5/15/2023 0 Comments Marjory's Book by Marjory Fleming![]() ![]() Their gifts included a cottage hospital, a school, and the YMCA building (a few metres from this pub), as well as Ravenscraig Park. Profits from the business enabled the Nairn’s to become great benefactors of Kirkcaldy. Michael’s floor-cloth factory was known as Nairn’s Folly until it proved successful, whereupon others followed his lead. Producers of similar material had to call it floor-cloth. Linoleum, made from cloth impregnated with linseed oil and left to harden, was a patented name until 1873. The canvas was for sails, but the rapid development of steamships led him to diversify into the production of floor-cloth. Robert’s father Michael, born in Kirkcaldy in 1804, set up a linen business in Linktown before the building a canvas factory on Hill Street in 1828. ![]() The Nairn family had long been in the weaving trade. Members of the Nairn family were associated with the bank for nearly a century. In 1886 he donated the land for the Trustee Savings Bank, which occupied this building until recently. ![]() The text reads: This JD Wetherspoon pub is named after the Kirkcaldy industrialist Robert Nairn. One of the Nairn’s many gifts to the town included the land (donated by Robert Nairn) to build the Trustees Savings Bank (TSB) – now this Wetherspoon pub. He was so successful that others set up similar businesses, and Kirkcaldy became renowned as the ‘linoleum centre of the world’. ![]() In 1847, Michael Nairn started a floor-covering factory. This pub is named after a member of the Nairn family, helping to put Kirkcaldy on the map. ![]()
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