1,000 views on 1st December 2013

The inscription above the door says it all - Andrew Carnegie had his mum lay the memorial stone. Bet she was one proud lady! The first of many, many Carnegie Libraries around the world.

Dunfermline (Scots: Dunfaurlin, Scottish Gaelic: Dun Pharlain) is a town (ancient City and Royal Burgh, and one-time capital of Scotland) in the County ("Kingdom") of Fife which is located on the east coast of Scotland, on the opposite side of the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh.

The first historic record for Dunfermline was made in the 11th century. According to the fourteenth-century chronicler, John of Fordun, Malcolm III, King of Scotland (reign 1058-93) married his second bride, the Anglo-Hungarian princess, Saint Margaret, at the church in Dunfermline between 1068 and 1070; the ceremony was performed by Forhad, the last Celtic bishop of St Andrews. Malcolm III established Dunfermline as a new seat for royal power in the mid-11th century and initiated changes that eventually made the township the de facto capital of Scotland for much of the period until the assassination of James I in 1437.Following her marriage to King Malcolm III, Queen Margaret encouraged her husband to convert the small culdee chapel into a church for Benedictine monks. The existing culdee church was no longer able to meet the demand for its growing congregation because of a large increase in the population of Dunfermline from the arrival of English nobility coming into Scotland. The founding of this new church of Dunfermline was inaugurated around 1072, but was not recorded in the town's records. David I, King of Scotland (reign 1124-53) would later grant this church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, to "unam mansuram in burgo meo de Dunfermlyn" which translates into "a house or dwelling place in my burgh of Dunfermline". The foundations of the church evolved into an Abbey in 1128, under the reign of their son, David I. Dunfermline Abbey would play a major role in the general romanisation of religion throughout the kingdom. At the peak of its power the abbey controlled four burghs, three courts of regality and a large portfolio of lands from Moray in the north down into Berwickshire. Dunfermline had become a burgh between 1124 and 1127, if not before this time. Dunfermline Palace was also connected to the abbey and the first known documentation of the Auld Alliance was signed there on 23 October 1295.

Dunfermline Abbey, one of Scotland's most important cultural sites, has received more of Scotland's royal dead than any other place in the kingdom, excepting Iona. King Robert the Bruce - King Robert I (11 July 1274 - 7 June 1329) - is buried in the Abbey, and several Scottish kings were born in the adjacent Palace.

The Union of the Crowns ended the town's royal connections when James VI relocated the Scottish Court to London in 1603.

The Abbey parish church, designed by the architect William Burn, was built between 1818 and 1821 on the site of the medieval choir and transepts which had been the eastern part of the Abbey. Parts of the original Abbey and of the Palace survive, albeit as ruins.

The Abbey Church has the words KING ROBERT THE BRUCE as cut out masonry in the four faces of the tower, to commemorate its most famous occupant.

Dunfermline is the birthplace of General John Forbes, who captured the town known as Fort Duquesne in Pennsylvania from the French in 1758 and re-named it Pittsburgh (burgh being the Scottish equivalent of Borough) in honour of William Pitt the Elder, Secretary of State of the United Kingdom. General Forbes died in Philadelphia on 11 March 1759 and was buried in Christ Church in Philadelphia.

Dunfermline is also the birthplace of another man with Pittsburgh connections, Andrew Carnegie (November 25, 1835 - August 11, 1919) who spent part of his wealth on buying Pittencrieff Estate in Dunfermline (formerly owned by the Forbes family) and donating it to the citizens of Dunfermline. The Estate is today a wonderful park right in the centre of the city. Of the many Carnegie Libraries established around the world, the first was set up in Dunfermline.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunfermline en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_(British_Army_officer) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie