Harrower Family Tree » Euphemia Arthur (1896-1979)

Personal data Euphemia Arthur 

• Alternative name: Faymie (also known as / alias)
• She was born on February 22, 1896 in 99 Fairfield, Lassodie, Beath, Fife, Scotland.Sources 1, 2, 3, 4
• Profession: in the year 1923 Linen Machinist in 79 Fairfield, Lassodie, Beath, Fife, Scotland.Source 5
• Resident:
• in the year 1901: 99 Fairfield, Lassodie, Beath, Fife, Scotland.Sources 1, 2
• in the year 1923: 79 Fairfield, Lassodie, Beath, Fife, Scotland.Source 5
• in the year 1960: 21 Forrest Place, Townhill, Fife, Scotland.Source 6
• She died in the year 1979 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, she was 82 years old.Source 7

  1979, ARTHUR, EUPHEMIA, WILSON, F, 83, DUNFERMLINE, FIFE, 432/00 0178.

• A child of John Arthur and Euphemia Michie

Household of Euphemia Arthur

She is married to Abraham Archibald Wilson.

They got married on August 3, 1923 at Loch Street, Townhill, Fife, Scotland, she was 27 years old.Source 5

Child(ren):

1. (Not public)

Event (Witness at Marriage) on August 3, 1923 in Loch Street, Townhill, Fife, Scotland : Lizzie McLean, Monteith Terrace, Fordell, James Wilson, Co-op Building, Townhill..Source 5

Notes about Euphemia Arthur

1. 1979, ARTHUR, EUPHEMIA, WILSON, F, 83, DUNFERMLINE, FIFE, 432/00 0178.

2. http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/79275/details/lassodie+fairfield/

Archaeological Notes

NT19SW 30.07 1290 9190

Nothing is now visible of Fairfield village which comprised of some 74 houses formed into rows. It is depicted as roofed on the 2nd edition of the OS 25-inch map (Fife, 1896, sheet xxxiv 10) and was still shown roofed on the 1943 revision of the 2nd edition of the 25-inch map, (Fife, 1943, sheet xxxiv 10). Air photographs taken in 1946 (RAF 106G/SCOT/UK93 4297-98) reveal that it had been largely reduced to footings, and by the 1961 all trace had been removed (RAF F22.58/RAF/4041 0052).
(Cleish 91 142)
Visited by RCAHMS (SH) 3 September 1991.

An archaeological desk-based assessment followed by a field inspection were undertaken to evaluate the archaeological potential of the area of a proposed opencast mine. The results of this work suggest that the area has significant archaeological potential. A large part of the area includes a complex of sites relating to the recent mining heritage of the area. The following site was identified within the study area: NT 128 919 Settlement (NT19SW 30.07). A report has been produced; a copy will be deposited with the NMRS.
Sponsor: Scottish Coal. M Cressey 1996

The site of the village has now been destroyed by open cast mining.
Information from RCAHMS (DE), April 2007

3. http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/mmartin/Fifepits/starter/stories/stor_8.htm

LASSODIE, BEATH, FIFE

The village of Lassodie, lying between Kingseat and Kelty, was razed by the coal owners. The miners were given 14 days by the mine owners to vacate their homes in 1931 and later the village was demolished. Only the WW1 memorial remains, along the main roadside nearby.]

LASSODIE - THE VANISHED VILLAGE
"Dunfermline Press" 1 October, 1960 Written by R. Gilfillan

Wandering beyond Loch Fitty, I found myself close to where the mining village of Lassodie had once been. Although not a native, I had known the village in my youth and now found it hard to realise it was no more.
I looked round, but apart from some bricks that had once supported the gable-end of Fairfield and a broken lintel sunk deep in the grass, there was no indication anywhere that the village had ever existed.
Yet, I recalled the time when the place and the people seemed to me as permanent as the countryside itself; for Lassodie was no sleepy backwater of a place, but a virile and active community, with its flower show, its football club, pigeon club, quoiters, and pipers. And in all these activities the village more than held its own with its neighbours.
I remember, in particular, how difficult it was to beat Lassodie Juveniles on their home ground. We used to blame the pitch, which was innocent of grass, but that was only an excuse; they were a tough lot to beat anywhere and any time.
Among the local pigeon fanciers, the one that sticks in my memory was "Burner" Campbell, of Fairfield. He had a loft of first-rate "homers", and, except when he was at work, callers would always find him in his loft beside his beloved "doos".
Laud Dewar, I believe, fostered the first flower show, which was before my time, and many amusing stories were told of tricks played by practical jokers on their rivals.
Like the one about the Old Row exhibitor who awoke on the morning of the show to find his outsize cabbage missing, and a New Row rival win the first prize with a suspiciously identical cabbage!
Beyond Fairfield stood the village hall of corrugated iron, where my Uncle David ran a kinderspiel, and where, as a teenager, I attended my first ball - and fell for the local beauty who sang "The Yellow Rose o' Texas" in a husky voice.
Unfortunately, I never learned her name!
Then there were the pipers and the Highland dancers who, in their day, brought medals and trophies from the Highland games in the summer. The Innes family was, I recall, prominent in this connection.
Retracing my steps, I passed the sites where once gable-enders played pitch-and-toss or debated the questions of the hour.
Now there was nothing.
The village, as I had known it, had vanished from the face of the earth as completely as Nineveh! The people had vanished, too - to where? Some, no doubt, had gone abroad, and many are scattered among neighbouring towns and villages.
Do they ever meet to recall the past - the carefree school days, the ploys of youth, the festive seasons of old? I wonder.
Reaching the farm on the main road, I glanced backwards, and the lines from "The Tempest" came to mind: ". . . and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

