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Photograph from 1965 of what is now the Glen Bridge car park looking towards the rear of the City Hotel. St Maragret’s Cave on the left of the picture was due to be completely covered over. However, after opposition to this proposal and a vigorous public campaign, access was maintained and it is now a free of charge, popular and accessible tourist attraction commemorating one of Dunfermline’s greatest historical figures.
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What a massive hole. What was there before the car park was built?
Amazing! Love these old photos!
It was woodland if I remember. I also remember my mum showing me the cave at about this time. I’ve never seen this photo before. The cave is still amazing to visit!
Ye, peoples back gardens and lots of trees.
Was called the backies ,a wooded area with a path running along side a burn from if Buffies Brea right along to centre,passing St Margarets cave,she went there daily to meditate,the burn continued on through a tunnel under Bridge Street and appeared again behind the wee Creepy Pub,in the old days Hodgsons rag merchants,there were steps down to St Margarets cave from Bruce Steet,next to Harlems night club!
Derek Walker where’s yer house
Debbie x
The things you learn about your town….love it! Imagine going to cover the cave… Glad the outcry worked back then.
Laura Malcolm Lynsay Hunter Jenna Marie Starbuck
My home town and I am ashamed to say I never knew about St Margarets Cave. Will have to go and have a look next time I’m down for a visit to Dunfermline.
That was a real whole, it is hard to imagine it that way now.
I can just remember this before the Car Park was built. I would have been about 11. I remember the green grill over the entrance to the cave. I also went through the tunnel and ended up in the Glen. Did the same thing about 2 years later after the car park was opened. A new tunnel leading into the old one. Before the car park was built and landscaped on the Buffies Brae side, the Glen Bridge always seemed higher up from the Tower Burn. ( or maybe that’s because I was smaller then). I just love these old photos. I can just remember the church in Chalmers Street, which was where the entrance to the car park now, and Souness the Ironmonger opposite in Chalmers St.
Now the college isn’t getting built there, it should be turned into a civic square.
Best play ground in the Toon!!!
I love all of those old photos and comments. I lived with my Dad and Grandpa (both Robert Campbell) at Glebe Cottage 31 Moodie Street in the early 1950s. The cottage was behind the main Moodie street and accessed by a close that led into a cobbled yard. There was a wash house in the middle and lots of clothes poles for the folk in the tenements. The cottage was divided into 3. There were 2 flats upstairs and these were accessed by an outside stair. My Grandpa had the whole of the bottom and the garden. This had an uninterrupted view down onto the Glen and if I remember correctly the lovely brass slide. My Grandpa used to do the garden of the minister of the Abbey church.
Keith Henderson
I used to play down there in the early 1950’s when the burn ran free and the felled trees you see grew along its banks. In my opinion filling this in for a carpark and burying St Margarets Cave, though it is now accessed by a tunnel, was and is a stupid decision and a criminal act.