The six-part BBC Scotland drama series 'Tutti Frutti' (which follows the fortunes of rock and roll band 'The Majestics') is currently being shown again on TV. Many will know that Episode Two of the series was partly filmed in the Lundin Links Hotel in the summer of 1986. The above photo shows cast members Stuart McGugan, Harriet Buchan, Maurice Roeves and Jake D'Arcy taking a break outside the front entrance of the hotel. First broadcast on 3rd March 1987, the series also starred Robbie Coltrane, Emma Thompson, Richard Wilson, Katy Murphy, Ron Donachie and Fiona Chalmers.

​​Below are a couple of stills from the second episode, 'On the Road Again', showing 'Vincent' at the hotel foyer and staircase. Alongside these stills are two promotional shots of the hotel for comparison. Note that, for the purposes of the show, the foyer was made smaller by boxing in the area to the left where the ornate pillar is. Presumably the hotel had to be made a bit less elegant to be in-keeping with band's budget.
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The images below show some of the cast in the 'lounge', off to the right of the entrance hall. This room was opposite the reception/office (see floor plan at the foot of this post). Robbie Coltrane's character famously wore a silver lurex suit in this episode - ready for the band's performance at Denbeath Miner's Welfare Institute. Incidentally, Coltrane was no stranger to the area, as his mum lived in Largoward.

The series, written by John Byrne, won six BAFTAs in 1988. In 2006, Byrne re-wrote it as a stage play. Finally, after years of music licensing issues which prevented its re-screening on television, the series is being rerun on BBC Scotland - catch it quick on iPlayer. ​Episode 1 is due to drop off iPlayer in a matter of days, although the series is also available on DVD.

The above advert appeared in the 17 September 1969 East Fife Mail, to herald the opening of the "Dolly Pop" Boutique on Leven Road, Lundin Links. The venture was run by Mieneke Addison, wife of Ian Addison who would launch the 'Yellow Carvel' in Emsdorf Street the following year (tickets for its opening event were on sale through both the boutique and the Crusoe Hotel, Lower Largo).

Advertising dresswear, knitwear and jewellery, the shop brought contemporary and exciting clothes shopping experience to the village for a short spell.  This was a contrast to the original clothing shop at this location - James Gulland the Tailor, Clothier and Draper. The 'Coro Craft' jewellery mentioned in the advert above was made in the UK from post-World War Two until 1980.

Back in the Summer of 1970, a 'Grand Opening' took place of a new enterprise on Emsdorf Street in Lundin Links. The Yellow Carvel offered food and dancing in what had formerly been La Scala cinema. Named after Admiral Sir Andrew Wood's ship, the opening was reported in the East Fife Mail as follows:

"A new entertainment centre for all age groups opened last week in Lundin Links. The 'Yellow Carvel', the brainchild of Mr Ian Addison, was launched with a buffet dance on Friday. Mr Addison has converted what was the La Scala cinema into a centre which will provide entertainment ranging from the latest on the pop scene to folk singing and a village hop. It will be open Tuesday to Saturday inclusive with a different programme each evening and during the day it will be open for coffee and other refreshments."

Mr Addison felt there was a need in the community for such a venue as there was little for locals or visitors to do. Tom Clayton the former La Scala owner, who had a wealth of experience on providing entertainment locally, had been helpful during the preparation for the opening of the Yellow Carvel. The venue's original weekly programme was a discotheque two nights a week (Wednesdays and Saturdays), dancing to "Fierce" on Tuesdays, folk singing on Thursdays and a village hop on Fridays. Timings and prices are shown in the advert below.

The opening buffet dance attracted more than 200 guests. However, the 'Yellow Carvel' name continued only until 1972, when it was rebranded as 'Seaway'. Below are a range of adverts for 'Seaway' from the mid 1970s. Note the wide range of live acts that performed there. Hogmanay 1975 saw the well-known jazz musician Chris Barber perform with his band. 

Finally, the architect drawing further below, dating from 1981, shows the front of the building annotated with proposed alterations. Soon afterwards, another re-branding of the venue took place, when it became the 'Admiral's Bell'. 

