Fife and Scotland - the offbeat perspective

In current times, Fife is the smallest administrative region within a devolved Scottish Parliament of the United Kingdom and has a total population of about 350,000 people. There are no cities in Fife but the region lies centrally between Edinburgh, Dundee and Perth. More than a third of the population live in the four main towns of Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy, Glenrothes and St Andrews. This section describes these four communities.

City of Dunfermline?

On the front page of this web site, we stated there were no cities in Fife. Some readers have challenged this assertion as misleading and wrong and citing Dunfermline as a prime example. After checking through notes and conducting further research, the statement has been proved accurate and correct.

City Status is the preserve of the Monarchy in the UK and not an automatic translation of 'Royal Burgh' to that status. As such and prior to Unification of the Crowns, there were no communities awarded the title of city in Scotland and none afterwards until 1889 when Dundee petitioned to obtain that status and attained the appropriate Assent and Charter. Aberdeen followed in 1891 and both were further confirmed as 'counties of cities' by the Local Government (Scotland) Act of 1929 and which included Edinburgh and Glasgow. Two more cities have been designated in recent years. Inverness became a city as part of the Millennium celebrations and Stirling as part of the Queens Jubilee in 2002.

In 1856, the town of Dunfermline began to use the title of city in all official documents and largely based on its former status as a royal burgh and capital. This status has never been officially recognised. An Internet search on 'Scottish Cities' correctly returns six locations; Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

In any case, it doesn't really matter much because, as Shakespeare put it, “a rose is still a rose even by any other name” and Dunfermline is a nice town with a wonderful blend of old and new.

King Malcolm III saw great potential in Dunfermline and effectively made this the capital town of Scotland in the mid eleventh century and it remained so under the assassination of James I in 1437. Having said that, it was Malcolm's second wife, the Saxo-Hungarian Princess Margaret, who often initiated and persuaded her husband to undertake many beneficial and lasting changes. She was a deeply pious woman who prompted Malcolm to establish a Benedictine Priory later referred to as Dunfermline Abbey and where this Romanised form of religion eclipsed that of the Culdees. Margaret sought to make it easier for pilgrims to visit the Abbey and perhaps venture further to St Andrews and a regular ferry service was established across the Firth of Forth.

The 'Queens Ferry' ran between the town of South Queensferry in Lothian and North Queensferry in Fife. It ran for about eight hundred years and closed on the day, in 1964, when the Forth Road Bridge was opened by HRH Queen Elizabeth II.

At the peak of its influence and power, Dunfermline Abbey controlled four burghs, three courts of regality ( as given to by royalty) and owned huge estates of land from Moray in the North of Scotland down into the border regions close to Berwickshire. The Royal Palace was connected to the Abbey and this was where the first known document concerning the 'Auld Alliance' between Scotland and France was signed on 23rd October 1295. King Charles I, the second Stewart monarch ruling over Scotland and England, was born in Dunfermline Palace on 19th November 1600.

His father, James VI of Scotland and 1st of England granted Dunfermline the status of 'Royal Burgh' in 1588 but the Union of the Scottish and English Crowns brought this to an end when James relocated the Scottish Court to London in 1603. In addition, the reformation of 1560 had reduced the importance of Dunfermline as an ecclesiastical centre.

In 1624, a major fire storm left much of the town in ruins. The Palace, Abbey and Abbots House escaped from the worst effects of the fire. It took a long time for the time to recover and by the early eighteenth century was beginning to recover some degree of its former prosperity. Writer Daniel Defoe visited the area around this time and it may be that he heard about a Fife sailor called Alexander Selkirk who had survived alone on a remote island for four years and perhaps giving rise to his most famous novel, Robinson Crusoe, being published in 1719.

It was about that time when damask linen ( the name derives from the City Name of Damascus and where the weave technique was well established long beforehand ) became popular and where the town of Dunfermline became one of the World's leading producers. The largest of these new mills was the St Leonard's Mill established by Erskine Beveridge in 1851and expanded to include a warehouse and office block in 1869. Demand for damask fell sharply in the wake of World War One. Much of the old mill and warehouse were converted into flats.

Dunfermline sits about three miles inland from the shore but there was a long established port on the coast serving its needs for many years. Rosyth became Scotland's only mainland Royal Navy Dockyard in 1909 and served as land base HMS Cochrane for a time during the twentieth century. During this period, the dockyard was one of the largest employers in the region.

In 1987, the government awarded management of the dockyard to Thorn EMI who ran the government owned facility on a contractor basis and prior to the dockyards being fully privatised in 1997. Despite this, the navy connection remains strong in current times and is still a sizeable employer in the region.

The dockyard has been a major part of decommissioning nuclear submarines in recent years with seven currently in that state. Rosyth dockyard is where the new 'Queen Elizabeth' class aircraft carriers will be assembled from prefabricated parts built in Clydeside, Devonport and elsewhere in the near future.

