RAF Leuchars - Izeria

Royal Air Force Leuchars or more simply RAF Leuchars (IATA: ADX, ICAO: EGQL) is a former Royal Air Force station located in Leuchars, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. Throughout the Cold War and beyond, the station was home to fighter aircraft which policed northern UK airspace. The station ceased to be an RAF station at 12:00 hrs on 31 March 2015 when it became Leuchars Station and control of the site was transferred to the British Army. The RAF temporarily returned to Leuchars between August and October 2020 to carry out QRA (I) responsibilities while runway works were being carried out at RAF Lossiemouth.

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Leuchars Station

Leuchars Station (IATA: ADX, ICAO: EGQL) is a British Army installation located in Leuchars, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland, near to the historic town of St Andrews. Formerly RAF Leuchars, it was the second most northerly air defence station in the United Kingdom (the most northerly being RAF Lossiemouth). The station ceased to be an RAF station in April 2015 when control of the site was transferred to the Army.

Earlshall Castle

Earlshall Castle is a restored 16th century courtyard castle, near Leuchars Station about 1⁄2 mile (800 metres) east of Leuchars, Fife, Scotland. It has been described as “a perfect example of a 16/17th century mansion”.

Leuchars

Leuchars (pronounced or ; Scottish Gaelic: Luachar "rushes") is a town and parish near the north-east coast of Fife in Scotland. The civil parish has a population of 5,754 (in 2011) and an area of 13,357 acres (5,405 hectares).

St Athernase Church

St Athernase Church is a Romanesque church located in Leuchars, Fife, Scotland. It is a Category A listed building and remains in use as a Church of Scotland parish church. The chancel and half-round apse date from the 12th century with the exterior featuring blind arcades with typical Norman arches. The church was granted by Ness son of William, Lord of Leuchars, to the canons of St Andrews in 1185. Around 1700 a belfry was added, and in 1858 restoration was carried out to the nave. The church is open to the public in summer, at other times by arrangement. Relics preserved inside include part of a 9th-century cross-slab found near the village (closely comparable to the large collection at St Andrews Cathedral), and three elaborate 16th century memorial stones of the Bruces of Earlshall, the local lairds. One of the latter shows a full length figure of a woman, naïve in execution, but valuable in documenting contemporary dress. The oft-mentioned dedication of the medieval church of Leuchars to St Athernase is actually an error. It arises from a nineteenth-century misreading of a list of church dedications in the Register of St Andrews Priory, a medieval manuscript now in the National Archives of Scotland. Folio 155v. has a list of churches dedicated, or re-dedicated, by bishop David de Bernham of St Andrews in the 1240s. The eighth church in this list is 'ecclesia sancti Johannis euangeliste et sancti Athernisci confessoris de Losceresch (the church of St John the evangelist and St Athernase the confessor). However the church of Losceresch is not the church of Leuchars, which in medieval sources is spelt Lochris, Locres etc., but the parish church of Lathrisk (now Kettle parish in Fife), whose early spellings are Losresc (1170s), Loseresch, Losseresc (1227) and such like. Athernase is the patron saint not of Leuchars but of Lathrisk. The patron of Leuchars is not known for certain, but some medieval sources indicate a local cult of St Bonoc, a name unknown outside the parish of Leuchars, and a chapel of St Bonoc, complete with chaplain, is known to have existed. "Athernase" may be an anglicised form of the name Itharnán, found also in Fife at Kilrenny, and on the Isle of May, an Irish missionary who "died among the Picts" in 669 according to the Annals of Ulster.