Kirkcaldy High Street | How times have changed 

I completely agree with you that it's a very sad state of affairs. Just how many empty shops there are across many large towns in Scotland and the UK. They have ripped the soul out of our town centres.😭☹💔

You are absolutely spot-on about the former Littlewoods store. They also had a small record section and a cafeteria. The internet has a lot to answer for.

I remember the Marks and Spencer store in Kirkcaldy it was a real good sized store.

Opposite old burtons corner of whytes causeway was the maypole (60 years ago) a deli with marble counters loved the smell in there! Young lad you are making some really intelligent comments keep it up!

I think that the big store was a Co-op Furniture store. I know for sure that the Kirkcaldy Indoor Market was a big Woolworths store for many years. I used to really love the record department in Woolworths.

Brilliant video well done guys very interesting can’t wait for the Burntisland fair vlogs 😃

Well done guys…..a few comments I’ve added….hope they help with identifying some of the buildings along the street……try the Stenlake books on old Kirkcaldy…library maybe has copies…..

Kirkcaldy cinema had 3 screens. In fact I can remember seeing Mission Impossible 2 there with my cousin. Which starred Glenrothes actor Dougray Scott as the villain and rogue IMF agent. Kirkcaldy cinema was run by a few different companies such as ABC, Cannon Cinemas and MGM. And directly across from the Cinema was Pinnacle Mountain Sports which was co-owned and run by my cousin's husband. Unfortunately places like Tiso and Mountain Warehouse did much more business than Pinnacle could, so had to close.

Betty Nicol's has certainly been well visited by my Dad, brother as well as myself and my uncles.

Big store was the co-op

I have been to the Gurkha restaurant a couple of times in the past. But a real family favourite is a wee bit further up the High street and that is the Amritsar Indian restaurant where we have often enjoyed very good food and customer service.

Thank you for the walk along I've not been in Kirkcaldy for at least 30 years but it is unrecognisable but it's the same every where else i hope you are both well

