The St Andrews Heritage Museum: A Hidden Gem in Our Local Treasure Trove
By Nicole Entin
When I visited St Andrews for the first time in the summer of 2019, it took only a couple of weeks to fall into a pattern of familiar haunts that I would visit from day to day. The ledge on Castle Sands, where I quickly learned not to bring my lunch for fear of scavenging seagulls. The common room in the School of English, still a firm favourite during revision week. And just a few steps down the road from Northpoint, a snug, two-story building from the seventeenth century – a veritable hidden gem in the St Andrews community. I stumbled upon the St Andrews Heritage Museum one afternoon after my customary chai latte, wandering through a gate, pushing open a wooden door, and being transported to our little Scottish town as it was in the nineteenth century. The displays in the museum feature reconstructions of different Victorian-era businesses in St Andrews that opened in the 1800s and remained open until the mid-twentieth century. The original fixtures and equipment of these shops were saved by or donated to the St Andrews Preservation Trust, including Art Deco-style fittings from Aikman and Terras, the local grocer, and a mahogany medicine cabinet from the Chemist Shop. Behind the main building is a garden that springs to life in the warmer months of the year, where I rambled along the stone paths, admiring the roses that bloomed bright red and pink in July.
The recreation of the Chemist Shop, c. early 1900s, St Andrews Heritage Museum, St Andrews.
The Heritage Museum situates itself in the long, evolving history of St Andrews and the lives of local working-class families that shaped its narratives, letting visitors discover the good, the bad, and the ugly alike. Although the house was built only in the seventeenth century – with its earliest recorded owner dating back to 1723 – the museum establishes the importance of the area in which the building is located, the oldest area of settlement in the town when it became the ecclesiastical capital of pre-Reformation Scotland in the twelfth century. In the nineteenth century, the four rooms of the house were rented to fisher families, some of whom consisted of up to ten individuals. Packed like sardines into these close quarters, the overcrowding of 12 North Street was representative of a larger issue of poverty and deprivation that was faced by the working-class community of St Andrews. The block of housing from 12 to 20 North Street was eventually saved from demolition in the 1930s after being purchased by James Hoey Scott, a local architect. The collections of the museum now comprise thousands of objects from photograph albums to a scrimshaw from the voyage of the HMS Beagle, with popular mainstay exhibitions including the shop recreations, as well as a rotating roster of temporary exhibitions that in the past year included St Andrews & Empire and Women of St Andrews.
James Bute, scrimshaw, c. 1831-36, carved sperm whale tooth, St Andrews Heritage Museum, St Andrews.
Although it is one of the lesser-known museums in St Andrews, the Heritage Museum is undoubtedly one of the most accessible spots in our community. Unlike many other sites in town, the museum does not charge admission and relies on a team of volunteer guides who answer questions, provide tours (these do cost a small fee of £4 for adult visitors), and work with school groups. The museum has also played host to a number of local and university-affiliated events over the years, including arts and crafts sales and object handling sessions led by a museum curator. The On the Rocks Festival, one of the largest student-run arts festivals in the UK, has also had a long-standing partnership with the museum, having hosted art-making workshops and even yoga classes in the back garden.
The St Andrews Preservation Trust continues to play a major role in the conservation of this valuable local heritage site, which has closed for the first time since it opened in 1981 for a major refurbishment project that will last until 2025. Having received a £630,000 funding grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to work towards redevelopments that are projected to cost nearly £2 million, the museum plans to make numerous repairs to the building, improve the environmental sustainability of the site, and develop an outdoor exhibition space to display more of its extensive collections. While the Heritage Museum will be remaining closed throughout this year, they are planning a number of pop-up events and exhibitions both in St Andrews and the surrounding Fife area. One of the events in the works is a coffee morning and sale of rare books scheduled for 27 January, with funds raised from the sale going towards the refurbishment project. This being the last foreseeable chance to visit the museum before its temporary closure, the event is an ideal opportunity to have an artsy morning viewing books and publications in a historical setting.
The St Andrews Heritage Museum, c. 1600s, St Andrews. Source: Google Street View.
The St Andrews Heritage Museum is an underrated gem in the treasure trove of cultural heritage sites and museums that our three streets have to offer. Providing a unique look at life in the town over the past centuries, the atmosphere of this spot is reminiscent of the historical recreation sites that I recall from my own childhood in Canada, albeit on a smaller and easily accessible scale. Once the museum completes its renovation project and reopens in 2025, I anticipate seeing how the Heritage Museum will connect to future generations of visitors while continuing to look to the past.