IN THIS week’s trip down West Fife’s Memory Lane we look at one of the principal streets in Dunfermline, the New Row, which has changed greatly over the years.

The first photograph shows some of the buildings that were situated on the upper west side of the New Row in 1973 just up from the Alhambra Theatre, with Miss Margaret Docherty outside the sweet shop that she had operated for 20 years.

Peter Williamson remembers this shop and other similar old properties: “When I was born, we lived at 53 New Row up the outside stairs then the inside stairs to get in the garret. I mind the laundry shed on the back green where each woman would stoke up the boiler depending on their laundry day.”

The Press reported in its issue of January 25, 1973, that Miss Docherty was planning on preventing the proposed demolition of her shop: "Work on a multi-million pound shopping development is being threatened by a 70-year-old woman. For shopkeeper Miss Margaret Docherty plans to defy the bulldozers with a ‘sit-in’ at the sweet shop she has run in the New Row Dunfermline for the past 20 years. The trouble began when her local council tried to buy the shop – and the house Miss Docherty owns next door – to make way for the development which will include a department store, a supermarket and two cinemas. When she bought the property over 20 years ago, she paid over £1,750. But the council is only prepared to offer £700 to buy her out. Miss Docherty said yesterday: 'The council’s offer is a ridiculous insult. I can’t understand it. The house above my shop was bought by the council a year ago for £2,750. Everywhere else in the country, property prices are spiralling but, according to the council, my property is almost worthless. I’m determined to fight them all the way until they come up with a decent offer. It’s heartbreaking. I’ve spent 20 years working seven days a week from eight in the morning till eight at night to build up my business.”

The next image shows Miss Docherty inside her shop in the 1960s in a photograph taken by Freda Drysdale, who documented much of the history of the New Row. Freda built up a collection of images of the shops, buildings and people who lived in the street, and this collection is now stored in the local studies department of Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries.

The next image is also taken from this archive and shows some of the staff of Stewart the plumbers outside their premises in 19 New Row with David Hunter second on the right and Willie McLeod on the extreme right.

Our final photograph is a view from the rear of the Regal cinema on the High Street looking down towards the Alhambra Theatre on Canmore Street at the top right of the image. The tenements on the left that had their frontages onto the New Row have since been demolished. Where their gardens were is now the car park to the rear of Primark.

More photographs like these can be seen in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries.

With thanks to Frank Connelly