Former hairdresser Arthur Nevay, 98

The funeral has taken place of 98-year-old retired Fife hairdresser Arthur Nevay who devoted his life to preserving social history in the heart of west Fife’s former mining communities.

For most of his 98 years, Mr Nevay lived at only two addresses just a few yards apart, in the west Fife former mining village of Glencraig – and it was here that he lived until taking ill just a week before his death.

Despite his down-to-earth nature, the former internationally-renowned hairdresser was a cut above when it came to his in-depth knowledge and passion for social history.

In 2015, the pensioner published an anthology of poems by Cowdenbeath miner poet Robert MacLeod (1876 -1958), who turned to entertaining after being injured in a mining accident.

Among Mr Nevay’s papers, collected from local sources including MacLeod’s relatives, was a letter from the miner poet himself, which stated that “lines like these should not be forgotten”.

Thanks to his new biographer, the legacy became available to a modernday audience.

Born in Kinross in July 1920, Mr Nevay moved to Glencraig at the age of five months when his Dundonian father bought a hairdressing business there in 1921.

As a teenager he attended hairdressing classes at Dunfermline’s former Lauder College and after serving with the RAF Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War, he took over the family firm following his father’s death.

He built up a business of five salons, employing 75 hairdressers, and established a factory in Dalgety Bay producing bulk products for hairdressing salons and an aerosol plant.

He later devoted his career to raising standards across the industry and in the 1970s became a member of the Board of Fife College. He became president of the National Hairdressers’ Federation in 1987, then chairman of the Hairdressing Training Board of Great Britain.

He was also a member of Cowdenbeath Rotary Club for 50 years and had a lifelong association to the Scouting movement.

He is predeceased by his wife Eliza.

Mr Nevay published a book of poems by Robert MacLeod.