THE photographs in this week's trip down West Fife's Memory Lane focus on entertainment in Dunfermline over the years.

Perhaps one of the best-remembered cinemas in Dunfermline, the Regal, can be seen in the first image from 1959. It was a spacious, well-appointed building in the Art Deco style and had a large indoor waiting area for patrons.

On the first floor, there was a restaurant and function hall that was suitable for weddings and dances. The alleyway to the left of it (just before the ladder in the photograph) was known as the Regal Close, which led to its car park and Canmore Street, and was where McPherson's bookshop was located. To the right of it can be seen what was one of Dunfermline's most popular cafes, Malocos. The Regal burned down in a fire in 1976 and the area became the site of Littlewoods and is now occupied by Primark.

The next photograph shows St Margaret's Hall, which was situated beside the Carnegie Library and was used for all types of occasions such as film shows, retail trade shows, orchestral concerts and weekly dances. The last event there was in 1961 and the posters for the boxing show can still be glimpsed on the building on the day after the fire that led to its closure.

The next photograph shows the last picture house to close in Dunfermline, the cinema in East Port Street in the 1950s. The admission prices of 1s 3d for the stalls and 1s 9d for the gallery are painted on either side of the entrance and that is where the queues would form.

Performances at all of the picture houses in Dunfermline were continuous. Unless you were caught by an usherette, you could sit twice through a performance consisting of news, cartoons, trailers, feature film and support film.

The final photograph shows the Palace Kinema in Pilmuir Street. The children are seen queuing in 1962 alongside the fragments of the old Dunfermline High School building that are still there today, and the former post office building can be seen in the distance.

The worst feature of this cinema was that the front row of seats in the stalls was only the width of a walkway from the screen and to sit in this row was like looking up the face of a cliff – most of the first few minutes were spent looking back to see when a more favourable seat became vacant!

From 1937 until 1960, the Palace Kinema was home to the Dunfermline Film Society that promoted the viewing of foreign and specialist films throughout the winter season, and they also promoted the showing of Scottish films during Civic Week.

More photographs like these can be seen in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries (an appointment to do so has to be made at present due to COVID restrictions) and also at facebook.com/olddunfermline. 'Old Dunfermline' DVDs are available online from olddunfermline.com/shop.