Fife

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Fife council area
Location
Image:ScotlandFife.png
Geography
Area	Ranked 13th
-Total	1,325 km²
-% Water	?
Admin HQ	Glenrothes
ISO 3166-2	GB-FIF
ONS code	00QR
Demographics
Population	Ranked 3rd
-Total (2005)	356,740
-Density	269 / km²
Politics
Fife Council http://www.fife.gov.uk/
Control	NOC (Labour administration)
MPs	Gordon Brown Menzies Campbell John William MacDougall Willie Rennie
MSPs	Helen Eadie Iain Smith Christine May Marilyn Livingstone Scott Barrie Tricia Marwick
Image:Flag of Scotland.svg

This article is about the area in Scotland. For other uses, see Fife (disambiguation).

Fife (Fìobh in Gaelic) is a council area of Scotland, situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with landward boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire. It was originally one of the Pictish kingdoms, known as Fib, and is still commonly known as the Kingdom of Fife within Scotland.

It is a lieutenancy area, and was a county of Scotland until 1975. It was very occasionally known by the anglification Fifeshire in old documents and maps compiled by English cartographers and authors. A person from Fife is known as a Fifer.

From 1975 to 1996 Fife was a local government region divided into three districts — Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and North-East Fife. Since 1996 the functions of the district councils have been exercised by the unitary Fife Council.

The historical town of St Andrews is located on the east coast of Fife. It is well known for one of the most ancient universities in Europe, and as the home of golf.

1 History of Fife
2 Geography of Fife
3 Towns and villages
4 Places of interest
5 Notable Fifers
6 Sports
7 Council political composition
8 External links
9 See also
10 Trivia

[edit] History of Fife

Popularly known as 'The Kingdom of Fife', the county of Fife probably takes its name from Fibh, a 7th century Pictish king. Fibh was one of the seven sons of Cruithne, a warrior king who ruled over a wide area of ancient Scotland.

Legend has it that upon the death of Cruithne, the Pictish realm - known collectively as 'Pictavia' - was divided into seven sub-kingdoms or provinces, one of which became Fife. The name is recorded as Fib in 1150 and Fif in 1165. It was often associated with Fothriff.

The Kingdom of Fife probably also owes its popular epithet to the fact that its distinctive shape - bounded to the north by the Firth of Tay and to the south by the Firth of Forth - makes a natural peninsula whose political boundaries have changed little over the ages.

King James VI of Scotland described Fife as a 'beggar's mantle fringed with gold' - the golden fringe being the coast and its chain of little ports with their thriving fishing fleets and rich trading links with the Low Countries, ironic given the much later development of farming on some of Scotland's richest soil and the minerals, notably coal underneath.

Historically, there was much heavy industry in the century or so following the Victorian engineering triumphs of the Forth and Tay rail bridges, The Fife coalfields were developed around Kirkcaldy and its hinterland, reaching far out under the Firth of Forth. Shipbuilding was famous at Methil and Rosyth. The world centre for linoleum production was in Kirkcaldy, and flax grown in Fife was transformed into linen locally too.

[edit] Geography of Fife

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Fife is a peninsula in eastern Scotland bordered on the north by the River Tay estuary, on the east by the North Sea and the Firth of Forth to the south. The route to the west is partially blocked by the mass of the Ochil Hills. Almost all traffic into and out of the county has to pass over one of three bridges, south on The Forth Road Bridge, west on the Kincardine Bridge or north east via The Tay Road Bridge, the exception being traffic headed north on the M90. It is a sore point among local residents that the only two bridges in Scotland (Tay and Forth) on which a toll has to be paid are those leading into Fife, with the tolls retained by the Scottish Executive for national use. The Erskine and Skye bridges did have tolls, but these were abolished recently (as of 2006).

There are a number of extinct volcanic features, such as the Lomond Hills which rise above rolling farmland, and Largo Law, a volcanic plug in the south east of the county. The coast has many fine but small harbours, from the industrial docks in Burntisland and Rosyth to the fishing villages of the East Neuk such as Anstruther and Pittenweem. The large area of flat land to the north of the Lomond Hills, through which the River Eden flows, is known as the Howe of Fife.

Image:Northeast Fife.jpg

North of the Lomond Hills can be found many villages and small towns in a primarily agricultural landscape. The areas to the south and west of Fife, including the towns of Dunfermline, Glenrothes, Kirkcaldy and the Levenmouth region are much more lightly industrial and densely populated. The only area which could claim to be heavy industry is that of Rosyth, around the naval dockyard.

The east corner of Fife, generally that east of a line between Leven and St Andrews is recognised throughout Scotland as the "East Neuk" (or corner) of Fife, small settlements around sheltered harbours, with distinctive vernacular "Dutch"-gabled (or stepped) stone-built architecture - an area much sought after as second homes of the Edinburgh professional classes in the 30 years since the Forth Road Bridge was built.