Following on from the previous post about La Scala cinema, above and below is another example of the programme produced to advertise the month's film screenings. This example was one of (if not the) last ones produced, as the cinema officially closed in November 1968 when owner Thomas Clayton retired. 
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Although the 'screen went blank' in November of 1968, that was not quite the end of the story for La Scala. The local children had become accustomed to an annual treat of a free film show under the auspices of the children's gala day committee. So, on 11 January 1969, just weeks after the official closure, the children had their film showing as usual when Tom Clayton opened the cinema again for this special show. The kind gesture was much appreciated by the children of the Largo villages. As the clipping from the East Fife Mail below states, the special show was a double-bill of "The Gnome-mobile" and "The Million Dollar Collar". The following week's paper reported that a full-house of 330 children and nearly 40 adults attended.
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​La Scala cinema was a feature of Emsdorf Street in Lundin Links from 1920 until 1968. The programme shown above and below dates to the final months of the picture house, which closed in November 1968. The front cover above indicates that the cinema was open every day except Sunday at that time and that there was only one showing at 7pm. However, if it was raining, continuous screenings would begin from 6pm (as people would be looking for something to do if they couldn't be on the beach, playing sports, etc). 

Below is the centrefold and the back cover, giving full details of all the films showing from the end of July until the start of September. This included the 1966 'Batman' movie featuring Adam West and 1967's 'Barefoot in the Park' with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford. Did you see any of these films at La Scala?  If so - please add a comment.

As well as showing films, La Scala hosted a wide range of events. Some early examples from the 1920s and 1930s are shown in the newspaper clippings below. One of these clippings mentions the Motor Club Dance - one of the attendees of that event became part of a news story, dating from 2 March 1929 in the Fife Free Press. One man travelled from Dysart to La Scala by car but unknown to him, two young, daredevil Dysart lads had hitched a ride on the back of his vehicle by clinging onto the spare tyre...

"The lads had apparently intended to jump off before the car left the town, but the exhilaration of the surreptitious ride, like stolen fruits, seemed too good to miss, and so they hung on and hung on until not to hang on would have resulted, at the best, in serious injury. Thus was a pleasure trip turned into a grim and hazardous enterprise. Along the undulating Standin' Stane Road, through Windygates, past the top of Leven, up Scoonie Brae, and thence along the Leven-Largo highway sped the car at a speed which often touched fifty miles per hour. Nine miles, an icy cold wind, the wheels of the car churning up slush and snow, and the young lads clinging onto the back like leeches!"

Eventually upon arriving at Lundin Links, the driver of the car went into the dance - still unaware of the stowaways. Around ten o'clock a local lady noticed the lads sitting on the step of the car, shivering and splattered with mud. The boys told of their experience and explained that they were waiting in the hope of a ride back. The owner of the car was informed and "more in sorrow for the plight of the boys than in anger at the foolhardy thing they had done, he put them into a passing Kirkcaldy-bound bus and paid their fare home."
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In the next post - another cinema programme from the final days of La Scala.
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​The previous post looked at flax cultivation and the preparation of the harvested flax for spinning within the mill that once operated in Lower Largo (shown in the photograph above in a later guise as an oil and cake mill). Following on from 'part 1', the drawing below shows the mill first floor plan and describes the "wet" spinning process, as well as providing other contextual information. To view this in a new window as a zoom-able PDF, please click here.

Once the flax was spun, 'reeling' or 'winding' took place. This was a labour-intensive process and described below. In the census of 1851 there were several folks described as 'yarn winders' in Largo, including 81-year-old George Kidd Senior and 13-year-old Isabel Bell. There were also a few recorded as 'pirn winders', which included 10-year-old George White and 12-year-old Caroline Lindsay. After winding, the spun yarn was dried. Full details of this and more are given in the drawing below - click here for a PDF version.
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Finally, to round off this two-parter, the drawing below shows the three levels of the main mill building in relation to the water wheel and the boiler and engine. The annotations indicate that the preparation of the flax took place on the ground floor, the spinning on the first floor and the reeling in the level above that. To view this as a PDF - click here. It was quite an operation and one that brought significant employment to the villages. In a future post it might be interesting to look more closely at some of the people that worked in the mill and what happened to them when it closed.
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Below are a couple of photographs taken inside a flax spinning mill in Arbroath. To see a film of a more modern (1940s) version of the flax spinning process, click the link below....

