Closed after 200 years - but Scotland's last linen mill is still spinning a good yarn

Now it's emerged the legacy of the Fife firm could help another community breathe new life into its own past.

Peter Greig & Co had been making fine cloth since 1825 and was the last survivor of a trade that sustained Scottish communities for centuries and fostered international connections. At one time, around 10,000 people in Fife worked in fabric mills and, aside from Greig & Co, there were 14 other mills in Kirkcaldy alone.

Less than 14 miles along the coast, Inverkeithing also boasts a rich mercantile history – one that's now being reinvestigated and reinterpreted through a range of initiatives by Inverkeithing Heritage Regeneration.

One of those is the Stitches in Time project, which seeks to create three massive embroidered panels telling the town's story. Led by artist Nikkita Morgan, local people will create the piece for display in the historic townhouse – which is where Peter Greig & Co comes in.

Linen's also in the fabric of Inverkeithing – records show flax was being imported there at least as far back as the 1600s and Daniel Defoe, visiting in the 18th century, noted the increase in linen manufacture there since the Union.

Morgan and her team hope to use the fabric as the basis for their creation and say only Peter Greig produce will do. They're trying to get their hands on as much of the material as possible, with a public appeal to Scottish craftspeople, designers and hobbyists for as many metres as they can spare.

Greig's sales arm, Scottish Linen, stopped trading with the mill and Morgan was "just too late" to buy direct, with the closure notice going up on the online store to little fanfare shortly before the curtain fell.

Staff were "stretched pretty thin" at the end, the company said on Facebook, as "we did not quite anticipate the level of response" to the final sale, which came just two years after its works featured in an Edinburgh Castle fashion show celebrating Mary Queen of Scots.

Back then it was making 25,000 metres of linen every week for customers in the UK, America, Europe and Asia.

"I was shocked when it closed down," says Morgan, originally from Newry, near Belfast. "It was like 'what are we going to do now?'

"If I'm making something in Scotland, I want to have that Scottish history, that Scottish connection. It's that idea of using something from your local area."

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The closure "brings a tear to the eye," Emma Griffiths of Fife Historic Buildings Trust agrees. It's delivering the heritage work for Fife Council and Griffiths has been working with the local historical society through lockdown to painstakingly transcribe handwritten records dating back hundreds of years – using an image of each page shared across Teams calls to allow the group to meet virtually.

"The linen trade has run through Inverkeithing for centuries," she says. "We have found records of Greigs who were sailors, we have records of weavers. It’s absolutely extraordinary material."

Some of the papers relating to the old burgh authority cover law and order, including pub fights between weavers and "amazing discoveries" like the case of the widow of a murdered teacher who was granted funds to take the case to court.

The culprit was the son of an aristocrat, who was tried imprisoned in Edinburgh's Canongate Tollbooth. Griffiths has retold the tale in the project's podcast.

"His sister went to visit him, they traded clothing and he got away," she says, adding that she has enough stories to make 50 series of the podcast.

"When we started," she goes on, "someone local said ‘we’re just a car park, really’. They saw themselves as a transport hub where people go in and go on other places, but that’s its history, that’s its making – it was a fantastically important trade centre.

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"We want to tell people all those fantastic stories. Enthusiasm is my middle name," she goes on, "I’m really excited to be working on this. I discover interesting things every day – I feel so lucky."

Morgan is equally inspired by the rich stories she's found in Inverkeithing. Her team will be "stitching away all summer" in outdoor, indoor and virtual sessions, depending on the Covid circumstances. "I feel really strongly about it and quite emotional," she says of the work, which will hang in the style of a stained glass panels.

"It's going to be magical, the fact that people from the area are helping to stitch all these important narratives that others won't necessarily have knowledge of, but will learn."

To donate or sell rolls of Scottish linen or help make the artwork, email Morgan at inverkeithing@fifehistoricbuildings.org.uk.