Dunfermline: Scotland’s eighth city, with some thoughts from

Kenneth Maclean FRSGS, RSGS Collections Team

recreational park and suggest innovative educational and cultural establishments. Significantly, his visionary report played a landmark role in recognising town planning as an acknowledged discipline, including Geddesian mantras of ‘survey, diagnosis, plan’ and ‘conservative surgery’, whereby worthwhile buildings were preserved for current and future use. Although Geddes’s 1904 report was not acted upon, mainly because of expense, less ambitious ideas were realised ultimately for Pittencrieff Park.

On 3rd October 2022, King Charles III conferred city status on Dunfermline. It was a salutary event for this famous royal burgh, now the nation’s eighth city; an opportunity to recall its old and new functions, as medieval Scotland’s capital and pre-Reformation religious centre, a significant textile town, a major service hub for west Fife, and a dormitory settlement for Edinburgh.

From Dunfermline’s recorded origins in the 11th century, interacting geographical and historical influences have fostered its evolving townscapes. These include:

• an advantageous location on the coastal fringe of south-west Fife, relatively secure from the ‘Auld Enemy’. Pioneer planner Patrick Geddes highlighted location as the key to its development: “we have the intersection of the two main roads, not only of Fife, but of the kingdom … and we understand … how ‘the king sate in Dunfermlyne toun’ not merely ‘drinkin the bluide-red wine’ but shrewdly settled at the exact strategic centre of Scotland.”

• a favourable site affording a defensible position for a fortification or ‘dun’, traditionally linked with Malcolm Canmore’s Tower in Pittencrieff Glen. Dunfermline is a hilly, south-facing settlement which initially expanded southwards over east–west trending ridges formed by glacial deposition. Later 20th-century expansion, such as from Pitcorthie to Rosyth, developed on a series of raised beach levels ascending from the Forth. Structurally, Dunfermline and district is underlain by Carboniferous strata rising upwards from Calciferous sandstone (a building stone, hence ‘the Auld Grey Toun’) through limestone to coal measures that fuelled industrial growth.

• chance, exemplified by Malcolm Canmore’s choice of Dunfermline as royal seat; his marriage to princess Margaret, and the town’s evolution as a significant ecclesiastical locus with its Benedictine abbey, royal mausoleum, and St Margaret’s shrine, a popular pilgrimage site; and the decision of Dunfermline-born Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) to purchase Pittencrieff Estate and fund public buildings through the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust.

Patrick Geddes and Dunfermline

In 1903, Patrick Geddes was commissioned by the Carnegie Trust to transform Pittencrieff Estate into a

Geddes coined neologisms, including ‘palaeotechnic’ and ‘neotechnic’ which marked old and new phases in industrial development. The former was based on coal and steam, “typified by waste of resources, smoke- and soot-covered cities, blighted landscapes, and stunted human lives.” The latter involved electricity and oil as potentially cleaner motive power, a return to nature, and the planning of cities. From Carnegie’s birth in 1835 to the present, Dunfermline transitioned between these stages.

Palaeotechnic Dunfermline

Throughout Dunfermline’s Victorian palaeotechnic era, textiles and coal mining were significant employers. Linen production dominated, especially world-renowned damaskpatterned tableware. Between 1700 and 1900, the industry evolved from cottage-based handicraft production to powerbased looms with factories sited on level land north and south of the medieval city core. Alongside related population growth, from 8,577 in 1851 to 25,250 in 1901, there emerged a densely populated townscape of mills (eg, the Pilmuir Works), dyeworks, bleach fields (eg, Abbey Park) and tall lums, intermingled with overcrowded, poor-quality housing, insanitary and lacking effective water supplies. Similar problems characterised the colliery rows in and around Dunfermline. Coal mining was initiated by the Abbey monks, and by the mid-19th century, pits such as at Wellwood and Townhill were exploiting deeper coal-bearing strata. By 1900, an expanded rail system had enhanced Dunfermline’s nodality, both within Fife and beyond, especially with the opening of the Forth Bridge in 1890, allowing quicker access to Edinburgh than the historic Queensferry passage. For many, conditions in Dunfermline were challenging, especially at times of economic depression, not least the ‘hungry twenties and thirties’. These years saw loss of markets, recession in coal-mining, and the rapid decline of the linen industry, albeit ameliorated from 1924 with silk manufacturing, including parachute production.

Neotechnic Dunfermline

Dunfermline’s historic mills and factories are disappearing; pit head machinery and bings are gone. Remaining buildings, however, not only constitute a valuable industrial heritage, but have been converted to commercial units or flats. Such relic landscapes are a form of sustainability of which Geddes approved: sustainability which, ideally, should characterise the planning of contemporary cities in the neotechnic era. In what ways has Dunfermline met Geddesian neotechnic notions?

Firstly, Dunfermline still benefits from Carnegie’s philanthropy, with assets, such as the library and art gallery, public baths and swimming pool (modernised within the Carnegie Leisure Centre), theatre and parks. The redesigned Pittencrieff Park with its formal gardens and Glen is a tangible tribute to Geddes’s awareness of nature’s