The harbour looks very different to how it did before the built the flats alongside it. I think this is because it wasn't tidal - the way in, by the end of the pier - which until the early 1980s had railway lines running almost to the seaward end of it - was the same as now, but the inner parts were constantly kept full of water, thanks to the existence of gates between the piers (are the west and middle piers even still there?). You used to be able to walk across these when they were closed, on wee fenced paths... The railway left the main line almost immediately east of the bridge over Dunniker Road and started dropping down the gradient almost immediately before curving sharply downhill. With a ruling gradient of 1 in 40, it was the steepest part of the entire British Rail network, and needed special small locomotives to cope with the gradients - latterly Class 06 shunters, of which three existed and were to be found in either the goods sidings at Kirkcaldy (now the station car park on the north side, which also had at least one signalbox), or at Markinch, as they also served the Tullis Russell mill at Achmuty, which had the further complication of extremely limited clearances through the A92 underbridge! It crossed over the foot of The Path on a girder bridge (where just pipes on a spindly metal frame were left to cross the road at roughly the same level, after the bridge was demolished in the late 1980s,) and at one time, had three or four sidings between the dock and road, along with a whole fan of sidings behind the grain mill, accessible by reversing on the pier. I do recall seeing what must have been one of the last trains crossing that bridge - in 1983, I think, as the branch was officially closed in 1984 and the rails lifted soon afterwards. I did once manage to walk down it from Dunniker Road, but even then it was extremely hazardous because lots of stuff had been dumped in the cutting... I think I'm right in saying that the Istanbul Kebab shop (the first you see in the now somewhat truncated High Street) used to be known as the Port Brae cafe. Betty Nicol's used to be the Victoriana, which in the early 1980's was advertised as "mixed gay / straight," by some of the gay men's publications of the day. (The Penny Farthing, at the other end of the High Street, was also listed!). "The Green Cockatoo," which was a high-class restaurant above a baker's shop, was in the building opposite the old ABC cinema, just before the pavement widens and the next shops up are set back from the road a little; was invariably filled with middle-aged women, dressed in their tweedy twin-sets and pearl necklaces - from the big detached houses near Beveridge Park and such like, throughout the 1970s (all very genteel, I'd imagine). Also, all the kids of my generation and more got referred to the dentist whose entrance was in the alleyway at the side of the cinema as plooky teenagers - as ordinary dentists didn't do braces in those days. With the cinema on the right it was entered on the left and then was upstairs - probably above the High Street shops on that side of the road. The big store where the Advice Hub is now, was the Co-op. The original one got burnt down about 1974, and although they did rebuild it (partly in the most featureless concrete block imaginable, as much of the old building had to be demolished), it was never the same afterwards and it went out of business - along with countless Co-op stores elsewhere - in 1982. Nickel & Dime used to be a supermarket - I want to say Fine Fare, but I'm not certain. The Kirkcaldy Indoor Market was indeed F.W. Woolworths - closed along with most of their other main town centre stores in 1984, when it left the ownership of the Woolworth family and joined the Paternoster/Kingfisher Group, who opened a new store named Woolworths, in the then newly-opening Mercat Centre - not, incidentally, the most recent one, which was a good deal smaller...! As with BhS and one or two others on thaat side, it was possible to enter/leave the store at the back via a long straight staircase down to the Esplanade. I don't recall it ever having a Cafeteria there, which was odd, as most of their major stores did back then - and both BhS and Littlewoods did, too! If you look at the roofline, the three shops including Kokuoshi and the Post Office is relatively new: back in the early 70s this was the Odeon, and I think previously, the Gaumont and prior to that, the Rialto Cinema. It was burnt to the ground on Christmas Day, 1973. Also back in the 70s and somewhere on that side of the road before Tollbooth Street, was an Arnotts store, which I can only recall as being very narrow at the front, and very long inside, widening in places - a very odd shape! WHSmith was of course John Menzies at that time - and I can remember that store when it was new! Littlewoods had the entire block next to that - again, look at the roofline to work it out. It was only half as deep before The Postings was built, and it was extended; however it always had a Self-service Cafeteria at the back where you could buy proper cooked meals, snacks and drinks quite cheaply. Marks & Spencer's, British Home Stores and Boots were all considerably enlarged when Phase 2 of the Mercat was opened, during the 1980s. Before that, M&S and BhS had back entrances down to the Esplanade - as the entire length between the two sea walls was car parks at that time - save for the bit just left of the foot of Charlotte Steet, which was the country bus station (Only town services used a much smaller bus station where the present, combined one is)! The three or four shops looking up Whytescauseway used to be just one - and it was the Co-op grocery department, with what became a small supermarket on the ground floor, and there was a rather nice cafe upstairs that I well remember sitting in the window of with my mother once, watching the parkie issuing tickets to all the illegally parked vehicles, and arguing with all the returning drivers who'd just stopped there for five minutes... LOL! As for all the smaller shops - there were six or seven shoe shops, several tailors, ladies and mens outfitters, electrical shops, tv rental shops, Electricity and Gas showrooms (both were nationalised industries at the time, so there was only one supplier of each), fancy jewellers, quite a lot of banks and building societies, bakeries (some, but not all of which also had cafes), butchers, greengrocers, haberdashery and fancy goods, hat shops, tobacconist & confectioner shops, gift and china shops - you name it, Kirkcaldy had it - and on Saturday afternoons, "The Street" was invariably crammed with what like the whole of Fife, their mums, grannies and all: it really was as booming then as it is declining now... But then, you must remember, retail parks were unheard of - many families didn't have cars. There was no by-pass: the A92 came right down St Clair Street, past Ravenscraig Flats and the Harbour, then all the way along the 1930's built Esplanade, before turning off to follow the coast to Kinghorn, Burntisland, etc. - the main trunk road then being the now B-road via Bernard's Smithy and Dalgety Bay;and so it was very, very busy. Fife still had sixteen deep coal mines in production and emplying many thousands, Nairn's was still fully open, plus there were good quality fuirniture factories (and shops) and much else besides - and it was as difficult to imagine then how it could ever get into that state it's in now; as I'm sure it is for both of you to imagine it as I'm describing it to you!!

The store that was WH Smith was also John Menzies Newagents before. John Menzies was a very similar to WH Smith but a lot better and brighter. It had a far greater diversity of stock than WH Smith and was also a Scottish company. Menzies closed all their High Street stores because the son tookover the running of the business and he wanted to take Menzies in a different direction. So, he still did newspapers and magazines but just as a Wholesaler and the Menzies Group has even moved into airport services like providing the air bridges for passengers getting on and off an airliner.

Nice video, I saw you on Walk on the wildside live the other night. I used to help out sometimes when Ian Joy camera shop was up by McD's when staff were off

Think bows and bells shop you had a glimpse of was the original pet shop when I was a kid 1970’s

George hairdresser above the old Macdonalds

Dunfermline glen and abbey guys would be good history learning lol 😊

Wilkies was the old Dunns clothing store

Boots the chemist has lasted well ?

Mercat was the cause of the high street demise….as the high street was a linear shoping area, bus stop led people down to the mercat…under cover shopping, this stopped people heading to the east and west end….anyone remember the Arcade ( it’s now Olympia) on the west end? Franks Army store….mr Frank a former polish Paratrooper. Took part in the airborne operation Market, Jumped into Driel September 1944.

COOP Store went on fire…. April 1975….

Just passed my old flat near the former ABC cinema

John Menzies before it was WH Smith’s

I was born in Kirkcaldy and still have at least 4 different lots of family in the town. When I say lots, I mean that they stay in different houses in different parts of Kirkcaldy. I also have relatives living in Inverkeithing, Methil, Glenrothes; Guardbridge and Strathkinness (approx 2-3 miles outside of St Andrews).

A shadow of its former self Wimpy x 2 one at the Halifax and one near opposite Old Woollies 1978 the High Street is a disgrace Fife Council has a lot to answer for

Super cuts …wimpy bar…