Cut into the sandstone cliffs on the north shore of the Forth Estuary at East Wemyss in Fife are a series of sea caves created by wave action at the end of the last Ice Age. Their name (which rhymes with ‘dreams’) comes from the Gaelic word for cave, uaimh, and the site first came to wider attention in the summer of 1863 following a visit by the antiquarian and pioneering medical doctor James Young Simpson, who came to investigate reports of Bronze Age cup marks. What he actually discovered, incised on the walls of five of the caves, was much more extensive: groups of abstract symbols, geometric shapes, and figurative representations that are more commonly seen on Pictish standing stones.
Although three other cave sites in Scotland have surviving or recorded Pictish symbols, over 90% of all those known from caves are located on the half-mile stretch of coastline at East Wemyss. Evidence suggests they may date to the early 4th century, putting them among the earliest examples surviving anywhere. Adding to this picture, the cliffs are home to early Iron Age and medieval burials (see CA 407), enigmatic pecked carvings which may indicate possible Roman connections, early Christian crosses, a ruinous medieval castle, a unique doocot (pigeon house) cave, and traces of industrial heritage from the 17th century onwards. It is a unique collection of Scottish history, all on one site.
Antiquarian interest
News of the caves’ intriguing contents soon spread. Following his somewhat hurried visit in 1863, Simpson engaged the artist and fellow antiquarian James Drummond to draw some of the Wemyss carvings to accompany his first published accounts in 1866/1867. Also in 1867, John Stuart incorporated the Wemyss Caves material into Volume 2 of his Sculptured Stones of Scotland, illustrated by Aberdeen engraver Andrew Gibb. The site continued to attract attention, and in 1875 Christian Maclagan, widely regarded as Scotland’s first female archaeologist, made a series of now-lost rubbings of the markings, uncovering some previously unknown carvings during the process. By this time, the site was very much considered to be part of the mainstream corpus of Pictish art, and further accounts appeared in Joseph Anderson’s 1881 Scotland in Early Christian Times and John Romilly Allen’s The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland in 1903.
