Fife Pilgrim Way - Part 2
Dunfermline to Lochore - Built on Coal
The
Fife Pilgrim Way is a new long distance walking path, following in the footsteps of medieval pilgrims coming from Culross or North Queensferry to see the relics of St Andrew. Over several weekends I am trying to run the route, and find out a bit about the local history on the way.
Arriving in Dunfermline from either
Culross, or
North Queensferry, the medieval pilgrims would head on towards St Andrews, out of Dunfermline through open countryside. One hundred years ago travellers would have been walking through mile upon mile of mine-workings, pit bings and bustling communities. Now the coal mining has all gone. Although many of the miners' villages still struggle on they are a shadow of their former selves. It seems amazing that so much of the infrastructure of Fife's industrial past has been completely erased from the landscape, and between Dunfermline and Ballingry few hints at what was there before now remain.
Dunfermline
On the Fife Pilgrim Way you arrive in Dunfermline from the south, into its "heritage quarter" past weavers cottages and abbeys. You leave through the centre of town and out through the east end.
With a population of 50,000 it is the most populous town in Fife. It was a royal town and an abbey town. Then it grew as a mining town and flourished with linen weaving. Now few industries remain and the service sector is the biggest employer in town, with Dunfermline being the main shopping area in Fife. Dunfermline is home to the
Alhambra Theatre, and now the old art deco fire station on Carnegie Drive has been re-modelled as
an arts centre. Dunfermline's other contributions to the arts include gifting the world members of the bands
Nazareth,
Jethro Tull and
Big Country, as well as the inimitable
Barbara Dickson. They should all get together as a Dunfermline supergroup.
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| The Carnegie Hall |
As you head east through town, you pass "the second"
Carnegie Hall as its website describes it, which I see has
Danny John Jules and
Neil Oliver performing there soon, though I suspect not together. There aren't many signposts for the Fife Pilgrim Way over the next couple of miles, so following the directions on the
official website or using a
map is necessary. Skipping onto a path parallel to the main road we pass between Dunfermline Cemetery and East End Park, home to Dunfermline Athletic Football Club. Before getting there on the left you will see the former
Poorhouse of Dunfermline. Built in 1843 it was extended several times, before later being known as the Dunfermline Combination Home and Hospital, being incorporated into the NHS when it was founded in 1948.
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| Dunfermline Poorhouse, now converted into housing |
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| The path behind East End Park football ground |
The path here passes between
Dunfermline Athletic Football Club and
Dunfermline Cemetery. The football club was started in the late 19th century as a way to keep players of
Dunfermline Cricket Club fit during the winter months. By 1885 they had split away to become a separate club. The club's greatest achievements were in the 1960s, twice winning the Scottish Cup and reaching the semi-final of the European Cup Winners Cup in 1969. As a Glaswegian child it was the club crest that I knew before I got to know the team as a travelling Partick Thistle fan, as it was so totally unlike the badge of any other Scottish club. It was designed by a local school art teacher in 1957 and features
Malcolm's Tower (the ruins of which lie in Pittencrieff Park), the "hanging tree" of Malcolm III's time, and what looks like a glass building of contemporary 1957 Dunfermline that I haven't been able to identify. A splash of green at the bottom represents East End Park.
Mr Dymock, take a bow. There ain't no club badge like that one. As a Partick Thistle fan I write this in November 2019, looking up to Dunfermline FC's mid-table Championship mediocrity with envy.
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| Club badge of Dunfermline Athletic Football Club |
Leaving Dunfermline the Pilgrim Way heads around the town's modern
Queen Margaret Hospital, named after the saintly
Queen Margaret that we have met already, and heads up the Townhill road and on to Kingseat. From here, looking out across the M90 off to the right lies
Hill of Beath. The hill itself was used for
Covenanters gatherings, held here in the 1670s, a good place to look out for approaching soldiers coming from afar to break up your meetings. From the days of The Reformation 100 years earlier, to the Covenanters and beyond, the splits and divisions over religious doctrine in Scotland were tied to many other social changes, with shifting allegiances, land ownership and royal interventions mixed into a murky theological mix which still brings problems to Scottish society today.
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| Hill of Beath, off to the right of The Fife Pilgrim Way |
The village of "
Hill of Beath" just beyond the hill was established to house miners, as were most of the villages in this area. In 1963 once the local pits had all closed, dismantling the pit bing here was the first of many subsequent land reclamation projects in the area. The land between the path and the Hill of Beath in the photograph above had been home to coal mining from the 1700s, now all gone.
If Hill of Beath rings any bells for you, it may be due to its football connections. This small village, which is still home to a Juniors team, was the childhood home of three famous Scotland internationals;
'Slim' Jim Baxter (whose statue stands
on Main Street),
Willie Cunningham, and current Celtic captain
Scott Brown.
