A new community website – classiccupar.org – has launched, creating a community resource to develop and deliver new community-led projects.

Classic Cupar is the result of the collaboration of several local organisations which has grown since the holding of the town charrette in 2016. CuparNow is one of many organisations supporting the initiative.

Cupar Development Trust, receiving grant support from Fife Council and from Fife LEADER, has recruited a team of two who are developing and supporting the delivery of the community projects until March 2020. Campbell Lawson heads the team as the community projects coordinator and Michael Hutton is providing administrative support. Classic Cupar is with working with Cupar Heritage and other heritage-minded organisations to establish Digital Cupar – an online community digital archive of local heritage.

Campbell explains: “The digital archive will be a lasting outcome of the running of a new community project – Cupar’s ‘Sense of Place’. This project is grant funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and will recruit, train and support new volunteers willing to give of their time to assist in placing collections of images, both past and present, of locations in and around Cupar into the digital archive.”

Key to the project’s development and success is its support to expand the digital skills available to Cupar Heritage. This will be delivered through increasing Cupar’s volunteer capacity. Campbell adds: “In time, the rich heritage of collections, both public and private, will be made accessible as a result of being held and displayed digitally.”

The ‘Sense of Place‘ will be the focus of exhibitions and supporting materials this summer (2019). The intention is to bring the heritage of Cupar and District to a wider audience. Further heritage-related projects and activities will be brought forward in the coming months. We will share more when the information becomes available, both on this Blog and through our social media pages.

Like to volunteer? Need more information?

Classic Cupar is all about building and supporting volunteer capacity at a local level.

If you have some spare time and would like to be involved – and benefit from the training and support the project is able to provide – please get in touch with them:

Contact Classic Cupar via this link.

You’ll find them at: Volunteer House, 69-73 Crossgate, Cupar, KY15 5AS.

Call them on 07519646042

 

April 2019: here’s a Blog update from the team at Classic Cupar …

 

Cupar’s Sense of Place ’causerie’

’causerie’, a short piece of writing in conversational style.

As part of our mission to inform, engage and intrigue you with aspects of the town’s past and present over the coming weeks we will present you with series of images from the archive with information gathered regarding the image. Hopefully this will stimulate interest and discussion regarding the towns past.

From the collection of historic images of Cupar. Part of Digital Cupar Resources.

 

Based on peoples’ attire, this photograph would have been taken very early in the Twentieth Century. Castlehill School occupied one of Cupar’s most historic sites. Originally the site of Cupar Castle, the Castle of the Earls of Fife that was later demolished by King David the Second to prevent English occupation.

The Castlehill remained as a public open space for a time and it was probably the ‘Playfield’ on which Sir David Lindsay’s Ane Satire of the Three Estatis was performed in 1552. A Grammar School stood on the Castlehill and remained in use until after Cupar Academy was founded early in the Nineteenth Century. A later initiative by Dr Andrew Bell saw the introduction of the Madras system of education and by 1844 to 1846 the Academy was extended and again in 1867.

Cuparians of a certain age will recollect that the building on the left in the 1960s was used as the teachers’ staff room and headmaster’s office and general office. The small building near the cycle shed was the janitor’s office. In 1975, following the building of a new school for primary age pupils at Ceres Road, Cupar, the former school became the Castlehill Centre for community use. Later, Fife Regional Council required the use of the North Block for Social Work Department Offices and this part of the property remained as offices until they were sold for a housing development.

 

Thanks for reading!