THE HEARSE HOUSE

A feature of Strathkinness which, according to Mrs. Betty Willsher, an

expert on gravestones in Scotland, was most unusual was the ‘hearse house’

now 36 High Road.

The hearse kept there and maintained by public subscription was used by

the villagers to carry the coffins to St. Andrews for burial as there was no

burial ground in Strathkinness. A farmer would loan a horse to pull the

hearse-cart and villagers would walk behind to the burial ground either at the

cathedral or, when that became restricted to those who could afford to buy a

plot there, to the Eastern Cemetery, adjacent to the cathedral — a distance of

some four miles.

The practice seems to have died out in the early 1900s, as John Duncan

says in his reminiscences of the village that by the time of his youth (around

the turn of the century), the hearse was becoming dilapidated.

THE HEARSE HOUSE

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