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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.
While Allen’s work was not published until the early 20th century, his first Wemyss sketches date from 1879 and he returned to the caves in 1890 to make rubbings and take photographs which are now held in the British Library. His notebooks document every probable Pictish and/or historic engraving present in the late 19th century, together with measured drawings of the caves and the locations of the symbols within them. This archive is invaluable as an objective record of the appearance of the symbols prior to modern damage and alteration – of which, sadly, more later. Allen undertook his own photography but also used material taken by local professional photographer John Patrick, who published additional images of the carvings and the caves’ exteriors in the early 1900s and wrote a series of articles for The Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist. A further detailed photographic record was made in the 1920s by local architect George Deas, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, although these were mostly not published until 1948. Deas is a significant figure in the struggle to preserve the site, as he made a series of plaster casts over 20 years which still survive as important historical artefacts in their own right. Some of these have recently been digitally modelled and will be reproduced as handling replicas.
The archaeology of the caves
Deas also sparked the first scientific investigation at the site, in 1929, when he alerted the Royal Scottish Museum and the Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Scotland to the imminent destruction of the Michael Cave. It was ultimately infilled to support infrastructure associated with a nearby colliery, but Deas’ actions meant that an emergency and partial excavation was carried out ahead of these works, identifying occupation levels containing shells, medieval pottery, stone pounders and a stone spindle whorl, and abundant burnt and unburnt animal bone.
After that, the archaeological narrative went quiet for half a century, but a flurry of investigations in the 1980s added new information to our understanding. Hunterian Museum-led excavations in 1980, responding to concerns over coastal erosion, focused on areas outside Jonathan’s Cave and the Well Cave. The Central Excavation Unit, meanwhile, investigated cliff sections outside Jonathan’s Cave in 1986 and 1989, and the 1989 excavations also explored a section in front of Sliding Cave. The following year, further sections of coast were recorded, and the 1980s and 1990s witnessed numerous watching briefs during the construction of a gas pipe and coastal defences.
These investigations established that much of the coastline in this area is derived from colluvium, slump, or cliff fall, with an uppermost layer of coal waste, industrial ash, and clinker. Recovered finds included burnt and unburnt bone, shell, worked antler, flint flakes, a jet spindle whorl and other fragments, a bone pin and awls, and pottery. These mostly lacked stratification and many were consequently hard to date and could not be unequivocally associated with use of the cave interiors.
Within the caves themselves, apart from known but undocumented disturbance by antiquarians, the first excavations were not conducted until 2004, when Time Team evaluated deposits inside and outside several of the caves alongside geophysical survey on the foreshore (CA 193). Their investigations in Sliding Cave, which contains several Pictish carvings, returned a date of cal AD 240-400 from barley in a secure context interpreted as a possible floor surface of trampled clay. These dates were thought to be anomalously early for Pictish carvings, but University of Aberdeen excavations at the Dunnicaer promontory fort in Aberdeenshire have subsequently uncovered contexts and artefacts associated with Pictish symbols that bear close stylistic similarities to those in the Wemyss Caves and which date from as early as the 3rd century (CA 364).
The Time Team trenches in Sliding Cave were revisited and extended in 2019 by SWACS (Save Wemyss Ancient Caves Society) and The SCAPE Trust (Scottish Coastal Archaeology and the Problem of Erosion; see CA 259) together with the University of Aberdeen’s Northern Picts project, and these confirmed 1st- to 6th-century occupation dates. Very similar deposits had been noted in other caves by Simpson and Maclagan in the 19th century, suggesting that they were more generally present prior to modern disturbance. The 2019 excavations also recovered evidence of iron smelting outside Court Cave, including a tuyère – the clay tube which protected the end of a wooden bellows. Funding has now been found to apply optically stimulated luminescence testing to see whether it is contemporary with metalworking activity known from other early medieval Scottish caves.
At least 12 burials, meanwhile, have been recorded along this stretch of coast since the mid-19th century, although most merited no more than a brief sentence in local newspapers. Most recently, coastal erosion in 1988 and 1993 revealed two burials, radiocarbon dated between AD 970 and 1190, and in 2023 Storm Babet exposed two more, comprising a child’s skull and a rare intact crouched burial of a woman, both dated to 801-566 cal BC.
