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Largo Arts Week 2024

26/7/2024

Largo Arts Week has recently completed its fifth run. Held over nine days 31-21 July 2024, the event showcased the work of more than fifty artists, provided a varied programme of bookable events (music, comedy, food, storytelling and more) and repeated its annual painting competition. All three villages were involved, with bunting adding to the colour of the summer blooms in the gardens, planters and roadsides. The week has evolved since its debut in 2019 and it was great to hear that visitors numbers were up this year.

Many thanks to the organisers, the artists, the performers, other supporters and the visitors for making it a special occasion with a friendly atmosphere. For more information and news of next year's event - which will take place 12-20 July 2025 - keep an eye on the website www.largoartsweek.com.

Some news that broke just before the start of this year's Arts Week was the welcome new chapter for the former Largo St David's Church on Lower Largo's Main Street. The building, pictured below, is to become a sister venture to the Aurrie (which is just across the road in the former Baptist Church building and opened in time for Arts Week 2021). To be known as The Aurrie Mor, plans are still in development but you can read a little more here:

https://www.theaurrie.com/mor.html.

No doubt by the time that Largo Arts Week 2025 rolls around, things will have progressed in leaps and bounds for Aurrie Mor.

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Photograph Manipulation

19/7/2024

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Imagine the scenario - you've just built a fashionable new hotel featuring all mod cons and had some professional promotional photographs of the hotel taken. However an important feature is missing from those images. It's the beginning of the 1900s and motor car ownership is dramatically increasing. Your target audience of well-to-do golfers would want to be sure that your hotel can accommodate their new or future vehicle. Thankfully, there is a solution in the form of photograph manipulation.

This was not a new phenomenon. The origins of photography can be traced back to 1822 and the editing of photographs developed gradually alongside the evolution of photography itself. The first well-known example of photo manipulation dates to 1846. In that case Calvert Richard Jones, a colleague of the pioneering photographer William Henry Fox Talbot, took a photograph of five Capuchin monks on the roof of a building in Malta. While four of the monks were aesthetically grouped, the fifth one was awkwardly standing a few feet behind them. Jones painted over this figure on the negative using Indian ink. In a positive print, the place where the fifth monk stood simply became a white patch of sky.

As well as removing features from images, technicians began to edit and add features to photographs as well. By the turn of the century manuals had been written for photograph 'retouchers'. Using scalpels, inks, pencils and paints, the retouchers would work at special angled tables to carry out their painstaking work on negatives. Sometimes, as in the case of the Lundin Links Hotel photograph, an entirely new image would be inserted into the main photograph, having been suitably scaled, trimmed and positioned. In the case below, a motor car has been added - exiting the hotel gate onto the main road. Although the scale and positioning are convincing, the tone is not quite right. The pale shade of the car stands out against the darker background scene.

According to the National Motor Museum, at the end of 1895, it was estimated that there were only 14 or 15 cars on Britain's roads. This figure had risen to approximately 700 – 800 by 1900, the year that the Lundin Links Hotel opened. The car registrations system was introduced in the UK in 1903 and by 1910, there were approximately 12,000 licensed cars on UK roads. By around 1905 there was even motor car ownership within Largo, with Thomas Graham Wishart being an early adopter. By featuring a motor car on a postcard of the hotel, the proprietors were signalling that this was an innovative establishment, ready to cater for the needs of the modern guest.

Did you notice the other artificially added feature in the postcard above? A large flag was added to the roof for good measure. The hotel did have a flag pole (although not in the position shown here) and often flew a flag. However, when the postcard photograph was taken the flag was absent. The flag is less obviously image manipulation and is not a bad job considering that it was done some nine decades before photoshop.

The hotel postcard is not the only example of photograph manipulation of Largo scenes. Below is a scene where the fishing boat KY 56 Fisher Lass. has been superimposed upon a more modern harbour scene. This earlier blog post explains how the same vessel appeared on various harbour scenes over the decades, as the appearance of the Crusoe Hotel altered. In the composite image below, Fisher Lass rounds the end of the pier circa 1910 but this detail has been overlaid on a 1930s background scene. The sky has also been touched up and the wave detail enhanced.

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Summer's Here!

12/7/2024

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The scene of an incredibly busy beach in front of Drum Park in this 1930s postcard, exemplifies Largo's popularity as a summer destination during the interwar period. Literally hundreds of people are packed into this small area on a glorious day. Perhaps on this particular day a 'picnic party' had swollen the usual number of summer visitors. In the summer of 1933, for example, there were thirteen large picnic parties officially using the site adjacent to Massney Braes. By the 1936 season, there were bookings for every Saturday.

Local newspapers of the time noted that this stretch of coast "enjoyed a remarkable measure of popularity". This popularity was nurtured by the newly formed Largo Parish Community Council. Their programme of foreshore improvements included a "water supply, a convenient fireplace and a comfortable shelter" according to the 23 June 1936 Leven Advertiser piece, below. Other amenities added around this time included public conveniences, a drinking fountain, litter bins and a pitch for mobile refreshment vendors. Twelve new benches were also placed around the district in 1935.

The 30 July 1935 Leven Advertiser snippet below highlighted how large crowds of day-trippers impacted upon local bus services. It would seem that the concept of queuing was unheard of at the time. Pushing and jostling was the norm - especially at Largo Harbour's bus stop - prompting calls for the supervised introduction of a queuing system!

Such was the demand for leisure facilities that a longstanding desire for a swimming pool for the Parish was reinvigorated. Soon an engineer was consulted and a scheme devised which readily gathered momentum. The piece below from the 26 March 1935 Leven Advertiser confidently tells of how the scheme was "awaiting the consent of Sir John Gilmour".

