Roger Pickering Returns

Guest speaker was Roger Pickering, a former customs officer and lover of local history. Roger runs a social enterprise company and Forth Pilgrims was key to the development of the Fife Pilgrim Way. 

By accident Roger stumbled across a zig zag trench on south west side of Dunfermline. It looked like a fighting position where he discovered a bomb down the Coal Road! It was a live parachute flare. He then found a barbed wire Silent Picket. 

What Roger had really found was part of the Polish community’s plans to make Dunfermline a fortress to repel any German invasion. World War Road blocks were 3ft cubes sufficient to stop a tank. Three blocks now on display in Pittencrieff Park were originally road blocks. Dunfermline was designed to be an anti tank island. 450 local Home Guard troops including World War One veterans were deployed armed with fortified by petrol bombs, grenades.

During WW2 many Polish forces were billeted at public buildings within Dunfermline including the Glen Pavilion. In the Polish Army archives in London Roger discovered lots of maps of Obrona Dunfermline dated 1940 outlining how the defences were positioned including two machine guard posts at the top of the Urquhart cut. There were also fortifications around the power station at Townhill Road. The plans revealed shops at interchanges as fortifications.

To promote the story Roger ran Living history festivals pre covid. Now information is provided at the Lathamond Bus Museum where an Open Day in July will tell the story. 

Neil Spriddle thanked Roger for coming along and revealing such a fascinating story, something “so relatable”.