Take at look back along Pittencrieff Street

THE photographs in this week’s trip down West Fife’s Memory Lane look at the area to the west of Dunfermline around Pittencrieff Street, an old road leading into town from the villages of Crossford and Cairneyhill.

The first photograph with two people in view shows a row of tenements lining the street at a time when this part of what is now Pittencrieff Street was called James Place. On the north side of James Place, the first building, just beyond where the car is parked, has since been demolished, though the building further east with the spire is still there today at the corner of Pittencrieff Street and William Street.

The next photograph shows the flats that were built on the site of the demolished buildings around Urquhart Crescent, as well as the remaining buildings on the right that were pulled down later to make way for new housing, as described in this extract from the Dunfermline Press in July 1957: ‘ Dunfermline Town Council took the first steps at their monthly meeting on Monday evening towards the compulsory purchase of most of the properties in Pittencrieff Street to the west of William Street and the Coal Road so that the area can be redeveloped for housing purposes.’

The next photograph is taken slightly further along the street into town looking back to its junction with the Coal Road and William Street with shops on diagonal corners. All that remains today is the tall tenement building with the spire on top.

Morris Grant has good reason for remembering one of the shops photographed: “The shop on the left was opened in 1953 by my mum and dad. I helped dad put up the Walls Ice Cream sign. It had been a shop many years before. That was 159 Pittencrieff Street.”

The photograph also brings back memories for Rysard Muller: “I walked down that road hundreds of times as I lived at Urquhart Farm (and went to Pittencrieff School) half way to Crossford. There was another shop and a petrol station further down run by two old dears and they sold firelighters and paraffin and everything smelled of them. They made tablet and sold it by the ounce. I smelled of paraffin too!”

Although many people bemoan the loss of many of the old buildings in Dunfermline during that period, many others at the time welcomed the improvement in housing conditions that followed on from their removal, as Jayne Baxter recalls: “I lived at the far end of Pittencrieff Street. No bathroom and a shared toilet on the landing. We were rehoused to the brand new flats at Urquhart Crescent. My parents and I could not believe how lovely it was!”.

The final photograph is a view looking into town from the same junction, with the car park for Pittencrieff Park on the right.

Margaret Jacqueline Forster remembers the Robertson family who ran the shop that can be seen on the corner in the foreground: “I was very friendly with Elizabeth, the daughter of the Robertsons who owned this shop, when we were at Queen Anne School and with whom, sadly, I lost touch on leaving school.

“Going into the shop and also their home above was a little bit of heaven to me. I used to spend weekends at my cousin’s ground floor flat which was across from the shop on the William Street/ Pittencrieff Street corner.”

More photographs like these can be seen in the Local Studies Department of Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries, as well as at Facebook. com/ olddunfermline.

With thanks to Frank Connelly