[Sent by one of our site visitors, Mary Searles, Kentucky, USA.

LASSODIE

"Dunfermline Journal" 24th April, 1860 (page 3)

LASSODIE FOUNTAIN - The first drinking fountain in Dunfermline is in course of erection at the corner of Queen Anne Street Church. It is a gift of Dr. Dewar, of Aberdeen, a cadet of the Dewars of Lassodie and a collateral descendant of Ralph Erskine, whose church it will ornament. Several of the public wells have lately been furnished with ladles, which it is proposed should be attached to them all.
"Dunfermline Journal" 9th May, 1931 (page 7)

CLOSING OF LASSODIE COLLIERY
Demolition of Pit Shaft

Notices have been posted at Lassodie Colliery, belonging to Messrs Spowart & Co., Ltd., terminating the employment of over 300 men. The Company intend to dismantle the shaft and remove the pithead buildings.
Houses May Also Be Removed.
All the houses in the village of Lassodie have to be evacuated within fourteen days, as the Company propose to demolish these. It is understood that a representation on the subject is being made to the colliery company by the Fife, Clackmannan, and Kinross Miners' Union with a view of securing occupation beyond the expiry of the 14 days' notice for those occupants of houses who may be still unemployed.
According to colliery officials, it is but a matter of time before the whole village will be evacuated. Kelty Cooperative Society have a couple of private shops, one in Lassodie village, and the other in Fairfield, less than a mile away, where a few of the Lassodie miners are resident. These shops will in due course be closed. Meanwhile, the work of demolishing the pithead building and lifting hutch rails underground is being undertaken by a number of men whose services were obtained for that purpose.
"Dunfermline Press" 9 May, 1931

