Dunfermline Palace and Abbey (HS)

The oldest and perhaps most splendid of Scotland's abbeys, Dunfermline, was founded by David I. The abbey church, built by English masons, almost certainly from Durham, was completed in about 1150.

This great church stands on the site of a priory established some 70 years earlier by Queen Margaret, later Saint Margaret. Both she and her son, King David, had strong English connections and the first monks in the abbey came from Canterbury in Kent.

The abbey became the principal royal burial place. Queen Margaret was buried there as was Robert the Bruce, and many other Scottish kings and queens.

This royal connection continued for over five centuries. Some years after the Reformation the abbey's magnificent guest house was made into a palace for James VI's queen, Anne of Denmark. It was here in 1600 that she gave birth to the future Charles I.

Despite the Reformation the abbey church continued as a place of worship with the west end being used as a parish kirk. In 1821 the east end, then in ruins, was rebuilt.

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