The first photograph in this week’s trip down West Fife’s Memory Lane is of a street that no longer exists in Dunfermline, Reform Street.
It was taken from the roof of the Fire Station and shows the area under transition from Reform Street to what is now Carnegie Drive. It began at the junction with Pilmuir Street that the two cars in the photograph are turning right into.
The pub on that corner was the Bath Tavern, which is now Coadys. Just beyond the Bath Tavern on the south side of Reform Street was Dunfermline Opera House and beside that was the entrance to a building that was at various stages used by pupils from Queen Anne School, Canmore Primary and St Margaret’s Roman Catholic Primary School, as remembered by John McHardie.
He said: “The school was Canmore up until about 1957 when St Margaret’s, who had used a part of Pittencrieff school, moved in. The Opera House was still open in the mid fifties and the show girls would give those of us in the boys playground behind the fence a ‘show’ from the windows in the gable end of the theatre.
"The Reform Street, Inglis Street area was incredibly busy in the fifties with the cattle market, Upper and Goods Stations and Elder’s Flour Mill all operating.”
The next photograph from around 1938 shows a fire tender of the ‘City of Dunfermline Fire Brigade’ after the fire department moved from premises in Campbell Street to a new purpose built station in Carnegie Street (now Carnegie Drive).
The fire tender No. 3 (an Austin 12 horse power van) is pictured with a Tangye auxiliary fire pump in tow ready to set off to the scene of a fire.
The Scotsman newspaper of January 9, 1934 reported: ‘In pursuance of their scheme to reorganise the fire brigade, Dunfermline Town Council last night approved a recommendation of the Public Lighting and Fire Brigade Committee to erect a new fire station on Corporation ground at Carnegie Street. In the lower part of the building there will be three engine bays, one of which may meantime be available for the accommodation of two Corporation motor cars.'
In the next image Dunfermline Upper Station can be seen at the end of Reform Street. The Police Station can be seen in the distance on the right in this image from 1978, as well as the floodlights at East End Park, home of Dunfermline Athletic Football Club.
The station opened in September 1849 and to the north of it was the goods yard and sidings. There was also a locomotive shed to the east and the station had two signal boxes.
The name was changed to Dunfermline Upper in 1890 to distinguish it from the town’s other station at the bottom of the Public Park.
Our final photograph shows the area occupied by the station being transformed into a retail park where B&Q and other stores are today.
More photographs like these can be seen in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries as well as at facebook.com/olddunfermline.
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