Crieff

Coordinates: 56°22′32″N 3°50′33″W / 56.37568°N 3.84262°W / 56.37568; -3.84262

Crieff (/kriːf/; Scottish Gaelic: Craoibh, meaning "tree") is a market town in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. It lies on the A85 road between Perth and Crianlarich and also lies on the A822 between Greenloaning and Aberfeldy. The A822 joins onto the A823 which leads to Dunfermline.

Crieff has developed into a hub for tourism, trading mainly on its whisky and cattle droving history. Tourist attractions include the Caithness Glass Visitor Centre and Glenturret Distillery. Innerpeffray Library (established c. 1680), Scotland's oldest lending library, is also nearby. St. Mary's Chapel, adjacent to the library, dates from 1508. Both the library and chapel are open to the public: the library is run by a charitable trust, the chapel is in the care of Historic Scotland.

History

For a number of centuries Highlanders came south to Crieff to sell their black cattle whose meat and hides were avidly sought by the growing urban populations in Lowland Scotland and the north of England. The town acted as a gathering point or tryst for the Michaelmas cattle sale held each year and the surrounding fields and hillsides were black with the tens of thousands of cattle - some from as far away as Caithness and the Outer Hebrides (for comparison, in 1790 the population of Crieff was about 1,200 which led to a ratio of tens cows per person, similar to the sheep/human ratio in New Zealand).