ELIE is a small town in the East Neuk of Fife, one of a series of small ports along the north shores of the Firth of Forth. All were until the 18th century important trading and fishing centres.
St Monans, Pittenweem and Anstruther remained significant boatbuilding and fishing centres into the 20th century. The Fife Coast railway (opened in 1863) brought holiday traffic from both east and west central Scotland, encouraging the establishment of Elie as a popular holiday and retirement centre.
Elie had been founded in 1589 as a Burgh of Barony under the lairds of Ardross, an estate to the north-east of the little town. It lies between St Monans and Pittenweem, and has a good natural harbour. A small improved harbour was constructed in the early 19th century, but trade did not develop as hoped. Elie’s western neighbour, Earlsferry, was the Fife terminus of a ferry across the Forth. It became a Royal Burgh in 1541, but during a storm its harbour was filled with blown sand, and never recovered. The twin settlements were united as a police burgh in 1865, and a fine links golf-course was laid out at Earlsferry. In the mid-1890s Francis Groome’s Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland described Elie as having been ‘in bygone times a place of some importance’. It retains a few antique mansions in a street near the beach, but mainly consists of modern well-built houses’. Groome went on to write that ‘It has for a long time been a place of considerable resort for summer sea-bathing, and is even claimed by some as one of the best health resorts, particularly in winter, of any place in Scotland’. The growth of the East Neuk towns as holiday resorts was greatly aided by the opening of the Forth Bridge in 1890, allowing express train services to be run both from Edinburgh and from Glasgow. Train services on the Fife Coast line ended in 1965, but Elie and Earlsferry remain popular resorts and retirement places.