Before Andrew Hogg began the Lundin Links Pharmacy in 1903 (pictured above shortly after opening), he had already been trading as a chemist at 56 High Street, Leven for some time. Back in 1887, he had moved from his native Border country and acquired the chemist business of Adam Gibson. His Leven shop is shown in the photograph below. The shop was part of the building that still is 52-56 High Street. Back in the nineteenth century, this whole block was owned by the Adamson family. The Adamsons were fleshers going back generations with a shop on the High Street but, by the 1880s, the building had passed on to the youngest son of the late Armit Adamson - Christopher Adamson - who did not continue in the butcher trade.

In 1885, the 52-56 High Street block (shown below with the 3 dormer attic windows and mortar and pestle shop sign) housed a public house (run by Christopher Adamson who was a vintner at the time), a draper and a chemist. This is not so different from the make-up of the block in more recent times, with the Crown Inn at number 52, Masterton the jeweller at number 54 and David T. Hay the chemist at number 56. In Andrew Hogg's day, the upstairs of the chemist housed a photographic dark room. This space went on to accommodate the optician part of Hay's. 
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The lives of Andrew Hogg and Christopher Adamson, were linked in a number of ways. Firstly, there was the landlord and tenant arrangement on Leven High Street. In addition, both men were directors of Leven Gas Company. Furthermore, Adamson's son, Armit Haxton Adamson, was apprenticed to Andrew Hogg and qualified as a pharmaceutical chemist in 1906. Also, Christopher Adamson would go on to become a supplier of goods to Hogg's shops in both Leven and Lundin Links - as in 1890, he acquired the business of the late Robert Wilson, manufacturer of aerated waters. The 1 August 1890 advert from the East of Fife Record below shows Adamson announcing his new business. This went on to become a very successful venture lasting many decades, with bottled drinks sold through numerous local outlets.

The images above show a couple of examples of the bottles used in Adamson's drinks production. One is a stoneware ginger beer and the other a pictorial glass Codd bottle with a glass marble in the neck which would have sealed in the carbonation. Both are marked C Adamson, Glebefield, Leven. Both bear a representation of Leven Mercat Cross, the symbol adopted by the business. The old market cross took the form of an obelisk type sundial with hollow faceted dials on its five-cubed shaft atop a stepped three tier base. Thought to date to the seventeenth century, the cross was lost for over a century before being found and restored in 1889. It must have seemed to be an ideal symbol for Adamson's new business that launched the following year, particularly as it had originally stood close to the premises of Adamson's butcher ancestors. The map further below shows the location of the aerated waters factory at Glebefield, close to Leven station.
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Christopher Adamson, pictured below, was born in 1837, the youngest son of Leven butcher Armit Adamson (himself the son of a butcher). He served for 28 years on Leven's parochial government and was Provost of the town 1903-07. Shooting, bowling, singing, horticulture and draughts were among his favourite pastimes. He died in 1912 at his home, 4 Trinity Place, Leven. Son George Wilkie Adamson took over the business, continuing it for many more years. Latterly, the business moved to Methilhaven Road (see circa 1950 map below) and traded as Glenfarg Aerated Water Company. The business was sold to Robert Barr Limited in 1954.

Interestingly, at the time of the death of Christopher Adamson, a list of businesses that owed the aerated waters firm for goods provided, were Andrew Hogg's chemist shops in Leven and Lundin Links and Somerville the grocer of Lundin Links. These and many other local shops would have stocked Adamson soft drinks and many locals and visitors to the villages would have enjoyed these beverages. The little fragment of Adamson Ginger Beer bottle pictured below, bearing the mercat cross pictorial, was found this summer on the Fife coastal path just east of the Temple. This tiny piece of local history, discarded long ago, could well have been purchased at Andrew Hogg's chemist or Somerville's grocer.
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Many old postcard images of Lundin Links Post Office date back to the days of Miss Margaret Bremner - the first proprietor of the facility from 1896 until around 1917  However, the image above dates from the time of the third name above the front entrance - James Laing Duncan. Duncan took over from Miss Bremner's successor Robert Ferguson in 1931 or 1932. Below is a notice from the 7 August 1931 Courier advertising the business for sale. Note that the property came with the adjacent space on Leven Road, which at the time was let to the National Bank of Scotland.

The postcard photograph, which likely dates to the 1930s, features many interesting details - from busy window displays, to vintage cars, imposing telegraph poles, plus a public telephone box and outdoor weighing scales. The bare trees and warmly clad woman suggest that it's a winter scene. The sign post in the right hand foreground states: St Andrews via Largoward 12, via the coast 25.

