At some point in the early twentieth century, during one of her many travels to Scotland, Vernon Lee (the pen name of Violet Paget) visited the shores of Fife, then one of the country’s most heavily industrialised regions. Driven primarily by coal extraction and linoleum manufacturing, Fife’s industrial expansion left deep environmental scars that the region still confronts today. In this short, first-person account from her 1925 collection The Golden Keys and Other Essays on the Genius Loci, Lee recounts her reluctant walk to an old estate known as Kilmany House: cutting through a landscape of debris and fumes, she uncovers a long-gone world quietly undone by the heedless industrialisation closing in around it.
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