The first photograph in this week’s trip down West Fife’s Memory Lane is from the early days of the construction of the huge Abbey View housing estate and shows Wedderburn Street near its junction with Blacklaw Road.
Dunfermline Abbey can be seen in the distance explaining the reason the estate was so named.
Whitelaw Farm, which became home for Mitchells removal company in the 1960s, can be seen in the upper right of the photograph over the tops of the houses under construction.
Our next photograph is of the tennis courts that were situated at the top of the Public Park behind the Carnegie Hall. The area is currently set out as a skate park.
Donald Adamson has memories of the area as a child: “I spent a lot of time there in the 1960s and 1970s playing both tennis and especially putting on the green in the foreground, which went up and over a sort of shoulder of the hill. Great times.”
John McGlary has similarly positive memories of the same area: “My playground as a kid when I stayed in Appin Crescent and I remember the trees there when they were not long planted - they still had the wire round them to protect them - oh, the memories!”
Our next photograph shows what the area above the tennis courts looked like around 1961 before the Sinclair Gardens roundabout was constructed and the present dual carriageway built through the Public Park.
A pub, the ‘Park Tavern’, stood at the beginning of Appin Crescent, and alongside it was the shop John Donald Drapers.
The Dunfermline Press reported on progress for the new road and roundabout in December 1971: “A start was made for demolishing purposes to make way for Sinclair Gardens, first part of the Northern Link Road. To be demolished in Appin Crescent to make way for the roundabout are the following: the Park Tavern, Donald’s the Drapers and Monaghans grocers shop. On the opposite side of the crescent the public convenience is to be pulled down, as is Benachie Lodge just off the Public Park’s West Drive. On the north side of Holyrood Place the warehouse building occupied by Thomson’s the drapers is also to be demolished.”
Our final photograph is of the northern side of this area with a view looking south to the bottom of Townhill Road at its junction with Leys Park Road on the left and Gardeners Street on the right.
The railway bridge crossing the road, heading towards what was the Upper Rail Station, has since been removed. Under the arches can be seen the Carnegie Hall above what is now the Sinclair Gardens roundabout.
Richard Allan Curry remembers the area for footballing reasons: “Nearby was Piggies Lane where you could walk along traffic free to East End Park to watch the Pars snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory on many an occasion!”
More photographs like these can be seen in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries and also at facebook.com/olddunfermline
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