Kingseat
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| Kingseat |
We come next to
Kingseat, another former coal mining village, with four pits sunk in this area in the mid-1800s. The village grew up about the mines and
a report in 1875 bemoans the fact that there were few amenities here, with "
no ashpits or closets over all the village". The report also mentions that for those living here "
(t)he water for the village is got from a field near at hand. It is surface water and becomes dirty in rainy weather". All this for 6s 8d a month for a room and kitchen. Mining continued here until 1945 when the last pit up beside Loch Fitty flooded, and was abandoned. On the edge of town new houses are being built, and like several of the towns around here, many people live in this area and commute to work in Edinburgh and surrounding areas.
The village allegedly takes its name from a large rock that sat near by, beside the long gone Craigencat Quarry. King James was supposed to favour this as a place to sit when journeying between Falkland and Dunfermline, enjoying views across to Arthur's Seat.
Even in this small village, home to 800 people at its peak, for those who worked the local pits death was an ever present danger underground. By the time the last pit closed in 1945, 27 people had lost their lives in the Kingseat pits, the youngest being an 11 year old and two aged only 14 year old. The last to die were in November 1945, when two brothers-in-law died working their last shift in the flooded Pit No. 3 that was being closed down.
Between Dunfermline and Kingseat lies the former Muircockhall Colliery, on the edge of Townhill Wood. From 1868 until 1943 this pit was worked. Towards the end of World War 2 with growing demands for coal, men were conscripted not to serve in the armed forces, but to work underground on producing coal. Over 5 years 48,000 men served as "Bevin Boys" across Britain. Muircockhall was where these men from Scotland and the North of England, including my great-uncle Peter, received 4 weeks of training. After the war Muircockhall continued as a miners training centre until 1969. Did my great-uncle decide to carry on as a miner after the war? Not on your nelly. He hated it from day one, and only a few weeks in, working in a pit in East Lothian, he was caught in a cave-in, breaking his leg which left him with a limp for the rest of his life. Once he had recovered he was sent back down the mine, at which point he deserted in terror, refusing to go down again.
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| Kingseat |
Leaving Kingseat the path heads down towards Loch Fitty, and across the causeway here. Walking this way you pass over the former route of one of the many mining railway lines and the site Kingseat colliery Pit No. 3, the last one to close here, which stood just by the loch. Though once a trout fishery, Loch Fitty is surrounded now by just farmland, with the sounds of ducks and swans, cows and horses rather than that of machinery.
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| The path across Loch Fitty |
Lassodie
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| New Rows, Lassodie |
On the other side of Loch Fitty the path leads you into a curious area. On some maps this area is described as "Lassodie" but no signs of human habitation exist. The rise and fall of Lassodie village is an extreme example of what has befallen much of this area, whose fortunes have come and gone with the Scottish coal industry. In 1901
Lassodie was a village of over 1400 people and several mines. There was a post office, a church and two co-op stores. By 1931 the cost of pumping the water out of the remaining pits made them unprofitable and they were closed down, with some families given
14 days notice to quit their homes.
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| 1854 map, before the miners' houses were built |
If you click on the 1854 map above to expand it, the Lassodie estate is there, in the days before the landowner had built any miners' houses. Also on this map is "St Margaret's Well" showing that centuries earlier, this area probably did have associations with those on their pilgrimage from Dunfermline Abbey to St Andrews.
In the 1930s the
Reverend David Patrick Thomson maintained the church and manse for a while as an evangelical retreat, in the now quiet village. Scotland's one time Olympic athlete
Eric Liddell was one visitor to the centre. Another visitor to the village in the 1930s and 1940s was a young
Sean Connery whose gran and granda had retired to the village. Young Sean (at that time still known as Tommy) was taken on the bus to Dunfermline to watch the football by his grandad. Another former Lassodie resident was my wife's uncle Archie. He spent his working life as a driver, and was a keen amateur footballer. We have his runners-up medal from the
1931-2 Fife Cup, when his Inverkeithing team were beaten in the final by Bowhill Rovers, 3-0 after two replays.
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| Archie Notman (R). Driver and one time footballer. Picnic in Dunning Glen |
For a short while at the start of World War 2 the quiet village became a place of refuge for people fleeing Nazi Germany. All the remaining buildings from the deserted village were swept away when mining briefly returned to the area.
St Ninian's open cast mine operated here in the 1960s, and then again from the late 1990s until 2013.
On running along this way the village has completely vanished from the face of the Earth, but one thing remains. A slight detour off the Fife Pilgrim Way brings you to the village's war memorial, which sits now at the side of the B912. On it are listed the names of the 21 men from Lassodie that died in the First World War, and 4 men that died in the 1939-1945 war. As the memorial says "we will remember them". However it feels strange to find that no other record on the ground of the village that these men grew up in survives today. All but forgotten.
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| Lassodie war memorial |
The Fife Earth Project or The Scottish World
St Ninian's opencast mine has now closed down, and the area partly remodelled by landscape architect
Charles Jencks. Sometimes called "The Fife Earth Project" or "The Scottish World" the project was abandoned in 2014. By then he had created a sort of mappa mundi in stones, with areas where Scots have settled around the world in four imagined continents, and had carved out two artificial hills. One of the hills is fitted out with sculptures of trees and tyres, and a row of old mining equipment that looks as if it is a twentieth century henge lined up to catch the winter solstice.