Lundin Links was connected to the telephone network in 1903 and the telephone exchange was housed within the linked building to the left of the Post Office on Links Road. The tall telegraph pole shows the many lines in place by the time this image was captured. The Post Office itself was Lundin Links phone number 1. The Post Offices in Lower Largo and Upper Largo were also number 1 on their exchanges. The other single digit numbers in Lundin Links, the early adopters of the telephone, were mainly businesses such as shops and boarding houses.
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Looking in more detail below at the Post Office frontage, the telephone box stands out. This particular box is not the one that stood until very recently on this spot. This was an earlier style of phone kiosk, that appears to be a 'K3' design. This design was introduced in 1929 as an affordable model for use in rural areas. Made largely from concrete rather than cast iron, around 12,000 K3s were installed across the country in the early 1930s. Only the window frames were painted red - the rest was a stony grey colour (explaining why the box appears so light in colour in the black and white photograph). Over time, it became obvious that concrete was not the ideal material for phone boxes as it was too brittle. Also, there was also a drive to standardise boxes nationally. So eventually the Lundin Links one was replaced with a newer model - the familiar red K6.

Also known as the 'Jubilee Kiosk', the K6 was introduced from 1936 to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of the coronation of King George V.  The main differences from the K3 (as well as the construction material) was that there were eight rather than six rows of windows and that that the vertical bars in the windows and door were spaced further apart to improve visibility. The K6 continued to be rolled out until 1968. The K6 box at Lundin Links was not installed until well after the end of the Second World War.

Both the kiosk types used at Lundin Links were designed by designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. The image below shows the K6 box still in place a few years ago. Further below is an image of the Post Office in the 1920s, when Robert Ferguson was Postmaster, shortly before the first telephone box arrived. Despite a scheme where communities could purchase their telephone box from BT for £1, the Lundin Links box was removed a year or two ago (after nine decades with a box present on the site). 

A shorter-lived feature outside the Post Office was a set of outdoor public weighing scales. In the top 1930s view, these can be seen immediately to the right of the phone box. Fairly common at the time, particularly in places that attracted tourists, scales would tell you your weight for a penny. The set in Lundin Links look like the 'Peerless' scales shown below. How long they remained in place is unknown but there is still a patch of concrete visible where they once stood.

Further to the right of the scales is a neat shop window display of groceries. The windows prominently feature adverts for both Cadbury's and Fry's chocolate, as did many a shop back in this era and beyond. Cadbury's started in 1824, while Fry's dates back to around 1760. Both companies were keen to promote the 'pure' nature of their cocoa as some alternatives added unnecessary ingredients.

Returning to the name above the Post Office door - J.L. Duncan. James Laing Duncan was born in Ladybank in 1892, son of a railway labourer. During the First World War he was a bombardier in the Royal Garrison Artillery. During that time, while home on leave in 1917, he married Elizabeth Gray, daughter of a vintner, in Lathones. Elizabeth's mother was Jemima Gulland, sister of James Gulland the tailor who had a shop on Leven Road, Lundin Links.

After the war, James set up as a grocer and wine merchant in Kettlebridge. Sadly, his wife Elizabeth died in 1929 aged just 36 years. James gave up the grocery in Kettlebridge later the same year. In 1930 he took over the Railway Hotel in Ladybank, however, with family connections in Lundin Links, James took the opportunity of taking on the grocery and Post Office when it was advertised for sale the next year. Shortly after arriving in Lundin Links, James Duncan married Janet Ness Tod, who was a confectioner. They remained at the Post Office for many years. Janet Duncan died in 1972 aged 79 and James Duncan died in 1977 aged 84.

Finally, in the main image at the top of this post, through the trees, the west end of Emsdorf Street can be glimpsed. The pharmacy at the corner and to the left the shop of Jimmy Brown. Part of the name 'Brown' can just be made out above the shop. More to follow soon on these shops and where the shop keepers moved from when these premises were first built.

The previous post covered the annual guide booklet for tourists to Largo, which was produced in the 1930s by the Largo Parish Community Council. After the Second World War a new style of tourist guide was published covering a wider geographical area. Entitled the 'Tourist Guide to the Vicinity of Largo Bay', this guide was put together by Leven man George Dingwall and encompassed the area from Wemyss Castle in the west to St Monan's Kirk in the east. Like the earlier guides, this one featured Alexander Selkirk's statue on the front cover, contained many photographic illustrations and delved into the history of the area, as well as praising the many amenities and natural features along the coast.

