Lassodie is an abandoned settlement located two miles south-west of

Kelty Kelty (Scottish Gaelic: Cailtidh) is a former coal mining village located in Fife, Scotland. Lying in the heart of the old mining heartlands of Fife, it is situated on the Fife/Kinross-shire boundary and has a population of around 6,000 r ...

, bertween Dunfermline and

Cowdenbeath Cowdenbeath (; sco, Coudenbeith) is a town and burgh in west Fife, Scotland. It is north-east of Dunfermline and north of the capital, Edinburgh. The town grew up around the extensive coalfields of the area and became a police burgh in 189 ...

, in Fife.

History

The name Lassodie was a collective for three settlements, named Old Rows, New Rows (or Parley), and Fairfield, all lying on a road from

Kingseat Kingseat is a village in Fife, Scotland, approximately northeast of Dunfermline. It was originally a coal mining village with the first pits sunk in the area in 1800. The name of the village is thought locally to have originated from when the kin ...

to a series of mines. The name derives from the Scots Gaelic ''lios aodann'', meaning "garden on the brow of a hill". The earliest known record of the name is as "Lassody", describing a tower in the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland of 1654. The first known use of the area was as the site of a mill in the 18th century, and then as a farm, known as Braehead, belonging to the Dewar family, who held the Lairdship of Lassodie. The right to collect coal was leased from 1825 at the latest, and pit mining is known to have taken place in the area from 1856. In 1860, Messrs. Thomas Spowart & Company, Ltd. took a lease over the minerals of the estate. Several hundred men were employed and the village (with a school) erected in short order. The village was difficult to find, being 6 miles from the nearest railway station, and offering an appearance of "a row or two and a farm house" (Lassodie House, the home of the laird) from a distance. However, in May 1931, the company closed the mines, and ordered the miners - whose conditions of employment contained a requirement to live in the village houses - to leave within 14 days. A handful of people stayed behind, living without street lighting or sanitary facilities, until on 15 October 1944 the remaining villagers agreed to leave for Weir houses in Kelty and

Halbeath Halbeath is a village northeast of Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. It derives its name from the Gaelic ''choil beath'', which means "wood of birches", and began as a colliery village. In the summer of 1789, a coal pit was sunk at Halbeath, two and a ...

. The remains of the village were almost completely destroyed in the 1960s for the creation of an

open cast mine Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of mining ...

. The last building remaining is Loch Fitty Cottage, a former shop and stable, which was saved from demolition by being on the B912 road.

Demography

A census from 1881 shows Lassodie had a population of 808 individuals; by 1901, it had risen to 1,425. After the closure of the mines, few people remained behind; by 1944, the population was 203.

Facilities

Lassodie had a Free church (St Ninian's), school, a post office, Miners' Welfare Institute, and a public hall. The only shops of any importance in the place were branches of the Kelty Co-operative Society at Fairfield and at New Rows; New Rows also contained the one

public house A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and wa ...

in the village, the Lassodie Tavern. The senior

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

club Lassodie F.C. had some success in the 1880s, entering the

Scottish Cup The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,Fife Cup The Fife Cup is a Scottish regional football competition for clubs in the historic county of Fife. The competition was founded by the Fifeshire Football Association in 1882. The competition was originally known as the "Fifeshire Cup" from 1882� ...

in 1887–88 and Fifeshire Charity Cup in 1889–90. The village also had a 9-hole golf course between Old and New Rows and Loch Fitty.

Notable inhabitants

*Lt-Col James Hislop MC, born in Lassodie in 1912, awarded the

Military Cross The Military Cross (MC) is the third-level (second-level pre-1993) military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and formerly awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries. The MC ...

for service in Malaya

External links

The Lost Village of Lassodie, Dunfermline Historical Society

References

{{Reflist Former populated places in Scotland Geography of Fife Former mines in Scotland 1860s establishments in Scotland 1931 disestablishments in Scotland Populated places established in the 1860s Mining communities in Fife