A Largo Bay Bathing Pool Association was formed and, on 30 July 1935, a public meeting took place in the Temperance Hall. An update from the scheme's temporary committee was provided, a draft constitution adopted and office bearers appointed along with a management committee. Discussion also took place around the best means of raising the cost of the construction of the pool. Some fundraising activities were proposed along with a plan to encourage subscribers to pledge money for the scheme. However, as matters advanced it became clear that early quotes for the work had been unrealistic. The far higher investment needed to make the pool storm-proof led to the scheme being reluctantly dropped (see 18 February 1936 Dundee Evening Telegraph extract below).

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William Thomson Dawson (1876-1943)

5/7/2024

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William Thomson Dawson was born in Buckhaven in 1876 to shoemaker John Dawson and Elizabeth Thomson. The family lived at Harbour Head. By the age of 14, William was employed as a clerk. A decade later in 1901, the census still described his occupation as 'clerk'. A keen sportsman, he was considered one of the finest footballers in the district. William was also active in the local lodge of the Independent Order of Good Templars (I.O.G.T.). The newspaper piece below from 23 October 1902 Leven Advertiser tells of an I.OG.T. social which was attended by both William and his future wife, Grace Williamson of Largo. Both William and Grace were musically talented and likely became acquainted through this shared interest. On Christmas Day 1903, William was married to Grace, the third daughter of Drummochy plasterer Alexander Williamson, in Edinburgh by Reverend James Robert Burt of Largo Parish Church.

At the time of the 1911 census, taken in April, William was recorded as living in Balmoral Cottage, Buckhaven with his wife and two children, six-year-old John and one-year-old Grace. William's occupation was 'Tramway Accountant', for the Wemyss and District Tramways (a scheme initiated in 1906 by Randolph Wemyss extending from Leven to Kirkcaldy). Later the same year, on 7 October 1911, Dawson was promoted to the position of General Manager, following the retiral of his predecessor. Under his management, the company both flourished and weathered various storms. He would remain General Manager for the remainder of the existence of the tramway.

While residing in Buckhaven, William was instrumental in the establishment of the local Boy Scouts' movement, eventually becoming secretary of the District Scout Association. He was also a founder of the Buckhaven Musical Association, which evolved into the East Fife Musical Association. He was well-known as a vocalist and was also treasurer and secretary of Leven Dramatic Society. He was session clerk of Buckhaven Parish Church for a time. By 1921, William, Grace and their three children (the youngest being Betty) were living at Stein Cottage, in Drummochy. This was next door to Coventry Cottage where Grace's parents and several of her siblings resided.

Inevitably, local transport evolved and the trams were increasingly challenged by omnibuses. The Wemyss and District Tramways Company invested in some bus stock of its own (and a few charabancs). One model was the Tilling-Stevens bus pictured above, navigating the bridge over the Keil Burn, with Drummochy in the background, including Stein Cottage. During the 1920s the Dawson family moved to Leven, living in 'Lyndhurst' on Links Road. In November 1927, William was elected to Leven Town Council. By then he was aged fifty and a keen golfer and bowler. The previous year he had been elected vice-president of the Scottish Tramways Managers' Association and subsequently became its president.

At the end of 1928, William and Grace celebrated their silver wedding anniversary. The occasion was marked at the annual dinner and dance held by the staff of the Wemyss and District Tramways Company in Leven's Caledonian Hotel. Mr Dawson presided over a gathering of around 190 people. After talking about how there was a greater need for co-ordination between buses and trams in order to ensure efficient public service, Mr Dawson and his wife were presented with a silver tea and coffee service. Below is an extract from Mr Dawson's speech, as published in 22 December 1928 Leven Advertiser. In this he joked about how he and Grace decided to get married to save in shoe leather, due to all the walking he did between Buckhaven and Largo during their courting days.

William was also the General Manger of the Caley Motor Engineering Company during the late 1920s (see advert above from 19 November 1927 Leven Advertiser). By 1930, the Dawson family had moved to Upper Largo, to the house shown below, which they named 'Lyndhurst', after their former Leven home. This house on the St Andrews Road had originally been the manse of the United Free Church in Upper Largo (the congregation of which dissolved in 1924). Now a listed building, the listing for Lyndhurst states:

Circa 1850. 2 storeys, a symmetrical. Stugged coursers with polished chamfered margins and quoins. Whin rubble flanks and rear. Shallow advanced gabled bay to right. All windows bipartite with 8 or 10-pane glazing; raised panel over centre 1st floor window, steeply pointed gablet to left window. Coped skews, end stacks, slate roof; rear wing. Modern lean-to conservatory.

On 3 January 1931 the Dawsons held a party at Lyndhurst for forty children of the employees of the tramway, who were conveyed to Upper Largo by bus. After a "sumptuous tea" there was "an impromptu programme of songs, dances and games". Many of the children gave "delightful songs and recitations". Each was given a gift before being returned to their homes (6 Jan 1931 Leven Advertiser). On 30 January 1932, the Wemyss tramway system ceased running and was replaced by a service of buses run by W. Alexander and Sons. William Dawson had been General Manager for 21 years and four other employees had been with the tramway since its beginning in 1906. William continued to live at Lyndhurst, working for Fife Electric Power Company for a time, becoming a Justice of the Peace and acting as a director of East Fife Football Club.

William Dawson died in Edinburgh on 7 June 1943 and his wife Grace died on 13 August 1944 at the Leven home of her daughter Grace. Both William and Grace were buried at Upper Largo cemetery where the gravestone proudly tells of William's management of the Wemyss and District Tramways.

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Largo Arts Week 2024

Photograph Manipulation

Summer's Here!

William Thomson Dawson (1876-1943)

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