Decline
Despite intense early antiquarian attention, it was not until 1937 that the site received legal protection, when six caves were inscribed as a group on the list of scheduled monuments. By then, though, industrialisation had heavily degraded the site and, despite the best efforts of a handful of locals like Deas and Patrick, academic and professional interest had waned. Even by the time Simpson arrived in the 1860s, the heritage was under severe threat. A foot passage and gas pipe had been forced through one cave in 1846. Another, home in the 17th century to one of Scotland’s earliest glass-making factories and described by Maclagan as filled with ‘sunbeams, lighting up a singular scene of pastoral beauty’, collapsed in 1901 due to coal-mining activity.
During the First World War, a coastal artillery platform caused the collapse of the West Doo Cave, which contained 17 Pictish carvings together with early Christian crosses and where, according to Simpson, ‘in some lights the cryptograms on its high walls and dome-like ceiling show masses of beautiful and changing colours’. As mentioned above, the Michael Cave (home to a large cup and ring marking) was also lost to future research, filled with concrete to facilitate the construction of a colliery boiler-house. Meanwhile, the local gasworks and a colliery extension destabilised and steadily destroyed a neighbouring cave which, according to antiquarian accounts, had yielded evidence of early human activity.
In 1934, the Wemyss Coal Co. Ltd installed brick pillars in Court Cave to mitigate the effects of undermining, although this did not prevent the collapse in 1974 of the roof of the outer chamber. The eventual closure of the coalmines and departure of other industries in the 1980s provided no respite, as they left a post-industrial landscape in an area blighted by high unemployment, vandalism, and anti- social behaviour. Stolen cars were pushed inside Jonathan’s Cave and set alight on at least three different occasions, with the low point coming in 1986 when a fire destroyed three carvings. Out of 49 documented Pictish symbols, only 26 now survive.
Human activity has not been the only threat to the survival of the heritage. Coastal erosion, subsidence, and rock-surface erosion through salt crystallisation, water action, and biological activity are also serious dangers. Attempts to mitigate erosion through coastal defences in the 1980s were unsuccessful against rising tides, as mining waste dumped along the coast was scoured away, leaving the caves exposed. Further work in the 1990s did, however, provide more effective protection, and rock armour in front of Court Cave and Jonathan’s Cave has succeeded for now in keeping the reclaimed land in place.
Turning point
While the events of 1986 were tragic, they were a turning point which finally galvanised action as local people – determined to do what they could to protect the site – started to organise. Ann Watters MBE was an environmental scientist and advisor to Fife Council who, in 1978, had founded the Wemyss Environmental Education Centre, eventually based in East Wemyss Primary School. When disaster struck Jonathan’s Cave, Ann argued passionately for a positive way to protect the caves and formed the Save Wemyss Ancient Caves Society (SWACS), with local historian and heritage enthusiast Frank Rankin as Chair, and Bill Barker, a local postman and poet. Thus began four decades of community action with the simple but ambitious aim to protect, conserve, and promote the caves and their carvings for public benefit.
From the outset, SWACS combined practical conservation with public engagement. An early success saw money raised for the 1987 installation of security grilles on Jonathan’s and Well Caves. A history pageant was held in 1988, and volunteers began offering a programme of guided tours, school visits, and public talks. Visitor numbers grew steadily, and the caves became an important part of the cultural identity of the East Wemyss community. Throughout the 1990s, though, SWACS still faced a daunting list of threats. The first grilles proved unfit for purpose, as they were easily breached and the metal was unsuited to coastal conditions. The padlocks were repeatedly broken and the caves continued to act as a magnet for anti-social behaviour, while erosion continued to undermine the coastline and vandalism and fires remained a persistent problem.
Although the 2004 Time Team investigations proved highly popular locally and provided a boost to the caves’ profile, progress at a national level was slow. However, SWACS’ persistence eventually caused a significant shift in 2013, when they undertook a group visit to the Scottish Parliament. Local MSP David Torrance raised a motion in the Parliament which attracted cross-party support and resulted in the establishment of the Wemyss Caves Working Group (WCWG). This brought together SWACS, Historic Environment Scotland, Fife Council, Fife Coast and Countryside Trust, the SCAPE Trust, and landowners the Wemyss Estate as stakeholders in a single body.
