The photographs in this week's trip down West Fife’s Memory Lane feature picture postcards of Pittencrieff Park.
Most people perhaps associate postcards with being used as mementos of holidays, but they also served a very important purpose in the early days before telephone contact, as a way of quickly communicating with friends and family locally.
Due to regular and multiple deliveries each day, if someone had an evening appointment with a friend, for example, which was for any reason delayed, they could be confident that a postcard sent in the morning explaining the situation would be received later that same day.
Postcards of Pittencrieff Park were on sale in the first summer after its purchase in 1903 by Andrew Carnegie, and before its official handover to the people of Dunfermline.
Our first postcard, which was sent in September 1908, shows the Tearoom. There was a Tearoom in the park from 1904, the first being built at a cost of £392 slightly to the east of the present building. This was extended in 1907 and 1913 before being replaced by the present building in 1927.
Our next postcard shows the present tearooms on a postcard sent on the July 21, 1939. Addressed to a 'Master Billy Cooper' in Lewisham in London, the entire message on the card simply (and perhaps a little ominously...) read: "I hope you had a nice long holiday at Long Melford and that you are behaving yourself although my strong right hand is absent."
Our next postcard shows the Gala in 1907 and the original Bandstand in Pittencrieff Park which was located in the hollow in front of the Teahouse. It was simply a raised dais (a roof being added at a later date), and in 1909 a more elaborate Bandstand was built.
The site chosen was north-west of the present building and the contractors, James Stewart & Sons, were given 12 weeks to carry out the contract with a penalty of £2 and two shillings for each day thereafter that the building was not completed.
The new Music Pavilion and Bandstand was opened in 1935. Differences over the years as to whether the title Pittencrieff Park or Pittencrieff Glen is the correct name for the park cannot be solved by referring to these old postcards, however, as both are used on them – though Pittencrieff Glen was the one most frequently used.
Andrew Carnegie himself in his autobiography refers to it first as the Glen, and later as the Park, and the Glen when he gave instructions for its transfer to the residents of Dunfermline.
The final postcard is a view from just below the entrance to the Glen near Dunfermline Abbey looking up towards the City Chambers.
Many of the buildings in the foreground have long since been demolished.
More photographs like these can be seen in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries and also at facebook.com/olddunfermline.
With thanks to Frank Connelly
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