1 "A WEE KEEK BACK" BY JIM CAMPBELL "CENTRAL AND WEST FIFE LOCAL HISTORY PRESERVATION" ("The Present Preserving the Past for the Future") --------------- 24 St Ronan’s Gardens – Crosshill – KY5 8BL – 01592-860051
[email protected] --------------- At the time of writing this, I have been researching the Central and West Fife Local history for some eight years. During this time I have read quite a few books about Fife written by various and well known authors, most of which I have thoroughly enjoyed and found very enlightening, but I found a source of much greater interest and enlightenment when I began to research the local newspapers. Within the pages of "The Lochgelly Times", the "West Fife Echo" and most importantly "The Dunfermline Journal", I was delighted to find a veritable gold mine of information regarding the development of Central and West Fife. Almost everything of any importance at all in regards to the Central and West Fife area was reported somewhere within the pages of those newspapers, from the early days of coal mining, the beginning and building of the Tay and Forth Railway Bridges, the building and opening of Schools, Co-operative Societies, Gothenburg’s, Miners Welfare Institutes, of the Tramway cars being introduced, the appearance of the Automobile, the Education Act, the introduction of electricity, the opening up of the mining industry in the area, the mining disasters, the Linen trade, the political scene, the birth of towns, burgh's and villages, in short, I believe I discovered for myself the beginning of the Fife that we now know, and thanks to the many different articles consisting of reminiscences, Sanitary Inspectors Reports, Medical Officers reports, etc, that appear in these newspapers, we have been left with a reasonably authentic account of what life was like in Fife in the days gone by.