Preserving the Past and Uniting the Present: The St Andrews Preservation Trust

Walking down the cobblestone streets of St Andrews, 12 North Street is easy to miss. Unassuming, set back from the street by a green garden and framed by fading red tiles, the building holds a treasure trove of historic artifacts inside its walls. From old fisherwomen’s daily gowns to ceramic jug carved with the names of sailors stranded at sea, the St Andrews Preservation Trust curates and protects the artefacts and histories of our little town within the St Andrews Heritage Museum and Garden. 

Once the site of a grand cathedral, now overrun with students, golfers, and young families, protecting the history and culture of St Andrews presents unique challenges. To understand how the Preservation Trust tackles this, I spoke with the Trust’s Chairman, David Strachan. 

In 1937, the community of St Andrews established the Preservation Trust with two main goals: to preserve the character and heritage of St Andrews and to provide locals with access to the town’s artifacts. Strachan explained these aims to me as we toured the museum on a quiet Wednesday afternoon. 

Strachan took me through the museum’s vast collection of St Andrews objects. Ranging from the artistic and historical, to the scientific and technical, even the most mundane items reflect a moment from the town’s history that could be lost if not preserved. “When a chemist shop was closing, we [collected] all the old glass bottles that they had [...] We've got old dentistry tools, like wires – some of them were totally brutal, but actually people probably thought it was better than not getting any treatment at all,” he explained. 

With objects like these, the Trust focuses on showcasing that the town’s history can be found at every street corner. For Strachan, it’s important to display how the town’s past illuminates its present. Pointing to a satirical painting on the wall — depicting a donkey guiding an elephant down an eerily familiar street — Strachan revealed the outline of what is now the Central and Sainsbury’s. 

Walking further through the Museum’s top floor, Strachan again stopped in front of an image, this time of a small, two-storied cowshed — the Byre theatre, as he remembered it from his youth. It  “held about 30, it was tiny, but it had so much character,” he recalled. The actors used to sneak up the stairs to the hay loft to change between scenes.

The past did not feel so far away inside the Museum. “If you have a look at this house here, it's set back from the road, that's very typical of St Andrews,” said Strachan, describing the various architectural motifs specific to the old fisher homes on North Street.  “In the past, they would have kept fishing nets and things like that down below, and then upstairs would have been where families would have lived upstairs, but they were very poor conditions to live in, I can imagine.” Today, these houses are modern student flats. 

The Trust doesn’t only work to preserve the past — they also work to bring the past into the present. When I walked into the museum, a fourth-year student volunteer greeted me, and throughout my hour-long stay, a number of young people rotated in and out of the building. Jokingly, Strachan tried to sell each of them the £5 Trust membership. “We try to involve our students in [the Trust], and they're a great asset in terms of having volunteers who are prepared to come in and work with us. And honestly, our students who come here are absolutely fantastic,” he said.

Strachan expressed only admiration for the youth and excitement for the students who come here. They’re “absolutely fantastic, really fantastic,” he said, rejecting the notion of ‘Town versus Gown.’ Strachan’s perspective on the 10,000 part-time residents of the town seemed to reflect the perspective of the Trust as a whole. The history of the town is not something to be guarded for the permanent residents, but something to be shared with everyone who interacts with St Andrews. The Trust works to help everyone who walks these streets understand where they are standing. 

Strachan even pointed out a thesis one student had written about the history of mussels in the town. “We published [the essay] as a booklet because it [was] so interesting. We have an award, it's intermittent when we put on the competition. And [this student] won the Murray Medal,” Strachan remembered. This story seemed a point of pride for Strachan, an example of how the Trust was beginning to work its way more actively into the community, a move that he credited with the ‘huge increase’ in membership over the last three years. Today, the Trust stands at 525 active members. 

Awards and medals are not the only way that the Trust engages with the town's present. At the end of our tour, Strachan and I made our way to a vast green space behind the historic building, an open lawn with a singular fruit tree in the middle. The Trust renovated this outdoor area to add more open space in the town centre. ‘You can see students come in here and they read, because on a day like today, you come in and read and it's just quiet,” Strachan said.“[The town] used to have lots, but St Andrews does not have many open spaces like that anymore.” A space for students and families alike —for the wine society to host an event or for a parent to bring their child to roam around the freshly mowed lawn — Strachan envisioned a more united St Andrews, not only in past and present, but between the town and its students. 

It’s one thing to preserve the town as it once was, by filing complaints against new developments or buying uncared-for land, but it's another to work towards the town’s future. The St Andrews Preservation Trust tries to strike a balance between these two ideals, merging both worlds. St Andrews is, and will remain, a historic town, but there is so much more to its future. If we understand the history of our little community, we can discover more sustainable ways to act in our present. By engaging with the Trust and supporting the local history, we not only preserve historic buildings like 12 North Street, but create a new and ever-changing community.

Illustration by Mia Fish