James II

I’ve never done a Blip challenge before.

As I was wandering through Ravenscraig Park this afternoon the current one - Your Local Architecture - came to mind. So here I am.

Why? Well what I saw in front of me was an encapsulation of this part of Fife. A mixture of the historical and the modern. The special and the mundane. The beautiful and the ugly.

You have the ruins of Ravenscraig Castle, construction of which was begun about 1460 on the instructions of King James II. He died before work started but his widow made sure it went ahead as a memorial to him. It may be the first castle in Scotland to be built to withstand artillery - if not one of the first.

In the 1960s Kirkcaldy Burgh Council built social housing of the brutalist variety right across the street from the castle. Cheap and not cheerful.

It was a beautiful, cold November day again. Great to be out enjoying it. The extras show what I mean - all natural light and no filters or “enhancements”.