CLOSING OF LASSODIE COLLIERY
MINERS WARNED FROM HOUSES
PROBABLE DISAPPEARANCE OF VILLAGE

As briefly reported in the Press of last week, the miners employed by Messrs. Thomas Spowart & Company, Ltd., at Lassodie Colliery, worked their last shift at the colliery on Thursday. Simultaneously with receiving notice of the termination of their employment, intimation was posted at the pitheads giving them fourteen days notice to leave the houses which they occupy as a condition of their employment.
What is to be the fate of Lassodie? At the moment, the indications are that Fairfield, Old Rows, and New Rows, the three small centres of population which are designated by the common name of Lassodie, will, in a short time, cease to exist. A Dunfermline Press representative, who visited the village on Wednesday afternoon, found a strange calm resting over the place. Several miners, with plenty of time on hand, were observed plying rod and line on the waters of Loch Fitty, which is within a stone's throw of the village, and which, on rare occasions, rewards the angler with trouts of abnormal proportions. Other men, perhaps younger in years than the trout fishers, were vigorously engaged in a football game on the flat, marshy ground at the south-east corner of the Loch. In the village itself, groups of men were assembled at the ends of the rows quietly discussing the situation which has arisen. Employment at Lassodie has been so steady for years that the miners probably do not fully realise the fact that operations at the colliery have come to an end. A miner who has wrought in the Lassodie pits for over fifty years informed the Press representative that, previous to lifting his graith last week, he had not had more than four idle days in four and a half years. "And," he hastened to explain, "these idle days were the result of shortage of waggons and not because of want of trade."
There are three shafts in connection with Lassodie Colliery - Nos. 4, 10, and 11. For some time, operations have been suspended at No. 11 because of the accumulation of a large quantity of water in the underground workings. Two powerful pumps installed at the pit were found to be incapable of dealing with the water, which is stated to be now well up the shank. Conversations with the idle miners elicited the fact that water trouble is the main factor which has brought about the closing of the other two pits, from each of which, just prior to their closing, the output was something like 150 tons per day.
Several seams which have been wrought in recent years have yielded large quantities of excellent coal, for which there had always been a large home demand. Steam coal, too, formed a considerable part of the business at Lassodie. The seams which have been worked in recent years are the Dunfermline Splint, the deepest, lying at a distance of 120 fathoms from the surface; and the Six Feet, the Eight Feet, Glassee, Mynheer, and Swallowdrum, the average thickness of the coal being three and a half feet. According to some miners, who professed a knowledge of the underground conditions, there is still a large field of coal untapped at Lassodie. One man put the life of the colliery at between forty and fifty years, if, he naively pointed out, the water could be economically got rid of.
Meanwhile, comparatively few of the three hundred miners whom the closing of the colliery has rendered workless have found employment. For these miners, who have for so long been in steady employment, it is a new and unpalatable experience to draw unemployment allowance. They have registered at the Kelty branch of the Employment Exchange, where, for some time, it is feared they will require to draw the "dole."
In the village, little credence is being given to the rumour that the Colliery Company have in contemplation the demolition of the dwelling-houses occupied by the miners as a condition of their employment. One old miner, who claimed residence in Fairfield extending to a period of about fifty years, was emphatic on the matter of the dwelling-houses. "If," he said, "the Company give up the houses, they become the property of the trustees of the late laird of Lassodie, and it will be up to them to deal with us as tenants." Quite a number of the houses in Fairfield, Old Rows, and New Rows were unoccupied when the Press representative visited the place this week. Many of them, indeed, had the appearance of having been tenantless for a considerable time. In Fairfield, the Press representative was told it was found necessary to close several of the houses, because of ominous cracks which were beginning to make their appearance on the walls and ceilings, the result of underground workings. In some instances, indeed, the collapse of the houses was only prevented by a process of shoring up between the gables of adjoining groups of buildings.
Lassodie boasts a fairly modern school. The Miners' Welfare Institute was erected some years ago, and there is a public hall in which dances, whist drives, and other social gatherings are held. The only shops of any importance in the place are branches of the Kelty Co-operative Society at Fairfield and at New Rows. In New Rows there is a public-house.

CHURCH MAY BE CLOSED

Another phase of the problem which is presented by the closing of the colliery was brought to the notice of the Presbytery of Dunfermline and Kinross at their meeting on Tuesday.
The Rev. Robert Johnstone, convener of the Home Mission Committee, reported that the situation at Lassodie had become acute as a result of the closing of the colliery. The Rev. A. Patman Muirhead, Townhill, who was interim moderator at Lassodie, had received a letter from the clerk to the congregational board asking him to bring the matter before the Presbytery, with the recommendation that Lassodie Church be closed in view of the fact that the people resident in the village had received fourteen days' notice to leave their houses.
The Presbytery remitted to the Home Mission Committee to appoint representatives to meet the congregation on Thursday evening and to review the whole situation.

HISTORY OF THE COLLIERY

Messrs. Thomas Spowart & Company, Ltd., took a lease of the minerals of Lassodie in 1860. From that year until 1887, Lassodie was worked as a separate concern. In 1887, a private limited liability company was formed among the partners of Lassodie and Elgin and Wellwood collieries, and from that date the combined collieries were carried on under the name of Thomas Spowart & Company, Ltd. At an early stage of the development of the Lassodie minerials, the late Mr. John Brownlie, father of Mr. H. M. Brownlie (Chairman of the Dunfermline and West Fife Hospital Committee), took over the management. Under his supervision great developments took place, and in later years the adjoining coal field of Thornton was also worked from the Lassodie shafts. Several hundreds of men were employed, and within a comparatively short time the village of Lassodie was brought into being, a school and church being erected in course of time.
At Lassodie, the late Mr. John Brownlie, who was a member of the Beath School Board, did excellent work in connection with educational matters, and took a prominent place in the promotion of schemes which had in view the moral and material welfare of his employees, their wives, and families. Mr. H. M. Brownlie, who succeeded his father in the management of the colliery, has all along manifested a live interest in the welfare of the villagers of Lassodie.

