Curate Wynd

These pages are dedicated to my uncle, David Edward Vernon Chalmers, whose 80th. birthday co-incided with their publication (12-Dec-1999).
David Chalmers died in March 2003 at the age of 83.
(The site was revised in July 2004.)

Curate Wynd is a small street in the town of Kinross in Scotland. It runs in a north - south direction, from Montgomery Street at the south end to Bowton Road at the north end and parallel and to the west of the High Street, the main thoroughfare in Kinross.

Curate Wynd has been in existence for some time. In J. Wood's map of 1823 it exists under the same name. The High Street then was known as Main Street, Bowton Road as Sluice Burn Wynd and Montgomery Street as Myre Wynd.

from J. Woods map of 1823		O.S. map altered to 1950's		from a modern O.S. map

So what is so significant about Curate Wynd? To most people, in truth, very little, but on examination of the maps above it can be seen that the eastern side of Curate Wynd has changed considerably in the last 180 years. In that time at least TEN of the buildings in and around the 'Wynd have had some connection with the CHALMERS family who ran a builders and slaters business from in and around Curate Wynd. Two of these ten buildings no longer exist and were demolished sometime in the late 1960's.

DAVID CHALMERS (b. 1795) moved to Kinross with his wife and family (two daughters and one son at that time) in 1826. He had worked with his elder brother Francis, both of them SLATERS in Milnathort, but in 1826 he set up a workshop on his own, probably the same one in BREWERY LANE (at the north end of the 'Wynd) that his son DAVID CRAIG DALZIEL BUCHANAN CHALMERS worked from. Francis, his brother, continued to work in Back Loan, Milnathort.

From 1826 until the retirement of DAVID EDWARD VERNON CHALMERS in 1986, five generations on and 160 years later the business of David Chalmers & Sons, Slaters was run from in and around Curate Wynd.