IN THIS week’s trip down West Fife’s Memory Lane, we look at one of the oldest streets in Dunfermline, Bruce Street.

It was originally named Collier Row, perhaps from the Gaelic word, Coile, meaning wood or forest, referring to its position backing on to the great woods of Dunfermline, before being renamed King Street in 1833 and later Bruce Street in memory of King Robert the Bruce.

A very early source says "the houses were in general thatched with straw, some with heather, and in one or two cases covered with ‘thin flat stanes’. The mill burn was to be seen flowing down the street with stepping stones from every door down to the waters edge".

Today, many of the properties are boarded up or empty as the street is probably one that has suffered more than most in Dunfermline from changing shopping habits. However, it was once a busy, thriving area and our first photograph gives a flavour of what this once bustling street looked like as viewed from the north across Carnegie Drive from where Tesco is today.

A variety of shops line the eastern side of Bruce Street, just down from the large building that still dominates the top of the street which used to be a lodging house catering for the many itinerant workers attracted to Dunfermline for work in the thriving linen industry for which the town was world famous. Other shops that once traded in the street were the photographer Peter Leslie, William Stevenson and Sons auctioneers and furniture retailers with a department that stocked prams and cots; McKissock, retailers and repairers of radio and TV sets; and two public houses, the Green Tree and the Bruce Tavern.

Our next photograph, from 1925, shows one of the shops that was demolished to make way for the construction of the Glen Bridge, the grocers D & J Todd at number 53. The blistered paint to the right of the shop sign was caused by heat damage from the fire that destroyed the nearby Caledonian Linen Works in March 1925.

The next photograph is a view of the entrance to the street in the 1950s as a Co-operative fruit and vegetable cart squeezes past a parked van. Parking was on opposite sides of the street on alternate days at that time. Burton’s shop and the entrance to the New Victoria restaurant can be seen on the right and a sign for Kyle’s premises is above the parked van.

The final image is of a painting by Adam Westwood of Kinnis Court on Bruce Street which has long since been demolished. This property belonged to the major Dunfermline linen manufacturer, William Kinnis, who had a warehouse and weaving works on the street. He was, at one time, Provost of Dunfermline who exhibited some of his damask linen at the Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace in London in 1851.

More photographs like these can be seen in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries once it re-opens to the public, and also at facebook.com/olddunfermline.

With thanks to Frank Connelly.