 The Muircockhall Colliery was not altogether abandoned and was used from training purposes until the 1970s.Those unfit for further work, including widows and injured persons, were housed in the town's purpose-built Poorhouse which stood around a mile to the south, on the road to Dunfermline.Education was piecemeal and irregular until the Education Act of 1872, causing a new school to be opened in 1876 under the Dunfermline School Board.