​The guide was re-advertised the following year, with a quote from a Daily Record journalist, stating that the guide was "packed as full as an egg with history, legend, romance and information" (2 July 1947 Leven Mail). Spurred on by the success of his tourist guide book, George Dingwall followed it up in 1951 with a new publication. This time it was a book about Largo's Alexander Selkirk, entitled "The Story of Alexander Selkirk: The True Robinson Crusoe". 

Of course, much had been written before then about Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721) and much more has been written since. It's unclear how successful Dingwall's publication was. This year is the 300th anniversary of the death of Selkirk, which follows closely on from the 300th anniversary two years ago of the publication of Daniel Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe'. In fact it was on 13 December 1721 that the eventful life of Alexander Selkirk came to an end. 

On 21 December 1720, the HMS Weymouth set off from Plymouth for the West Coast of Africa with Selkirk onboard. The purpose of the voyage was to seek out and destroy the pirates who preyed upon British ships there. At the end of May 1721 they arrived at what is now Ghana. Within weeks a tropical disease began to spread through the ship. As Rick Wilson put it in the book 'The Man Who Was Robinson Crusoe', "the sounds of distress emanating from the hammocks below grew lounder as the fever and jaundice took its toll. The doomed men vomited, shivered and bled from the eyes and mouth." By late October many men had been lost to what is now supposed to have been Yellow Fever. The ship's log of 13 December noted matter-of-factly that "at 8pm Mr Alexander Selkirk died". The ship lay off Ghana's Cape Coast at the time. He was buried at sea - one of 180 men to die on the voyage.
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​Previous posts have looked at the origins of the Largo Parish Community Council and their early work on foreshore improvements around Massney Braes. Another of their endeavours was the production of a handy guide to Lundin Links and Largo for visitors. A guide book was produced each year from 1932 for at least six years and an example of this is shown above. The man responsible for compiling the guide was James Peebles Greig, a member of the LPCC.
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​James Peebles Greig was born in Duke Street, Leith on 3 April 1881, the son of gas works blacksmith George Greig who was born in Lundin Mill in 1850. James became a clerk in the Leith Town Chamberlain's Office, later marrying Jean Donaldson in Milnathort in 1910. He went on to become Town Chamberlain of Montrose between 1922 and 1930, before moving to Lundin Links, to 'take up a business opportunity'. This opportunity was to run Mount Vernon Boarding House, which was owned by his sister Agnes Peebles Watters (nee Greig).

Agnes had been widowed in tragic circumstances in 1923 but had continued to run Mount Vernon. In 1930 she took on Victoria Boarding House as well and so James and family took the helm at Mount Vernon. They remained there up until the outbreak of the Second World War. After that James worked in the Costs Office at Leven Foundry as an accountant. He was very active in various aspects of local life in Largo, including Lundin Golf Club, Largo Silver Band and of course Largo Parish Community Council. Moving from Lundin Links to Upper Largo in 1947, James Greig died on 6 September 1953 at Dunedin, 38 Main Street, Upper Largo. He was survived by his wife, a son and two daughters.

James was the natural choice for co-ordinator of the Largo Guide. With his clerical background and later interest in tourism and hospitality, he had the skills and connections to compile the content of adverts, information and a bit of flowery language to entice visitors to the 'Scottish Riviera'. The first guide went on sale in March 1932.  Printed by J. and G. Innes Ltd, Cupar, the booklet had a reproduction of Alexander Selkirk's statue on the cover and copies could be had free on application to the LPCC Secretary, Mr Charles Raeburn. The 22 March Leven Advertiser commented that "the explanatory material is both interesting and informative, while the illustrations are well produced."

Almost 1,000 copies of this first edition were distributed and £48 was raised from the advertising within the guide. Seen as a successful venture, a revised edition was produced in 1933. That year 128 copies were sent out to people that had written to the LPCC, a further 725 were distributed through the L.N.E.R railway enquiry office, 56 copies through libraries and 72 copies were sold in local shops. The Guide became an annual publication, however, by the end of the 1936 season concerns began to be raised about the decrease in income from advertising. On balance is was decided to proceed with a 1937 edition and also to place adverts in two Civil Service journals to entice civil servants to spend their holidays in Largo.

However, this may have been the final year of publication, as there were no further references to the guide book. It was also noted that repetition of the same information each year, as well as reliance upon the same people to place adverts each time, was becoming problematic. Although a local guide in this format had run its course, guide booklets for visitors continued to be produced on and off over the years in a number of different styles.