Views and cherished memories of Nethertown area of Dunfermline
THE first photograph in this week’s trip down West Fife’s Memory Lane is a view looking down Dunfermline’s Moodie Street.
This image features in the ‘Old Dunfermline’ calendar for 2024. The woman pictured is passing the cottage in which Andrew Carnegie was born on November 25, 1835.
Since then an addition to the original cottage has been added as a museum telling the story of Carnegie’s life and his journey to the United States where he made his fortune in Pittsburgh.
The next photograph is of the bottom entrance to Pittencrieff Park at the western end of Nethertown Broad
Street.
This is at the junction with the road going to Limekilns and ‘Lovers Loan’ leading on to the Coal Road. The Coal Road then follows the old walls of Pittencrieff Park round and up to the west end of Dunfermline.
The houses in the distance on the left are still there today.
This area of Dunfermline, Nethertown, is mentioned as far back as 1270 in the Register of Dunfermline and its name has its origins in the lower or ‘nether’ position on which it stands, compared to the more elevated position of the town around the Abbey and Palace etc.
The final photograph is of the ‘Brig Fish and Chip Bar’ at the eastern end of Nethertown Broad Street near the railway viaduct and the busy roundabout at the bottom of the New Row.
The photograph was provided by Roseen Woolf (nee Keddie) who now lives in Australia and whose family once owned the very popular fish and chip shop.
She said: “My father William and my mother Jessie bought the property in 1941 and it was sold to Tony Corrieri around 1957/1958.
The shop was always busy as I recall, even in the seating area out the back, especially when the dances and pictures were finished.”
The photograph brings back memories for Ellen Baillie: “I remember all my times in the West Fife Hospital with knee injuries.
“The smell from that chippy every night was torture as I was only a kid who loved chips!”
June Ramage also remembers the shop: “I lived in an attic flat right next door, when first married.
“Friday was fish and chips night for us and I remember they had a sit-in part on the right.”
Kat Duncan also recalls using the café: “I used to go here on my lunch hour at school with my then boyfriend and now husband Craig.
“The women that worked there used to call us ‘kissy, kissy’!
“That would have been about 20 years ago now.”
The ‘Old Dunfermline’ calendar is on sale in the shops in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries and Abbot House.
It is also available online at olddunfermline.com/shop.
More images like these can also be seen in the Local Studies Department of Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries, as well as at facebook.com/ olddunfermline.
• With thanks to Frank Connelly