IN 1881 the publishers of the St Andrews Citizen produced An Alphabetic Guidebook to St Andrews by David Hay Fleming – a local man whose father John had a china and stoneware business which David would sell two years later to finance a life focused on all things antiquarian. His guidebook pointed to the usual tourist attractions, including the skating rink at the west end of the Scores where workmen had unearthed a lead seal of Pope Innocent IV, a pontiff described by Hay Fleming as ‘inferior to none of his predecessors in arrogance and insolence of temper’. In comments such as these it was clear that Hay Fleming offered more than a map to the boulevards of the town: he also suggested he had the measure of its soul. Anticipating the black tourism of later generations, while clinging unapologetically to hegemonic Protestant ‘truths’, Hay Fleming began this volume by guiding visitors around sites of execution and iconoclasm, imbuing the built environment of St Andrews with the memory of religious fervour.

Yet Hay Fleming’s, as one might expect, was not the only voice when it came to St Andrews’ heritage around this time. In 1861 Selkirk born Andrew Lang enrolled at St Andrews University.