Lower Largo and the Serpentine Walk

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Creative Commons Licence [Some Rights Reserved]   Text © Copyright April 2019, Bill Kasman; licensed for re-use under a Creative Commons Licence.


Every publicly-accessible road, street, lane, track and path in the Fife village of Lower Largo including the Serpentine Walk

With a population of around 2000 the ancient fishing village of Lower Largo is probably best known as the birthplace of Alexander Selkirk (born 1676), who provided inspiration for Daniel Defoe's famous novel Robinson Crusoe. Lower Largo has many wonderful and important historic buildings and, in 1978, was designated as a conservation area. The Fife Coast Railway used to serve Lower Largo but this was closed in the 1960s and, although it has been disused since then, the prominent railway viaduct (a listed building) remains an important local landmark and the disused railway line is now part of the Fife Coastal Path.

Little commercial fishing is carried out from the village nowadays and it is a popular holiday destination for those who like a little history and a quiet place to unwind as well as being ideally situated to explore the picturesque Fife coast and the East Neuk LinkExternal link It is also the base for the Largo Bay Sailing Club, a well-known dinghy racing club. The bay is sheltered, little affected by the tides and is reckoned to be one of the best sailing areas in Scotland.

Where is Lower Largo?

The village of Lower Largo is situated in Largo Bay on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth LinkExternal link It is contiguous with the neighbouring village of Lundin Links. It owes its origin to the fishermen who decided to move from living in Upper Largo, half-a-mile inland Link to living at the seashore where they berthed their boats. In past times the village was known as Largow Burnemouth, Nether Largo and Seatoun of Largo and it could be said to form one of a 'pair' with Upper Largo - the two villages are connected by an old path known as The Serpentine Walk. As the village grew it incorporated two hamlets already present - Drummochie and Temple - giving rise to the today's picturesque village of Lower Largo.

A 'snapshot' in time

All of the images in Section One and Section Two were taken in March or April of 2019 and as such form a pictorial record of the highways and byways of the village in the spring of that year. There are many excellent photographs of the older and more historic areas of Lower Largo on Geograph and some of these I have included in Section Three but much of the village (and the Serpentine Walk) isn't well represented on Geograph, especially those areas not on the seaward side of the line of the former railway nor those parts which take a little exploring to discover and this collection at least partially corrects that deficiency. Whilst taking photographs for this collection I have erred on the side of caution in that any path or track I could not identify as being fully available to the public 24 hours a day has not been included. If anyone has knowledge of such a missing path please don't hesitate to drop me a line and I will see what may be done.

Note: During the preparation of this collection a new housing development - Selkirk Grove - was under construction. Since this was, at the time, uncompleted it has not been included in this collection.

Many thanks to Dora of Vintage Lundin Links (a valuable local history resource) LinkExternal link for help with historical information used in certain image descriptions and for allowing me to include these two links to old images of the Fife Coast Railway at Lower Largo: Largo Railway Station LinkExternal link and Serpentine Level Crossing LinkExternal link When compared to images of the same locations which I have included in this collection these two images illustrate the difference the closure of the Fife Coast Railway, which brought many holidaymakers to Lower Largo, has made to the appearance of the village. The route of this former railway is now part of the Fife Coastal Path.

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