillary trades. There was an ironworks and a plant to produce coke. The harbour was used by émigrés to the colonies, notably including the Carnegie family.

Nowadays, Charlestown has three claims on a passing hitchhiker's attention:

The Lime Industry

As a centre for the lime industry this village of Charlestown was the largest producer in Europe. It supplied a great deal of the lime used to construct Edinburgh, across the river, and at its peak produced 30% of the building lime used throughout the UK, even exporting to Denmark, the Netherlands and to the USA. It was always cheaply-priced, with marketing agents in all the major towns of Scotland. It had particularly good waterproofing properties, and was often used to construct harbours and the like.

Much lime from here was also spread on the fields of Scotland making the soil more amenable for the Barley crops used to make whisky - as a strong alkali, lime is mixed with acid soil to make it more amenable for the growth of a wider range of plants.

The original bank of six vertical kilns, and the fourteen others added later, remain impressive. The kilns are built into the shallow cliffs near the harbour and were once connected by a small rail track to the quarries, a couple of miles away, built in 1762⁶. The railway itself is quite interesting. The original horse-pulled wagons ran on wooden rails. These were later replaced by iron rails, and the horses replaced or supplemented by stationary steam engines at the major inclines. At the steep slope down to the harbour, there was an ingenious system whereby the declining loaded wagons provided the power for the empty wagons to climb back up the slope.

Recently a new 'state of the art' kiln has been tested successfully by the Scottish Lime Centre Trust, which has its headquarters in Charlestown. The trust works to reintroduce the now neglected virtues of building with lime.

A local group organises walking tours through the quarries, along the track and inside the kilns - a part of the tour that needs to be omitted by claustrophobes, the less agile and larger people. Enquiries at the village shop will elicit the timetable for the walks.

Submarine Bashing

As the lime industry declined, other uses were sought for the harbour facilities, and shortly after the First World War the Alloa Shipbreaking Company (later the conglomerate Metal Industries Ltd) found a home in Charlestown, having been rejected by their proposed home at Alloa. The small enclosed tidal harbour has been a deathbed for a good number of warships from both the German and British Navies. Among the first vessels broken up there were the German naval fleet scuttled at Scapa Flow, raised by divers, and towed there 'belly-up.' Perhaps the most famous was the ocean liner the 'Mauretania', and the last, in 1963, a submarine 'The Scorcher' from the nearby naval dockyard at Rosyth.

Conservation area

The original 'CE' rows of cottages are now a conservation area. These squat homes crouch against the gales from the forth and appear, with just two windows and a door facing the 'street,' deceptively tiny. Inside, the rooms are small but sufficient, most having enough rooms for a small family, with extensions at the back unseen from the street. Incidentally, it is only the central road - the one along the centre arm of the 'E' - that is paved. The others are unpaved grassy lanes. Visitors, although they may be welcome, will feel more than a little intrusive walking along them as they pass between the house front doors and their gardens, sheds and garages.

Charlestown may lay claim to have been among the most successful of the 'tied' villages. It was used for the intended purpose well into the twentieth century, some 200 years of continuous prosperity - although one hesitates to use the word, given the often poor pay and the extent of indebtedness to the company-owned commissary, the village store.

Nowadays, Charlestown is a peaceful backwater, with a quiet sense of its own history. Wipe the misted pane of this window on the past and reveal much of what Scotland is about.