The Working Group commissioned a comprehensive Conservation Management Plan (CMP), completed in 2014, which assessed the condition of every cave, identified threats and priorities, recommended conservation strategies, proposed improved access and interpretation, and established a long-term framework for decision-making. This plan remains the guiding document for the site. In the same year, SWACS and SCAPE embarked on an ambitious digitisation project with Northlight Heritage and York Archaeological Trust to record the landscape and cave interiors in great detail through laser scanning, photogrammetry, drone photography, and reflectance transformation imaging. This created a baseline for monitoring the site but also provided the data for the Wemyss Caves 4D website (https://4dwemysscaves.org). Launched in 2016, it brought together 3D models, films, and historic photos in a groundbreaking interactive digital resource. It was even possible to reconstruct the lost West Doo Cave, drawing on antiquarian records. This baseline has been built on through an annual monitoring exercise, and SWACS now have a decade of data charting the condition of each carving, the cave interiors and exteriors, and the surrounding landscape including the eroding coast.
An important component of the CMP was to improve the general amenity of the site, and new interpretation boards, signage, and accessible paths have been installed, together with three well-used picnic tables. Training and scheduled monument consent from Historic Environment Scotland allows SWACS to tackle most graffiti immediately, and regular maintenance keeps paths clear. We have also organised outreach events; a conference in 2016 and a community festival in 2018 further raised awareness of the site, and in 2019 SWACS found a long-term home in the former Guide Hall, a short walk from the caves, having operated out of the cramped and damp basement of East Wemyss Primary School since the 1980s. Funding from Fife Council saw the hall transformed into a museum and office space, with archaeological displays, site interpretations, and an important local history collection reflecting the later development of the village. At the rear, a ‘Pictish history garden’ is under development, growing plants that would have been used locally for pigments and foodstuffs. The centrepiece is a reconstructed hearth recovered from excavations at the contemporary Pictish hillfort at nearby East Lomond.
The 2020s brought new challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which temporarily halted tours and public events. Digital resources such as Wemyss Caves 4D allowed engagement to continue online, though, and this hiatus also provided opportunities to conduct new research into some of the less well-understood carvings. Two in particular, which had previously and anachronistically been identified as Scandinavian (‘Thor’ and ‘The Viking Boat’), were found to be much more likely to be many hundreds of years earlier and to derive from direct Roman influence.
The site gained meaningful protection during this period with the provision of protective grilles in 2022 to secure three of the most important areas of carvings in Court Cave and Jonathan’s Cave. Fabricated by a local manufacturer and funded by Historic Environment Scotland and Fife Environmental Trust, these were designed to be aesthetically pleasing and to incorporate some of the images they protect. Before their construction, though, SWACS volunteers had to clear the caves of detritus in advance of public visits. This could include the remains of fires, broken glass, needles, nitrous oxide inhalers, and even human waste. Although some unsuccessful attempts have been made to breach the gates, they have proved robust and secure, and are finally providing lasting security to ensure the survival of the remaining carvings for generations to come.
A further huge step forward was taken in 2023 with the appointment of a part-time site warden, marking a significant shift in the approach to the caves. Funded entirely by visitor donations, for the first time the site is providing an income rather than just being regarded as an expensive burden. Although only funded for a few hours each week, the warden role is invaluable in providing a visible deterrent to anti-social behaviour, and greatly improves the amenity through managing vegetation and improving access routes.
SWACS at 40
Several thousand visitors now take advantage of SWACS’ free public guided tours each year, alongside visits by local community groups, schools, colleges, specialists, and heritage organisations. This anniversary year has also seen a special programme of activities financed by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, including a week of excavations, visited by every class from the local primary school, which uncovered the gas pipe running through the Court Cave passage together with the 19th-century sea wall buried deep under industrial deposits.
In July, more than 300 mostly local visitors attended a Community History Festival (featuring a Pictish craft village and re-enactment of a medieval court in Court Cave) and a major conference will be held at Levenmouth Academy on 21 November, with national and local speakers showcasing what has been learned over the last four decades about the caves and their wider early medieval context (https://wemysscaves.org/conference). None of this would have been possible, and much of the heritage might no longer even exist to be visited and discussed, were it not for concerned members of the community stepping up in 1986. They initiated 40 years of largely volunteer activity that saw the caves recover from a dangerous, vandalised, and unwelcoming site into a nationally significant heritage landscape. The Wemyss Caves remain fragile and vulnerable, but thanks to these ongoing efforts they are now properly cared for, cherished, and celebrated.
Source:
Mike Arrowsmith is the current Chair of the Save Wemyss Ancient Caves Society. He first visited the site for a guided tour 12 years ago and just kept coming back. He works as a part-time Computer Officer at the University of St Andrews and, when not volunteering on local excavations, also develops heritage websites and apps, including the Wemyss Caves 4D website.
All Images: Save Wemyss Ancient Caves Society
