Notable Inhabitants
James Melville, nephew of the more celebrated reformer, Andrew Melville, who was minister of Kilrenny, has given in his Diary a graphic account of the arrival at Anstruther of a weatherbound ship of the Armada, and the tradition of the intermixture of Spanish and Fife blood still prevails in the district. Anstruther fair supplied William Tennant, who was born and buried in the town, with the subject of his poem of "Anster Fair." Sir James Lumsden, a soldier of fortune under Gustavus Adolphus, who distinguished himself in the Thirty Years' War, was born in the parish of Kilrenny about 1598.
David Martin (1737–1798), the painter and engraver; Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), the great divine; John Goodsir (1814–1867), the anatomist; and Robert Fowler (1853–1926), artist, were natives of Anstruther. Archibald Constable, Sir Walter Scott's publisher, was born in the parish of Carnbee, about 3 miles to the north of Pittenweem. Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart (1887–1970), director-general of the Political Warfare Executive during World War II was also born in Anstruther. Anstruther has also become known as the base for the Fence Collective, a network of nu-folk musicians.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the town was also the home to The Beggar's Benison, a gentlemen's club devoted to "the convivial celebration of male sexuality".
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