Dunfermline Weekly 🌻 25 May 2025
Bus services consultation, Inverkeithing firework control zone proposal, Kincardine houses demolition, what burned at Burntisland, and more
👑 Bruce Fest is back next weekend, 31 May - 1 June from 10 to 17 both days, in Pittencrieff Park.
🏁 The Courier has photos from Knockhill’s 50th birthday event last weekend.
🚨 Another large cannabis farm was busted in Cowdenbeath, this time from a vacant property off High Street. (Courier)
🎆 Inverkeithing might become the first firework control zone in Fife. Local councillor David Barratt has the community council backing for a consultation looking to implement a control zone covering Inverkeithing and possibly Rosyth. (Dunfermline Press)
🚌 There’s a consultation on council-funded bus services in South Fife running until 6 July - this covers only the specific routes that Fife Council supports partially or wholly, so for example X55 or 19 are excluded. Submissions will be used when subsidised routes are being reviewed next summer. There is an online survey, and paper questionnaires are also available at the Dunfermline Bus Station. (Fife Council)
🧑🚒 A public consultation on fire service changes will be held this summer, with previously covered Lochgelly fire station closure plans far from certain. (Dunfermline Press)
🅿️ Inverkeithing High St car park will close tomorrow for resurfacing as part of larger Inverkeithing centre street upgrades that have been ongoing for the last few months. The closure is expected to last until early July unless the works are completed ahead of schedule. (Dunfermline Press)
🏚️ Demolition of six houses in Kincardine is now certain after investigation of subsidence-caused damage. The council is supporting the affected residents; in the meantime, nearby Kincardine Community Centre is also shut, though its future has not been yet decided. (Dunfermline Press)
🛝 The playground in Duloch Park is to be upgraded and expanded with funding nearly 80% of the way there. (Dunfermline Press)
🪨 Application for redevelopment of Inverkeithing’s Prestonhill Quarry has been refused. The proposed plans contained 180 houses, holiday lodges and a cafe. (Fife Today)
Place names of West Fife
🗺️ Today takes us to the western edge of our jurisdiction - Aberdour and Burntisland - in what is the last entry in this series! I hope you’ve found it interesting and/or amusing. I am considering ideas for other future limited series like this, diving into history and geography of West Fife, so let me know if you have any suggestions.
Aberdour - Pictish aber ‘river mouth’ and duvr ‘water’. The river mouth is of course that of Dour Burn, which as you can deduce was quite literally just “the water” to the original local residents.
Cullaloe - Gaelic cùil ‘corner’ or cùl ‘back’, ail ‘stone, rock, cliff’, each ‘place of’ - ‘corner of many stones’ or ‘back of the place of stones’. This spot has seen active large scale quarrying since 1700s.
The Binn - from Gaelic beinn ‘high hill, mountain’.
Burntisland - almost certainly Scots. Local tradition, considered very probable, claims there used to be fisher’s huts on an islet east of the present day harbour, which were burnt down - potentially as land clearance to build the port in the 1500s. This new royal harbour was named Newhaven or Port of Grace, while Burntisland likely was its local nickname. The general area where the town was built was known as Greiflands and Cunningarlands: the Grieve family was locally prominent, while Scots cunningar means ‘rabbit warren’ and in this context describes previously uninhabited land.