Living in St Andrews

Close to spectacular beaches and harbours on Scotland’s east coast, St Andrews draws golfers, students and holidaymakers and has such global appeal that property is a sure investment, says Joanna Willcox.

Bounded by waters on three sides (the Tay to the north, the Forth to the south and the North Sea eastwards), the ancient kingdom of Fife has a strong and special identity. It was home to Scotland’s kings for 500 years until James VI became James 1 of England in 1603, and St Andrews in the north-east – its dominant town near the mouth of the Eden which flows through Fife’s gentle hills – is Scotland’s ecclesiastical capital.

Here, in the fourth century, the bones of St Andrew brought ashore by St Rule from Greece after a shipwreck became a shrine, then, in the 12th century, a cathedral. Since the Scottish Reformation it has been a ghostly ruin, standing beside the castle, once the bishops’ residence, near the shore.

St Andrews has more prominence these days as a lively undergraduate town – it has the oldest university in Scotland, founded in 1413 – where Prince William and Kate Middleton met. And very importantly, it is the birthplace of golf and the home of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club (the R&A), founded in 1754, which governs the rules of the game (except in the USA).

ABOVE (left-right): College Street, close to the castle, cathedral and the old part of the university in the heart of St Andrews; Falkland Palace, built between 1501 and 1541, where Mary Queen of Scots spent some of her happiest days, has beautiful gardens.

Desirable locations

A huge attraction of St Andrews is its position, looking out on all sides over broad sweeps of sandy beach. The R&A and the famous Old Course are close to the town – on The Scores, the shoreline area also occupied by St Salvator’s, the university’s oldest collegiate complex.

Property on The Scores is highly desirable, with apartments from £500,000 to over £1m. The ultimate residence for golfers is a double upper apartment in The Links with a view of the 18th green of the Old Course, for sale with Strutt & Parker at £1.75m.

Linda Black, from the long-established property and legal specialist Pagan Osborne, says that the old town is dominated not only by golfers’ second homes but by student accommodation. About 15% of the property market is dedicated to buy-to-lets for students. ‘Many parents invest, then keep the flats after their children have graduated,’ reveals Linda. Flats cost from £200,000 for a one-bedroom flat to £400,000 for four bedrooms, according to Rollo Davidson McFarlane’s list. Student accommodation tends to be high-quality as it is let out to golf tourists during the summer months.

ABOVE: Golfers putting on the Old Course of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, whose towering clubhouse in St Andrews is visible in the background.

The simple medieval street plan of North and South Streets intersected by central Market Street converges on the cathedral, and the ‘wynds’ connecting them offer Georgian and Victorian mixed with 16th and 17th century stone buildings. The quiet end of Market Street towards the castle has family homes, between £500,000 and £600,000. ‘North and South Castle Streets are fabulous,’ Linda says. ‘Some houses date from 1600.’ A four-bedroom house here with Murray Donald Drummond Cook, for example, is for sale at around £570,000. Further out, Hepburn and Buchanan Gardens have stone-built period family houses, and Dempster and Kinnessburn Roads have appealing four-bedroom houses from £400,000.

The pretty East Neuk fishing villages south of St Andrews are good value and many university staff commute from Kingsbarns, Crail, Anstruther and Pittenweem. A substantial period house will cost between £300,000 and £450,000; those with sea views cost more but Murray Donald Drummond Cook has a smaller four-bedroom seafront terraced house in Pittenweem for £290,000.

While these towns have a good mixture of permanent and second homes, the southern villages of Elie and Earlsferry attract mainly second-home-owners from Edinburgh and Glasgow, which are easily accessible.

ABOVE: The gatehouse of Falkland Palace.

Living in St Andrews

With its serene setting of sea, sand and cliffs, the quality of life is special here, whether taking a scenic walk along West Sands beach, kite surfing – a popular student pastime – or playing golf. Residents are eligible for reduced green fees over the seven St Andrews Links courses and many other golf courses in the area including The Dukes, Kingsbarns and the Fairmont St Andrews complex. The Tentsmuir Nature Reserve on the Firth of Tay is another popular haunt for walkers and cyclists.

Since the 1900s, after the advent of the railway in 1852 and with it, tourism, the population has doubled in size to 15,000, swelling to 23,000 when the students are up. The university ensures a good age mix, and plenty of cultural and café life. The Byre Theatre, Scotland’s only five-star arts attraction, offers everything from theatre, pop and classical music, to poetry readings, workshops and exhibitions, and also has a bar and bistro.

ABOVE: St Monans, west of Anstruther on the Firth of Forth, is a typical fishing village in the East Neuk, huddled against the sea wall.

It takes part in the Fife Open Studios (openstudiosfife.co.uk) in May, which celebrates the artistic talent of north Fife. Pottery is almost a cottage industry – George Young runs classes in St Andrews (standrewspottery.co.uk), and Griselda Hill produces the Scottish hand-painted pottery Wemyss Ware at her studio in Ceres; Crail and Culross also have studio potters as does Pittenweem, which has an artists’ colony and holds an arts festival every summer.

If you have children to consider, St Andrews provides good state education at Madras College and private schooling at St Leonards. Glenalmond and Strathallan near Perth and the High School of Dundee, are other co-educational independent schools within reach. The town is well placed for commuting to Dundee, Perth, Kirkcaldy, Glenrothes and Cupar, while the railway station at Leuchars five miles away, on the main Aberdeen to London line, provides a fast link to both Dundee and Edinburgh.

ABOVE (left-right): The beach at West Sands looking across to St Andrews; Flemish influence in the gables of houses near the harbour in Crail, south of St Andrews.

Top attractions

Golf is paramount: the Old Course, where it has been played since 1400, attracts visitors from all over the world as does the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, which runs the Open Championship, held there every five years (next in 2015).

Highlights of the St Andrews Historic Trail available from the tourist office include the courses, The British Golf Museum, the harbour, St Rule’s Tower and the Preservation Trust museum and garden.

Pretty fishing villages in the East Neuk region such as Crail – the oldest – have Flemish-inspired crow-stepped gables which reflect the influence of European trading in medieval times. Pittenweem is now the base for the local fishing fleet, and Anstruther’s Scottish Fisheries Museum, set around a 14th century courtyard, is not to be missed. Boats from Anstruther embark to the Isle of May, which teems with sea birds.

The Fife Coastal Path (fifecoastalpath.co.uk) passes the woodlands of Cambo House, a 19th century mansion which offers accommodation for walkers, and holds a snowdrop festival each February and an annual tulip festival in its walled garden in spring.

The reputedly haunted Kellie Castle, which has ornate plasterwork and a Victorian walled garden, and farther afield, the Renaissance Falkland Palace, designed as a hunting lodge for the Stuart monarchs, with richly panelled interiors, are among National Trust for Scotland treasures in Fife.

Find out more about food and drink in St Andrews...
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WORDS JOANNA WILCOX PHOTOGRAPHS VISIT SCOTLAND/SCOTTISHVIEWPOINT.COM; ©NATIONAL TRUST FOR SCOTLAND; ©STEPHEN FINN/ISTOCKPHOTO.COM; JOANNA WILCOX
*All property estimates quoted correct at time of publishing
Featured in the March 2012 issue of Period Living