The Filming of Karen Pirie in St Andrews
Filming at the harbour. X Post by Val McDermid, Author of ‘The Distant Echo’ (@valmcdermid) On 3 May 2021, filming for the first series of detective drama Karen Pirie (ITV, 2022, UK) took place at the St Andrews Cathedral grounds. This marked the first day of filming in St Andrews, which continued each weekday, and occasionally into the night, until 11 May (The Courier, 6 May 2021). Based on Fife author Val McDermid’s best-selling novel, The Distant Echo (2003), the three-part series follows the reopening of the unsolved murder case of...
Read MoreThe St Andrews Shipwreck that inspired a Local Film
On 1 October 1912, the Norwegian vessel Princess Wilhelmina was caught in a storm and shipwrecked in St Andrews. The ship’s crew was rescued by the St Andrews Lifeboat team, who managed to reach the ship before it beached on West Sands. Whether it was due to the success of the rescue or the recollection of a more tragic 1881 local shipwreck, this event, “watched by thousands”, was widely-discussed and photographed in town [Dundee Evening Telegraph, 1 October 1912, 1]. In some photographs, we notice the crowd gathered on the rocks where today’s aquarium stands, watching the wreck...
Read MoreNew Articles published
I’m pleased to announce that we have a new batch of articles available on the site. These cover more than a century of St Andrews’ rich history. We have a piece from Cameron Mumford, which brings into focus one of the earliest photographs of St Andrews. Audrey McBride examines the little-known history of the New Picture House Cinema Cafe, using newspaper reports and building plans to provide a fascinating account of its establishment as a social centre in 1931. Finally, Brooke Daley takes us back to Christmas Day 1950, examining the feast of films (and food) on offer that day at...
Read MoreAn Image of St Andrews in 1845
St Andrews, North Street, Fishergate, Women and Children Baiting the Lines (c. 1845)The earliest surviving films of St Andrews from 1916. The photograph known as St. Andrews, North Street, Fishergate, Women and Children Baiting the Line depicts a group of fisherfolk, predominantly women and children, baiting fishing lines. Found today in the National Galleries Scotland, it was taken by the hugely influential photographers, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, and is estimated to date from 1845. Yet, this image would be revisited and reworked throughout the...
Read MoreCafé Culture: The New Picture House and its Tearoom
‘A Novel Xmas Party’. St Andrews Citizen, 5th December 1931 On 4 July 1931, the New Picture House (NPH) announced that their ‘magnificent cinema café’ would soon ‘complete Fife’s Super Cinema’. The ‘tastefully furnished’ café was set to add ‘the finishing touch to a truly super-cinema’; the jewel in its entertaining crown. Indeed, it went on to become much more than this, serving as a community hub and multifunctional venue in its own right. Yet the café had less than auspicious beginnings. First mooted in the St Andrews...
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