Freuchie is a village in Fife situated just off the A 92, north of Glenrothes, about three miles or so from Son of the Rock Acres.

Freuchie was once used as a place of banishment form the nearby Royal Court at Falkland Palace but is perhaps most famous now for its cricket team reaching and winning – at Lord’s – the village cricket championship in 1985. Falkland also has a cricket team.

Freuchie’s War Memorial lies in a triangular shaped kind of traffic island hard by the local church on the mainroad through the town, the B 936 .

Showing inscriptions. 1914-19 names on plaque, 1939-45 on pedestal. (The Lomond Hills Hotel is in the background):-

I noticed the sign for Commonwealth War Graves as we were passing St Andrews Cemetery on Strathkiness Road and stopped to take photos on the way back home. Commonwealth War Grave stones are easily picked out by their distinctive shape and colour, though some of these were in grey granite rather than the usual off-white. I also found the grave of a member of the Polish Forces.

There were twelve graves in all.

Gunner A M Pirie, RA, 6/8/1942.
Bombardier D B Tulleth, RA, 12/11/1944, age 36.
Private F Dickinson, KOYLI, 15/8/1940, age 24.
Private J McIvor, Black Watch, 19/7/1915.
H C Barr, Merchant Navy, 7/2/1946, age 41.
Driver J Thomson, RE, 10/6/1946, age 19.
Guardsman W Murray, Scots Guards, 23/7/1945, age 29.
PIT S Glabinski, Polish Forces, 13/2/1941, age 34.
Sergeant W H Stewart, RAF, 11/7/1944, age 43.
Private F Higgins, HLI, 19/5/1918.
Private T Robinson, Cameronians, 26/7/1918.
Able Seaman F Shearer, RN, 25/12/1918.

On the corner of Queensferry and Admiralty Roads, Rosyth stands the Ex-Servicemen’s Club, which has some deco features.

Stitch of two photos from Admiralty Road:-

From Queensferry Road. Note memorial wreath on wall:-

Detail, Queensferry Road:-

Wreath and Plaque, Ex-Servicemen’s Club, Rosyth:-

Plaque to Users, Ex-Servicemen’s Club, Rosyth:-

These were both in New Calton Burial Ground, Edinburgh.

M Miller, Royal Scots, 5/8/1916, age 36.

There was an unusaul communal gravestone for seamen of the Merchant Navy Merchant Navy inscribed, “Five Sailors of the 1939-45 War, MV Atheltemplar, 1/3/1941.”

On 1/3/1941 the Atheltemplar was attacked by Heinkel 111s off the Aberdeenshire coast. A total of 12 crewmembers died. This stone commemorates the five who were unidentified.

Flight Cadet A A Hepburn, RAF, 23/8/1918, aged 18.

West Bridgend Church hall was where I started playing badminton, long, long ago now.

I had never explored its churchyard till last October when I discovered this Memorial to the men from the church who died in the Great War:-

The names:-

There was also a Commonwealth War Grave. Private William C Douglas, RAMC, 7/12/1916, age 19:-

And this gravestone commemorates, as well as his father, one Captain William Learmonth Buchanan, 5th HLI, killed in action in Palestine, 20th November 1917, aged 25:-

This lies beside the main road through the town, which is on the A 814 between Dumbarton and Helensburgh.

Closer view:-

Left-hand name panels:-

Right-hand name panels:-

Falkland is a village quite close to where I now live and at present houses one of those Fife libraries which are to be shut down.

The village’s dominating landmark is Falkland Palace the hunting lodge of Scotland’s Stuart Kings (and Queens.)

The village does have a relation to the perhaps more famous location in the South Atlantic as the Falkland Islands were named after Anthony Cary, 5th Viscount of Falkland. The Viscounts Falkland took their title from Falkland Palace.

Falkland’s War Memorial is relatively new, being erected only in the last year or so. The names are listed under First World War, Second World War, Other Conflicts. The word dziękuję, which I believe is Polish for “thank you”, is inscribed at the bottom, though there aren’t any Polish names on the memorial, as far as I can make out.

Reverse view. Arms of Falkland in the cartouche:-

The old memorial was a plaque which has been housed in various locations in the village.

The below is from the Scottish Military Research Group’s website where the plaque was said to be within the building occupied by “Smart Cookies” – a children’s play-group. I believe the plaque has now been moved to the Village Hall.

Edited to add:- The photo of the plaque I originally linked to is now inaccessible.

This is on the High Street outside a local government office. The plaque is divided into Navy, Army, RAF and civilian deaths. The lower plaque is headed Armed Forces and records a death in Iraq 2007.

Cowdenbeath’s Great War Memorial is on top of a hill overlooking the High Street but is not as easily accessible as this one.

Our last stop on the way back up from England in August was in Rothbury, in Northumberland, close to Cragside, which the good lady wanted to visit again as the last time we hadn’t managed to get a look at its gardens.

Rothbury is a lovely wee place strung out along the main road through it, which is set just down from an elevated street containing one side of the thoroughfare’s shops.

Rothbury War Memorial from east. WW1 names:-

Rothbury War Memorial from West. WW2 names and one for the Korean War:-