Kirkcaldy indoor market: demise of town centre’s once thriving market stalls

The indoor market has been part of Kirkcaldy’s High Street for 35 years, while The Pet Shop has served customers for 67 years. Both will be gone before Hogmanay.

The market’s closure in a matter of weeks will add one more large empty shop to a growing list of once thriving buildings. BhS, Debenhams, M&S, and New Look have all departed with no indication of any interest - now the former Woolworths building will be added to the list, and it is difficult to see how new life can be breathed into them as big retail names contract, move out of town or simply go online.

The market has been home to many small businesses, giving them space for a stall or small unit to get started and then, in many cases, move on to bigger things. Others have stayed and established solid customer bases.

It has hosted everything from shoe repairs to second hand books, furniture, a hair salon, clothes, and records and DVDs. Markets have been part and parcel of the High Street for decades, and it certainly outlasted the old Knightsbridge market area of the former Postings - another once busy market place which declined over a number of years before the shutters were pulled down permanently.

An entire generation or more will also have no memory of the Forum which is now home to TKMaxx at the rear of the Mercat and used to boast a cafe with great views across the Forth.

There is no doubt the indoor market needed money spent on it front and back by its owners, the Gold Brothers whose vast business empire includes somewhere in the region of 25 businesses in Edinburgh’s city centre alone.

From the Esplanade, the building looked drab and uninviting - did anyone even use its back door entrance? - while the frontage still retained that distinctive Woolies look even although that famous name moved out and into the Mercat,a dn out again, decades ago.

But it had a customer base, and its cafe was a popular haunt for many. Its recent closure was seen as big loss, and while the stalls were certainly piled high to the roof, it was clear there were fewer of them. The rear of the premises started to thin out some time ago - every empty unit equated to lost rental - and, more recently it saw its hugely popular picture framing shop which occupied a prime slot in the main shop window, move across the road to its own premises.

What happens next is a key question. Most empty shops along the High Street have been left to sit empty with only the occasional change to the agent’s name on the ‘to let’ signs that hang in forlorn hope of someone showing interest.

The reality is there is no demand for big empty retail units - and that issue isn’t confined to Kirkcaldy town centre.