Wellesley Road and the Wemyss & District Tramways

The newly-established Burgh of Buckhaven and Methil was permanently unified by the construction of Wellesley Road in the 1900s. Named after Lady Eva Wellesley, the second wife of the local laird, Randolph Erskine Wemyss, it provided a broad highway between Muiredge and Leven to accommodate the Wemyss tramway and to replace the short-lived shore road between Methil and Buckhaven which had to be closed to make way for the development of the Wellesley Colliery and for the dumping of colliery redd into the sea - it is hard to imagine that landscape vandalism on this scale would be advocated nowadays! Wellesley Road itself was lined with trees, and eventually with ornate lampposts, both of which have sadly gradually disappeared in the interests of more efficient and less environmentally conscious roads engineering. About twenty-five years ago, the stretch of Wellesley Road shown in the picture on the right (c. 1910), was the subject of an extensive 'traffic-calming' scheme with much use of red paving blocks. The scheme was certainly successful in slowing down the traffic, but some of the 'speed tables' soon showed signs of wear and tear, and had to be resurfaced with tarmac.

 

The Wemyss & District Tramways Co Ltd, also a creation of the laird, began operations in August 1906, and provided an electric tram service between Leven (Durie Street) and Kirkcaldy (Gallatown) until March 1932 when competition from the buses made the service unviable. The photograph on the upper right shows a standard Wemyss tram with driver and conductor, standing in front of the tram depot at Aberhill. After the closure of the tramway, this building accommodated buses for many years and was latterly converted into an indoor bowling stadium which it still is. The trams, locally known as 'mustard boxes', carried 60,000,000 passengers and ran 10,500,000 miles during their period of operation. 
 

Notable Buildings
Methil or Wellesley Parish Church - The most impressive building along Wellesley Road is Methil Parish Church, currently known as Wellesley Parish Church (photograph, upper right), completed in 1925 to replace its previous building in Lower Methil (see 'Lower Methil' web page). It is a large church, designed in the Romanesque style by Reginald Fairlie. It has a traditional cruciform layout, the north transept joined to the pyramid-roofed tower by an 'aisle' housing the vestry. The most striking feature of the interior is the enormous organ by Rushworth and Dreaper; its case has been compared with the 16th century screen in the chapel of Falkland Palace, although the carved detail, and that of the integral elders' stalls, is Celtic in inspiration. Amongst the stained glass, it has been suggested that two windows at the west end may be German or Flemish in origin, perhaps dating from the 17th century. 

War Memorial and Public Library - In the park to the west of Methil Parish Church, the centrepiece is the burgh war memorial of Buckhaven and Methil, a fine statue of a kilted soldier designed by G C Campbell around 1920. Another feature of the park was an open air theatre or bandstand, a rather ugly structure which had become derelict by the late 1960s and had to be demolished. On the opposite side of Wellesley Road is the Methil Library (right), designed by Edward L Forsyth, originally completed in 1935 and successfully extended to the west c. 1970. The quality of the library service was a source of particular pride to the old Town Council, an attitude no doubt continued to the present day, although the space devoted to books has declined in recent years as office space for council staff has increased.

 

Tower Bar - Closing the view at the Aberhill end of Wellesley Road is the distinctive clock tower of the Tower Bar which dates from 1906 (image on right). The tower is closely based on the early 18th century tolbooth at West Wemyss.  The pub itself is still very much a traditional men's drinking howff, but the phone box was removed in 2018.

 

The eighty year old aerial photograph on the right depicts a number of features of interest. In the centre, next to the colliery railway sidings, is the original Bayview Park, the old ground of East Fife FC which has recently moved to a new stadium at the docks. Towards the upper left can be seen the cross-shaped Aberhill Primary School (then a Junior Secondary) with its central school hall, still in use but recently extended with a new dining hall and now listed as of architectural/historic interest.  Running from the top left to the middle right is Wellesley Road, then lined by tenements, most of which were demolished in the mid 1970s. Finally, in the centre right, facing Wellesley Road with its white sun blinds can be seen the Department Store of the Methil Co-operative Society - run as a high class establishment. Like so many co-ops elsewhere, it did not keep up with the times and suffered a slow period of decline from around 1970 until it was finally demolished about twenty years ago. The site is now occupied by flats.

 

Housing in Methil
The first large-scale miners' housing in the Burgh of Buckhaven and Methil was built at Denbeath by the Wemyss Coal Company over the period 1904-08. Designed by Alexander Tod, the Wemyss Estate architect, they incorporated vernacular features such as red pantiles, twelve-paned windows, forestairs and crow-stepped gables. After the nationalisation of the pits in 1948, the houses were inherited by the National Coal Board which failed to maintain them adequately. The whole 'village', by then in semi-derelict condition, was then sold to a development company which succeeded in saving and refurbishing at least the eastern part (see photograph on right). Also in this area are the picturesque single-storey rows of cottages in Cowley Street, built around the same time and now listed.  These cottages have kept their appearance, but mixed window alterations have greatly spoiled the appearance of most of the other housing in the area.

 

The North British Railway provided a lot of workers' housing in Methil, particularly along Wellesley Road (mostly now demolished) and Whyterose Terrace at Aberhill, but the construction of privately-rented housing effectively ceased following the 1919 Housing Act. As a result of this legislation, Methil's first scheme of 64 council houses was provided in 1920 at Bayview Crescent (right) and Kirkland Road. The scheme was designed by G C Campbell and built by Robert Durie, whose yard came to be established close by in Wellesley Road. These attractive dwellings, originally all with twelve-pane traditional sash-and-case windows, were the first of a large number of council houses which extended the built-up area well beyond Methilhaven Road to the site of the original Methil Church at Methilmill, near the River Leven. These council schemes, many of them to the everlasting credit of the former Buckhaven and Methil Town Council, have been described in a national series of architectural guides as 'generously laid-out local authority housing of surprisingly high quality' and have been popular purchases under successive Governments' 'right-to-buy' legislation.

 

From the mid 1970s onwards, the main council housing investment took place in Lower Methil (see 'Lower Methil' web page). The photograph on the right (slightly above) shows the first phase of the redevelopment of Lower Methil, a distinctive and attractive scheme by Methil architects, Sinclair & Watt, as seen from near McDonald Street. The wide public stairway leading down to Suttie Street (now Durie Court) from McDonald Street (image on right with the red roof of Methil Community Centre, formerly the Miners' Institute in the background) was never given a name, but a very similar stairway, between Whyterose Terrace and Toboggan Road, was, and is locally known as the 'Waverley Steps'. The 'Monkey Steps' is the name given to the narrow stairway between Rose Street and the part of Whyterose Terrace shown in the background of the upper photograph on the right.