Lochgelly

A historical perspective, drawn from the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, edited by Francis H. Groome and originally published in parts by Thomas C. Jack, Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh between 1882 and 1885.

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Lochgelly, a police burgh in Auchterderran parish, SW Fife. It stands 460 feet above sea-level, 5 furlongs NW of Loch Gelly, and ¾ mile S by E of Lochgelly station on the Dunfermline branch of the North British railway, this being 7¾ miles WSW of Thornton Junction and 7½ ENE of Dunfermline. The headquarters till 1798 of a gang of notorious Gipsies, it dates mostly from modern times, and owes its rapid rise in prosperity and population to the extensive collieries and ironworks of the Lochgelly Coal and Iron Company (1850). It has a post office, with money order, savings' bank, and railway telegraph departments, a branch of the Union Bank, 6 insurance agencies, an hotel, a police station, a public water supply (1880), a subscription library (1867), a floral and horticultural society (1871), a co-operative society (1866), a Good Templar's lodge (1871), a masonic lodge, a curling club (1831), and cattle fairs on the first Thursday of April o.s., the third Wednesdays of July and September, and the first Thursday of November. The Established church, built as a chapel of ease in 1855, in 1868 was raised to quoad sacra status. The Free church was built about 1860; the U.P. church, which was long the only place of worship in the town, contains 400 sittings; and St Patrick's Roman Catholic church (1877) contains 250. Two public schools, East and West, with respective accommodation for 390 and 310 children, had (1883) an average attendance of 367 and 294, and grants of £321, 2s. 6d. and £257, 5s. Loch Gelly, lying chiefly in Auchterderran parish, but partly in Auchtertool, measures 5¾ by 3½ furlongs, and is wooded and beautiful on its northern bank, but elsewhere bleak and tame. Lochgelly House, a seat of the Earl of Minto, stands near the NW corner of the lake, and has pleasant grounds. The municipal voters numbered 300 in 1884, when the annual value of real property within the burgh amounted to £4290, whilst the revenue, including assessments, is £480. Pop. of q. s. parish (1881) 3190, of whom 605 were in Ballingry parish; of police burgh (1831) 612, (1861) 1629, (1871) 2496, (1881) 2601, of whom 117 were in Ballingry, and 1242 were females. Houses (1881) 500 inhabited, 98 vacant, 4 building.—Ord. Sur., sh. 40, 1867.

An accompanying 19th C. Ordnance Survey map is available, or use the map tab to the right of this page.

Note: This text has been made available using a process of scanning and optical character recognition. Despite manual checking, some typographical errors may remain. Please remember this description dates from the 1880s; names may have changed, administrative divisions will certainly be different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original text, which we have not corrected because we wish to maintain its integrity. This information is provided subject to our standard disclaimer

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