VEDay: Kirkcaldy pupils photographed at a historic moment in time

It could be an ordinary image of young schoolchildren on a day out, but it was taken on VE Day in Kirkcaldy - May 8, 1945.

While the Fife Free Press archives contained the most detailed reports of how the Lang Toun marked the end of the war in Europe, there are no photographs within its pages.

This one was supplied by Isabel Coventry who also gave the story behind it - a snapshot into past times, when war finally gave way to peace.

The photograph was taken on steps which led down from Coal Wynd opposite what was then Beattie’s Bakery, next to the old fire station and close to the old Mission Hall. The steps and many of those buildings have all long since disappeared from the town;’s landscape.

Isabel wrote: “The steps stopped at a short wynd which had a door to Davie Baird’s pub in it - a few steps from the High Street.

“The photo was given to by my my mother in law who was also Davie’s cousin. He was a leading light in the building of Stark’s Park during the First World War, and was possibly Clerk of Works at the time.

“At one time there was a large mat at the door which said “Davie Baird’s pub” or so I am told. I assume it was he who gave my mother in law the photo.” Isabel, who was a music teacher at a number of schools and also choir mistress at the Old Kirk in the Lang Toun, said she went to Kirkcaldy High School with some of the children in the photo, and estimates they would have been nine or ten years old at the time it was taken.

Other images of VE Day celebrations can be found online in various archives.

One shows a street party in Pratt Street showing a large group of women, many wearing aprons or pinnies, standing around children seated at a long trestle table decorated with vases of flowers and laden with plates of buns and other food.