Textiles formed the core industry of Dunfermline in the past but this has largely disappeared in current times and have been replaced by a more diverse base of engineering, defence, electronics and service related employments. The bank HBOS and the satellite broadcaster BSkyB are the largest employers in Dunfermline at this time of writing in 2011 and where about 87% of the towns employment is reliant on financial and service sector jobs.

Unemployment levels in the Dunfermline area are typically below the Scottish average and where the town generates about 30,000 jobs mainly in the town centre and in surrounding business and industrial parks.

Some years ago, there were high hopes for a new state-of-the-art silicon chip manufacturing facility and in which a sizeable amount of taxpayers money was invested. Sadly, the project turned out to be a 'white elephant' and was built at a time when many companies saw investment in the Far East as a better alternative. A similar set of circumstances took place in nearby Glenrothes years later with the construction of a building intended for use by ADC of Ohio. For a time, the ADC building in Glenrothes has been used by Internet Retailer Amazon but with reorganisation of the Fife Regional Council moving into the ADC building, Amazon has chosen to remain in Fife with the construction of a new one million square foot distribution centre at Duloch Park and which is adjacent to the main M90 motorway leading from the Forth Road Bridge and providing easy links to most of Scotland from this site. It will be Amazon's biggest warehouse in the UK and create about 750 jobs.

Dunfermline is a sub-regional shopping centre serving the West Fife area. The Kingsgate Shopping Centre is located beside the pedestrianised High Street and is a main retail destination within Fife. A £50 million extension of the Kingsgate Shopping Centre increased retail space to around 370,000 sq ft and was completed in August 2008. To the north of the centre and adjacent to the Kingsgate shopping centre is the Carnegie Drive Retail Park where several warehouse store retailers are located. Major shopping facilities are provided at the Halbeath Retail Park to the east of the town.

Dunfermline has two museums, two theatres, large public parks (Pittencrieff and St. Margaret's), a swimming pool and sports centre, three golf courses, major shopping facilities and a leisure park which includes a multiplex cinema, a ten-pin bowling alley and a variety of restaurants.

The most recent estimate of population, made in 2008, suggests that Dunfermline has a population of 46,430 and thus the second largest town in Fife. The 'Greater Dunfermline' conurbation includes the smaller towns of Rosyth, Inverkeithing and North Queensferry and has a total population of 78,550 people.

The town's most famous son is Andrew Carnegie, a name forever synonymous with the Pittsburgh Carnegie Steel Company, Carnegie Mellon University and a great many gifts to his birthplace in Dunfermline. A museum dedicated to the life and work of Andrew Carnegie is located on the southern gateway of the town centre. The museum also runs annual heritage walks every summer.

Many of his donations to the town such as the Carnegie Swimming Baths (now the Carnegie Leisure Centre), the Carnegie Library and particularly, Pittencrieff Park were all intended to "bring into the monotonous lives of the toiling masses of Dunfermline more sweetness and light". Andrew Carnegie House which is located on the edge of Pittencrieff Park has served as the headquarters of the Dunfermline Carnegie Trust, the Carnegie Hero Fund, the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust since the completion of the building in 2008.

Carnegie College is located in the Halbeath area of the town and caters to over 10,000 students annually. The college has particular specialisms in Business, Technology, Creative Arts and Construction courses.

Dunfermline has four secondary schools and twelve primary schools. Other educational facilities include a private school and a school for children with learning difficulties. A new £10 million Dunfermline Museum and Art Gallery is planned for the near future.

Dunfermline has been bequeathed two theatres, Carnegie Hall on East Port and the Alhambra on Canmore Street. Carnegie Hall was built between 1933 and 1937 and is a 540-seat theatre complete with a restaurant and adjacent music institute. The Alhambra, opened in 1922, claims to have one of the largest stages and seat capacities in Scotland.

The towns football team is Dunfermline Athletic whose home for many years is East End park.

There are many 'night life' venues in Dunfermline with many dedicated to live music and mostly located in the town centre. Famous popular music bands to have originated in Dunfermline include the Skids, Big Country and Nazareth.

Dunfermline lies on the northern spur of the Fife Circle rail line and close to the intersection of the M90 motorway and the A92 regional road thus providing it with good communications to other parts of Scotland. Five rail stations serve the conurbation with two serving Dunfermline directly. Dunfermline Town Station is located close to the town centre while Dunfermline Queen Margaret is located close to the Queen Margaret Hospital; one of Fife's two major hospitals. Other stations at Rosyth, Inverkeithing and Dalgety Bay serve outlying areas to the South of the Town.

The main bus terminus is located on a site to the north of the town centre. A continental ferry runs regularly from Rosyth and the nearest international airport at Edinburgh is just thirteen miles away.

Credits:
Photographs by McWesty, Ian Mitchell, Kilnburn and Public Domain Sources.
Text by Alandon. Photo Effects and Page Design by Advision ProServe.