A pensioner is to stand trial over child sex abuse charges dating back more than six decades.

Robert Wishart, 76, faces four charges of using lewd, indecent and libidinous practices and behaviour towards girls as young as five between 1954 and 1961.

Wishart is said to have been 14 when the alleged abuse started, Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court heard on Thursday.

Prosecutors say he first targeted a girl, aged between nine and 14 at the time, and on various occasions seized her by the body, placed his hands inside her underwear and touched her inappropriately.

Wishart is also said to have attacked a second girl on one occasion between May 1954 and May 1958, when she was aged between five and eight. He is alleged to have pinned her down on a chair, lain on top of her and prevented her from moving.

A fourth charge alleges that between January 1959 and January 1961 he abused a third girl, aged eight or nine at the time.

In that incident he is said to have put his arms around her while she was in bed and touched her over her underwear.

Wishart, now of Langwith Junction, Mansefield, Nottinghamshire, pleaded not guilty on indictment to four charges of using lewd, indecent and libidinous practices and behaviour.

Prosecutors stated in court papers that they also intend to lead evidence of a fifth incident, alleged to have been committed by Wishart against a girl aged three or four in Germany in the late 1960s. They will not be seeking a conviction on that alleged incident, however.

Fiscal depute Beverly Adam said the Crown is still investigating how the evidence of the first alleged victim will be put before a jury due to her ill health.

Sheriff Grant McCulloch adjourned the case to a further pre-trial hearing next week.

It is understood the charges are among the most historic to come before a Scottish sheriff court.