The Fife Earth Project is now a strange curio, and with so much empty land and not a soul in sight it feels rather desolate. If you look at
his website, he had ambitious plans to create a major attraction for the area, which would have involved carving out a watery map of Scotland. As Charles Jencks died in October 2019, it seems unlikely his vision will ever be realised and you will need to
look at his works outside the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh and Jupiter Artland to imagine a completed version. Here are some pictures I took when I went to explore the area. It seems odd and neglected now, this vast swathe of empty land. The half finished artwork feels like some strange archaeological vestige of a vanished civilisation. It is all rather melancholy.
Kelty
After passing through Blairdam Forest the Fife Pilgrim Way then comes into Kelty.
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| Entrance to Blardam Forest |
Kelty is one of the larger towns in this area, much reduced in size from its peak when mining was in full swing. A century ago the authorities were concerned about the negative effects of alcohol on the workers. So a number of towns established bars on the
Gothenberg principle, a Swedish model of co-operatives which refused to allow credit, no gambling, dominoes or other vices on the premises, and they were generally unadorned. In return they could promise an unadulterated product for sale at the bar, and profits fed back into the well-being of the local community. The
No.1 Goth still stands in Kelty but looked decidedly closed when I passed through town. A mural here marks the life of young boxer
Connor Law from the town, who died earlier this year.
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| Totem pole, Kelty |
An unexpected sight were several totem poles in and around the town. These were carved by Canadian aboriginal totem carvers who visited Kelty in 2005. You may be unaware, as I was, that Kelty was once home to an undefeated world champion. Robert Stewart became world draughts champion in 1922 after a narrow victory in Glasgow over the reigning champion from America (a narrow victory after 2 wins, 1 loss and 37 draws). His obituary in the Montreal Gazette reports that he "
lost only 2 out of 8000 games" in his draughts career and retired as British champion after multiple victories "
for want of competition". The table and chairs in Kelty's memorial garden are an appropriate tribute I think you would agree.
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| Sit and remember Robert Stewart. Champion. |
Lochore Meadows
The Fife Pilgrim Way as it is routed manages to just miss several other notable former mining villages. A short detour will be required if you want to pass through the villages of Ballingary, Lochgelly, Cardenden or Lochore. I ran up to Lochore to catch sight of a notable Goth pub that was still very much in business when I passed, The Red Goth, possibly named after a famous Communist Robert Smith fan (or maybe I just made that up).
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| Red Goth, Lochore |
Before getting to Lochore, we pass through
Lochore Meadows, a large country park on the edge of Lochore which has Fife's largest loch in the shape of Loch Ore. 'The Meadies' as it is more commonly known, is now an area of grass, hills and lakes used for dog-walking, outdoor pursuits and sports, but it is all laid out on land reclaimed from former mines and pit bings. A few mementos of the former industry of this site still exist, but you have to seek them out. (This short film shows the extent of the work that had to be carried out here to create the park->
Lochore Meadows Reclamation.)
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| Canoeists and dog walkers are what can be found now in Lochore Meadows |
Some memorials to the mining heritage of the area exist, in some subtle ways. The children's playpark consists of several hillocks, and each represents a pit from the area - the tree house below represents the Nellie Pit for example. The cafe and community building is called the
Willie Clarke Centre, after Fife's longest serving Communist councillor, who just died last week. He had served as a councillor for over 40 years. He had began working as a miner in 1949 aged 14, and he was elected as the councillor for the Benarty ward in 1973, representing the Communist Party. Fife has a strong history of elected Communist representatives, founded in the radical history of the miners here, who had to fight for every advance in their conditions. We will come back to this in the next part of the Fife Pilgrim Way as we continue through mining areas.
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| Playpark at Lochore Meadows |
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| Willie Clarke Centre, Lochore Meadows, Fife |
The concrete headframe and winding wheels of No. 2 Mary pit stand beside the visitor centre at Lochore Meadows, beside a decaying NCB steam engine. Like other pits in Fife and elsewhere, the work of the miners was never safe and a board nearby lists the names of the 78 men who lost their lives in the Mary colliery that worked here from 1902 until 1966. Apart from maybe fishermen and soldiers it is hard to think of any other profession where death is accepted as an occupational hazard.
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| The concrete headframe of No. 2 Mary pit, Lochore |
A small plaque stands opposite the Willie Clarke Centre to commemorate the miners strike of 35 years ago that effectively marked the end of mining in the UK. It reads "Erected by the Scottish people in recognition of the struggle by Fife miners and their families during the year long strike 1984-1985".
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| Small plaque commemorating the miners strike of 1984-85 |
Nothing was put in place to succeed the mines when they all closed down. Thousands of skilled workers were abandoned and years later these former mining communities are still suffering. A report out this week (November 2019) shows that "
Fife's former mining communities are being left behind the rest of the UK" with regard to unemployment rates, ill health and rates of incapacity benefits, both in former miners and in the generation that has followed.
Next the Fife Pilgrim Way heads towards Glenrothes, skirting past the delights of the Kingdom Shopping Centre for the more traditional pleasures of Leslie and Markinch....
Fife Pilgrim Way Links
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