Posts tagged Inchcolm

Recently acquiring a new metal detector (really, it’s brilliant) and having tested out the settings on Silver Sands beach in Aberdour, I headed up the bitingly cold Fife coastline with particular direction towards to the enigmatic Monk’s cave. Past the golf course and in the shadow of the foreboding Braefoot Bay Gas Terminal, low tide allows access to Monk’s Cave which looks across to Mortimer’s Deep and the island of Inchcolm. A particularly treacherous area of coast off the island, Mortimer’s deep is believed to be named after William De Mortimer, Lord of Aberdour in around the 1180’s who apparently following a feud with the monks who lived on the island, murdered him and dropped his body into this deep part of the waters.

Less gruesomely, but none the less interesting, the more likely story is as written on http://www.british-history.ac.uk, “(Aberdour) castle, with the lands, passed, in 1125, from the Viponts, by marriage, to the Mortimers, of whom Allen de Mortimer granted the western portion of the lands to the monks of Inchcolm, in consideration of the privilege of being allowed to bury in the church of their monastery on the island, about a mile distant from the shore. When conveying the remains of one of that family to the abbey for interment, a violent storm is said to have arisen, which compelled the party to throw the coffin into the channel, which, from that circumstance, obtained the appellation of “Mortimer’s Deep.”

To call it a ‘cave’ is slight misleading, as it is carved into the side of a small cliff, and it was probably built for the purpose of holding supplies by the monks of Inchcolm. Nestled in between the World War II gun emplacements and ammunition stations that are scattered along the coast line, it’s certainly not the most picturesque jaunt of the Fife Coastal Route but is worth the great views of Inchcolm island and the feeling of having stumbled across an almost well kept secret. 

Metal detector efforts were fruitless however.

And even if I did find something, I’m not sure I’d be sharing it here.

First photo from http://www.geograph.org.uk