M&S: closure announcement five years ago marked end of M&S on Kirkcaldy High St

The building may still look unmistakably like an M&S store, but the frontage is tatty, and the ornate clock which sat above its main entrance has long since stopped keeping time.

Today, the vast, empty shop is used by NHS Fife as a vaccination centre, but to step inside for an appointment is to be reminded of the hustle and bustle which was the hallmark of M&S as folk made their way, around its sections and into the Mercat Shopping Centre.

The Fife Free Press of October 11, 2018 broke the news the town had feared most. As long as there was M&S, the High Street had a focal point and a brand name to bring people into the pedestrianised zone. It stood for quality, tradition and familiarity - a name that could trace its customers through the generations, and staffed by folk whose long service meant they knew many of them by name.

The store closed its doors on Tuesday, February 5, 2019 with the staff forming a guard of honour at the door, departing with a sense of pride as well as sadness.

The site, understood to still be owned by M&S, remained empty until NHSFife was given use of it as Fife’s biggest vaccination centre dung COVID. The health authority looked at Tesco on The Postings, but it was such a mess it was unusable - the fabric of M&S had been maintained and was able to provide the space it needed to cope with social distancing restrictions in place at the time.

It was all a far cry from the day M&S came to town, creating excitement among Langtonians when the opening was reported in the Fife Free Press on Saturday, August 20, 1938. The article said: “For some time the structural alterations have been a centre of interest, and it was not surprising, therefore, to find large crowds paying visits of inspection to the store.

“The area covered by the counters and island stalls is extensive, measuring roughly from the frontage to half way down Tolbooth Street and the fittings are of an attractive nature. “As for the articles on sale, the variety is as large as one expected, ranging through a wide variety of goods.”

It continued: “Upstairs have been placed the administrative offices and stock rooms, which include vermin-proof food rooms. For staff requirements there is a kitchen and canteen, cloak rooms and a rest room.”

The front of the store was refurbished in 1967, and a cafe added at the rear, occupying two different sites within a store with the foodhall as its hub. At its peak it employed around 150 staff. It outlasted all the big names - from Mothercare to Woolworths, BhS, Littlewoods and Debenhams whose days in the High Street belong to the history archives - as well as a cull of M&S stores earlier in 2018 which saw Falkirk, among others, lose their stores.

There was a tactic acknowledgement that M&S would leave town one day as retail migrated online, but, pre-Covid most town centre observers reckoned it was still good for a few more years.

Perhaps lockdown would have delivered the inevitable, but, in the end M&S departed after eight decades, leaving behind one of the biggest empty units in the heart of the town centre. Five years on, the loss continues to be keenly felt, and the challenge of what to do with the store remains unresolved.