The first photograph in this week's trip down Memory Lane is a view from where the Sinclair Gardens roundabout is now, looking up Townhill Road. The railway bridge in the photograph has since been demolished. Townhill Road was known as Witch Loan on old maps and 'Witch Knowe' was situated near it, where in the months of May, July and August alone of 1642, six women were burned as witches. The Witch Dub, near where Arthur Street is now, described as being 'about 100 yards in circumference and in the deepest parts from 6 to 10 feet in depth', was where many people were 'ducked and drownit at the will of the judges'. If they sank they were innocent and if they floated there was something 'no canny aboot them' and they were burnt at the Knowe. Although it was mainly women who suffered this fate, on the August 6, 1648 a William Crichtoun was accused and after 'being dealt with by the ministers' (in a way that would probably be more accurately described as torture today) 'came to a confession of sundrie things' and was condemned to be burnt.

The second image is an old postcard of a sandpit in Pittencrieff Park.

More photographs like these can be seen on facebook.com/olddunfermline, in Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries, where 'Old Dunfermline' DVD's are on sale in the shop there, and also in a 'Then and Now' exhibition in the lower mall of the Kingsgate Shopping Centre.