The first photograph in this week’s trip down West Fife’s Memory Lane is from 1906 and shows the cobbled road at the junction of Maygate and Kirkwynd being dug up for the installation of electric power cables.
The signpost can be seen for the Temperence Hotel that stood on the left of the entrance to the Abbey graveyard, as well as two gas lamps that provided light before the advent of electricity.
Mick Reilly remembers the area where the photograph was taken: “I lived in the Maygate in my Nan’s flat when we first arrived in the city back in the mid 50s and I remember that place being an importers warehouse and the smell of coffee coming from the bags of beans stacked next to the door."
What Mick remembers was the building that came later on that site occupied by ‘Fraser & Carmichaels’ that can be seen in our next three photographs.
The firm was founded in Dunfermline in 1866, though the family links to the Dunfermline business probably go back to back to 1817, when John Carmichael, a native of Comrie, Perthshire, opened a grocer and grain merchant’s shop in the town’s High Street.
This shop is believed to have been at No.7 High Street, later occupied for many years by the London & Newcastle Tea Company. John occupied the High Street shop for a number of years before moving to 1–7 Maygate where the firm of Fraser & Carmichael will be best remembered.
The Maygate shop of Fraser & Carmichael was added to over the years and was developed into a wholesale outlet with branches all over the central belt of Scotland, the north of England, as well as an outlet in Old Kent Road in London.
The Fraser & Co shops in Dunfermline at one time included two in Pilmuir Street (one of which operated under the name of Fortune), one in Bridge Street, and one each in Canmore Street, Brucefield, Rosyth and Inverkeithing.
The company had other diverse interests including Maclay’s Thistle Brewery in Alloa, the Edinburgh bottling firm of Charles Wooley & Son, Ross Brothers whisky blenders in Leith, the City Hotel, Dunfermline, which was the oldest hotel in the town, and the Albert Hotel in North Queensferry.
During the mining boom in Fife prior to the First World War, Fraser & Carmichael did a big trade in patent tallow (paraffin wax) and cup tallow (made from animal fats). These were the fuels for the miner’s lamps.
At one time the Maygate warehouse was selling around one ton of this product each week, one of their main customers being Kelty Co-operative Society, the majority of whose members were miners.
The firm ceased trading in 1971 and the building was demolished in early 1973.
The site was grassed over and not built on because of its close proximity to Dunfermline Abbey.
More photographs like these can be seen in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries as well as at facebook.com/olddunfermline.
With thanks to Frank Connelly
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