Telephone Exchange

The photograph above was taken during the 1900s and is from the collection of George Washington Wilson & Co images held by the University of Aberdeen (ref: GB 0231 MS 3792/C5555). The Post Office building is largely unchanged to this day but the long-gone huge telegraph pole is strikingly in this old view down Links Road. The notice below, from the 6 June 1896 Fife Free Press, announces that the Post Office authorities had given approval for a branch Post Office at Lundin Links.

In fact plans had already been drawn up for the building itself over a year earlier, as the original architect drawings are dated May 1895. This time lag, plus the fact that the plans were entitled 'Shop and Dwelling House for Miss M Bremner' (with no mention of a Post Office), suggests that it was not known with certainty back in 1895 that this building would in fact go on become a Post Office, as well as a shop.

Perhaps originally Miss Bremner was simply re-locating her grocer shop from Largo Road to Leven Road (taking advantage of the westward growth of the village) and it was only some months later that the opportunity arose to incorporate a Post Office and to become Post Mistress. The Post Office function became operational from 1 October 1896 and as the notice below indicates it was "hoped that a telegraph office will long be added to the post office". 
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Turning attention to the single-storey building behind (to the left) of the Post Office - a comparison of  its appearance upon construction (it was built at the same time as the main P.O. building) and its appearance several years later, shows a few differences. The earlier right hand image below shows the rear building with 3 doors (from left to right these gave access to a general store, a coal store and a passage between these outbuildings and the main shop - see extract from architect drawing below).

After the alterations (see later left hand image), the left hand door remained but the second (coal store) door had been made into a window; a new door had been put in to the right of the new window and the passageway door had become another window. Presumably, this was to make the 'telegraph office' (later known as 'telephone exchange') better integrated with the main Post Office (rather than separated by a passage) and to allow light into what was now a working area where staff would eventually work shifts connecting phone calls.
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The telephone came to Lundin Links late in 1903 (see above newspaper snippet from 19 Sept Fife Free Press that year). The Post Office itself took the phone number 1. 
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The above notice from 15 June 1929 Fife Free Press outlines plans to extend the telegraph line from Links Road towards Lundin Links station. Below is some general information about how telephone lines and exchanges worked.

The telephone exchange moved out of the building adjacent to the Post Office around 1950 and shifted again in 1971 to it current location on Cupar Road.