THIS week's trip down West Fife's memory Lane focuses on Fife College, which was known most recently Carnegie College, but is best remembered by those who attended it as Lauder College.
For many years, George Lauder, uncle of Andrew Carnegie, worked to create a college in Dunfermline that would provide technical instruction and education for its citizens, and he can be seen in our first image as depicted in a painting.
George Lauder's father owned a snuff mill in Dunfermline, one of the three mills that can be seen in our second image that shows them situated below Dunfermline Abbey – the foundation and remains of these buildings can still be seen today behind the First World War Memorial in Monastery Street.
Lauder appreciated the skills he himself had picked up while working there and wanted to see them made more widely available. Despite his long, vigorous campaign to have such a college built, local councillors refused continually to fund his vision and eventually he had to turn to his nephew Carnegie in Pittsburgh to provide the funding which enabled it to be opened in 1899.
Our next photograph shows the building in Priory Lane, the facade of which still exists today, after it was converted into housing. At the opening ceremony organised by the Earl of Elgin and attended by more than 500 invited guests, Andrew Carnegie asked that the college be named in memory of his uncle and all the efforts he had expended to create it.
Although overcome with emotion at such an unexpected tribute and therefore unable to read the speech he himself had prepared for the occasion, an excerpt from it that was read out on his behalf by Sir William Robertson outlined his vision: "I was a persistent advocate of technical education. When I found myself at the age of 25 with a deficient education for the trade I had got engaged in, I resolved that every youth that came under my influence would get a good technical and literary training. I could mention many individuals who have assisted in this way but two of them were my own son, George Lauder, and my nephew, Andrew Carnegie. When they were boys, they assisted me in business. Robert Burns' work lay open in my back shop and I taught them to recite his poems, and poured into their veins a love of Wallace, Bruce, Burns and old Scotland. It is on this account that Dunfermline has got this splendid college."
Our final photograph was sent in by Press reader Joan Douglas and shows just some of the people that later benefited from an education at Lauder College, which later relocated to its present campus on Halbeath Road. In the image are joinery apprentices from around 1964.
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
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