THE first photograph in this week's trip down Memory Lane is of troops mustering in the grounds of Pittencrieff Primary School in Maitland Street in 1914, at the start of the First World War.

In the photograph might be some of the sons of the Reverend T. Nicholson of the nearby United Free Church, situated just around the corner in Chalmers Street.

That family paid a particularly high price for their involvement in the hostilities.

Their son John, who joined up in August 1914 in the Royal Highland Regiment, was killed by a sniper in July 1915 while repairing trenches near Fustebert.

Another son, 2nd Lieutenant Thomas Nicholson of the Royal Scots, was seriously wounded at the Battle of Menin Road in March 1918 and was repatriated to Dunfermline.

The third son, David Nicholson, who joined up in December 1914 and took part in the famous charge of the Royal Scots in the Battle of the Gully Ravine in June 1915, was later reported killed in action.

The next photograph, also from 1914, shows soldiers parading up Bridge Street past the City Hotel.

The Dunfermline Press reported at the time that the large numbers of soldiers in the town during mobilisation made Dunfermline resemble one huge garrison.

The next photograph is a view down the High Street taken approximately from where the Town Cross is situated today at the junctions of Cross Wynd, Guildhall Street and the High Street.

On the left are the offices of the Dunfermline Press.

The sign for Sanders Dining and Tearooms can be seen further down on the left and just beyond that can be glimpsed another signpost for The Commercial Temperance Hotel and Restaurant.

Temperance hotels provided all the amenities of a hotel with the exception of alcohol.

The next photograph is of someone who played an active role in the temperance movement in Dunfermline, and who agitated against the excessive consumption of alcohol and its negative effects.

Daniel Thomson had an immense input into Dunfermline's history, collecting and publishing invaluable manuscripts and newspaper cuttings.

He had good personal cause to support the movement, describing the scenes from his childhood outside Hoggan's Grocery and Publican Establishment in the town's Foregate (now Bothwell Place), saying that "the house when the pay came out (ie once a fortnight) rang with the ribald songs of the drunken weavers till the small hours of the morning, while pleading mothers and starving children waited outside in the cold night air".

In one of his books, 'Anent Dunfermline', he describes himself standing outside with his two baby brothers "weary, hungry and shivering in the cold waiting until the wintry midnight hour for the wretched weavers and my father to finish their debauch. The scenes I have seen when a boy of six or seven years will never be blotted from my memory".