​www.youtube.com/watch?v=nspGz6xYzvg

Below is a detailed description by John Band of flax cultivation and processing, and the history of this particular site. To open this document as a PDF please click here. Note that 'retting' (the soaking of the flax in water) was a key part of the process. An example of a 'retting pond' (a small natural or artificial body of water used for the prolonged soaking of flax straw, in order to soften the woody tissue and enable the fibres to be separated) can still be seen at Silverburn Park.

Next, the drawing below shows scale plans of the 'heckle house' building, showing the probable use of the space within it at the time of the flax spinning operation and describing the initial steps in the process. To open this drawing as a PDF, click here. 
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​Finally, for this post (a part two is to follow), the drawing below features a ground floor plan for the main mill building and outlines the next stages in the process. A PDF of this can be opened by clicking here. In the next post, the actual 'spinning' part of the process will be detailed, along with the subsequent winding and drying, as well as much more information about the buildings at that time and the industry in general.
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The above photograph shows the Slee family of Edinburgh on holiday in August 1933, with part of the Temple visible in the background. The family came to Lower Largo annually from the early 1930s until the Second World War. Their visits began when the children had whooping cough and the doctor suggested some sea air. A book named "Two Generations of Edinburgh Folk" by Dorothy Slee (1993), describes the holidays as follows:

"Granny rented a cottage at Largo for us for a month and it was such a success that we returned there annually for six or seven years. The little rented cottages were at the far end of the village of Lower Largo, just across a narrow road from the beach. Happy and carefree, we spent more of our time on this beach - building sand castles, paddling, looking for crabs in the rocks, or floating in a large rubber inner tube".

The book was part of the 'Flashbacks' book series designed to reveal the daily lives of individuals in the context of their own time and place. Dorothy worked at the National Museums of Scotland who co-produced the series. The concept of the series was that everyone can contribute to the "total sum of knowledge of human history" and that "local and personal history" should be set alongside political and other kinds of history.
 

The second photograph above shows some members of the family sitting outside their rented cottage. It has since been demolished and replaced by the modern home that is now 5 The Temple. You can recognise the neighbouring house (number 7) which looks the same today.  Later in the Dorothy Slee's book there is a description of the entertainment on offer in Largo at the time:

"At the other end of the village by the Crusoe Hotel there would be pierrots and a Punch and Judy show to visit, where we would stand enraptured by the strains of "Oh, oh, Antonio" or "Why am I always the bridesmaid never the blushing bride?"....We would sometimes climb up Largo Law and always have a picnic at Shell Bay which meant a trek along the beach laden with picnic gear and, most importantly, Grandpa hugging the large yellow melon."

Below is the spot where the above photo was captured - the group sat by the low wall in the left hand foreground.

The above advert for the 'East Fife Co-operative Society' shops dates to 1965, just a few years before the closure of the Largo branch (which is mentioned in the list of stores above). The Largo branch was at west end of the main street next to the grocer's shop at 'Forthview'.  Initially a milliner's shop, this building had became a branch of 'Leven Reform Co-operative Society' by 1915. Some decades later, the Leven co-operative society merged with others in the area, taking the 'East Fife' name.  Below is an advert from 1925 inviting applications for the position of 'saleswoman' at this Largo branch (12 Sept Scotsman). 

Following on from the previous post about the 'Forthview Grocer's Shop', a trawl through our archives has revealed a selection of vintage adverts for this particular shop. In chronological order below, we have tenant grocer Thomas Cooper, who ran the shop after the death of original proprietor Robert Alexander in 1891 until his own early death in 1898. Note the wide range of beers listed and the fact that these were "carefully bottled on the premises".
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Next is an advert from the era of Peter Scott c1910s. Note that, as in the advert above, the grocer would call round local homes to take orders and then deliver them in the mornings.  Peter Scott started business in Lower Largo in 1906, coming from Dura Den. He actually found himself bankrupt in 1912 but managed to retain the grocer shop. He married fellow shop-keeper Catherine Simpson Bell in 1913. Catherine was the daughter of the green-keeper at the Lundin Ladies Golf Club and their marriage took place within her home - the green-keeper's cottage behind the ladies golf club house.
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Peter Scott died in 1931 and Catherine applied for a renewal of the shop's license before advertising the business for sale. The advert below must date to around that time. William Gould took on the grocer's and the final advert below dates from early on during his time in charge.