"Dunfermline Press"
9th October, 1948
(page 3)

OPEN-CAST MINING
The Lassodie Operations

At the fortnightly meeting of Cowdenbeath Rotary Club, some interesting sidelights on open-cast coal production and comparisons with deep mining methods were given by Mr. J. R. McGibbon, BSc, A.M.I.C.E., manager of the Eastern Division of Messrs Watlings, Ltd., who are responsible for the scheme at present in operation at Lassodie. Mr. Alex. Westwater, president, presided.
Mr. McGibbon said that open-cast coal, although only initiated in this country in 1941 as a war-time emergency, had been in operation in America for approximately forty years. As the land had to be returned to the farmer in a state capable of producing crops, the removal of the top soil was a very important factor. This was stored in bings and replaced after the completion of the work. The removal of the overburden was the main part of the work, and this had to be executed efficiently to make any coalfield a successful enterprise. Illustrating the big improvements which had been made in the excavating plant, Mr. McGibbon said that, with the latest Dragline excavators at Lassodie, they moved on an average 40,000 cubic yards per week. That figure had risen as high as 70,000 cubic yards in one week, and that was equal to 100,000 tons. With a total personnel of 130[?] (including clerks), they produced an average of 7000 tons of coal per week, with a maximum of 11,000 tons. So far as quality was concerned, he maintained that this compared favourably with deep mining, and he knew certain buyers, once they got to know open-cast, had asked specifically for it. Since moving into the Lassodie site on 28th March of this year, the total output to date was approximately 420,000 tons. He expressed the opinion that open-cast coal was cheaper because the personnel, being more highly technical, the output per man was greater.
"Edinburgh Evening News"
Thursday 20th September, 1962
A long-dead Fife mining community will "spring to life" this weekend in the memories of more than 200 people who used to live there. The company who are to gather in the Co-op Hall, Kelty, on Saturday will drink a toast to the vanished village of Lassodie which once lay in a pleasant green setting close by Kingseat, north-east of Dunfermline.
Presiding over the gathering will be County Councillor William Mill, of Kelty, who was born in Lassodie 63 years ago.
He said today: "It is close on quarter of a century since Lassodie ceased to be generally inhabited and most of the village as we once knew it has gone. When I was a boy there was a population of 1,500, with nearly 300 children attending the nine-teacher school.
"Most of the men worked in the collieries. I began work in the No. 10 pit at the age of 14, but I left the village in 1926 and have worked since at the Aitken Colliery, which will soon be gone too."

The school and schoolhouse, pictured above, are all that remain of Lassodie.
In Retrospect

Nowadays opencast coal workings have ripped up many of the green fields that gave the village a pleasing prospect. Its name is thought to have a Gaelic derivation meaning "Garden on the brow of the hill."
The school has become an office block for the opencast contractors, their washery plant stands where the No. 10 pit once wound coal, and the site of the No. 4 colliery is now occupied by their repair yard.
Councillor Mill, who has presided at every Lassodie reunion since the practice was instituted in 1948, added: "It is a far cry from the days when the village boasted its own senior football team, a brass band maintained by penny a week contributions from the miners, its own co-operative society, and an annual flower show."
He recalled also the tavern that was the centre of social exchanges in the village and was popularly known as "The Web" thanks to the sermon of a local minister who described it as a web ensnaring the menfolk of the community.
Family Record
Councillor Mills' grandfather, who was a pit sinker, moved into the first Lassodie house to be occupied just over a century ago and one or two dwellings are still inhabited.
Mr. Alex. Hunter (88), and his wife Mary (82), returned to the village 17 years ago after living in other parts of Fife, and now occupy what was in more prosperous days the "Store House," home of the co-operative society manager.
His son David (58), an oncost worker at Aitken Colliery, lives in Lassodie Cottage with his wife Jane, the only surviving couple who can claim to have been born in Lassodie and lived there all their lives.
Sprucest erection remaining in the community is the pale grey pillar of the War Memorial bearing a score of names of Lassodie lads who fell in the First World War. It is maintained by the proceeds from the annual reunion which, this weekend, will attract former residents from as far apart as Galashiels in the south, to the North of Scotland, and a number from overseas.

[Sent by one of our site visitors, Mary Searles, Kentucky, USA.]

LASSODIE - A HUNTER FAMILY CONNECTION

We were contacted by Bert Hunter, Inverkeithing, Fife, in October 2010, and are delighted to display his contribution.
M. Martin & Webmasters.

"I have attached a photograph of Lassodie you may be interested in. While researching my Hunter Family Tree, I have uncovered a photograph that belonged to my grandfather, and I have reason to believe it was of his mother, Margaret Hunter, and older brother, Robert. The canary and the cage in the background certainly adds to the authenticity of the photograph which is dated around 1887 making Margaret about 26 years old, and Robert about 3 years old.
They lived at 42 Old Row, Lassodie.
My Hunter Family Tree is based around Lassodie, Beath and Wellwood. Your wonderful Fife Pits Website has been a great source of information relating to members of my Family Tree albeit mostly of tragic circumstances or of accidents but it has enabled me to tie together knowledge I would never have been able to gather."

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Timeline Euphemia Arthur

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