Cowdenbeath

A Memory of Cowdenbeath.

I moved to Cowdenbeath from Lochore in 1959 at the age of two. We lived at 3 Alexander Street (house long since gone).  My mum, dad and me. I attended Foulford School for one year. I remember the walks home alone every day by the burn.  

Around the end of 1962 we moved to 49 Arthur Place in the old miners rows and my brother Harry was born. My dad worked for many years at Cowdenbeath Workshops (Jock Campbell). Happy years attending Broad Street School, although I missed nearly a year's schooling whilst in Leith Hospital with kidney trouble at the age of 8. I always remember long walks across Moss Moran with Jennifer Baxter, Linda Lees, Steven and Stuart MacKenzie and Gary and Brian Stein, who all lived in Arthur Place. We spent many hours playing under the pedestrian green brig swinging from rope.  Around 1969 the miners rows at Arthur Place were being demolished (all 5 blocks of them), and we moved to 101 Blamey Crescent, where I stayed until 1975. I attended Beath Junior and Senior High (pals included John Kane, Tom Rae & George Brown, girlfriends Caroline Williams, Mary Bolland and Audrey Bruce), then worked at Cooper Fine Fare in the High Street, then Claude Alexanders in Dunfermline. I joined the Army in 1975 for 22 years, and I now live in Farnborough, Hampshire. On the rare occasions I visit Cowdenbeath, it depresses me how much it has gone backwards in the past 40 years.Mum and Dad are now dead, so I have little reason to go back often. Good luck to all that remember me.

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