Dunfermline, a 'city' of Fife, the chief town of its western district, 16 miles NW. of Edinburgh, and 20 E. by S. of Stirling. It stands on a long swelling ridge, 3 miles from and 300 feet above the Forth, and, backed by the Cleish Hills (1240 feet), presents a striking aspect from the south. It is a place of hoar antiquity, from 1057 till 1650 a frequent residence of Scotland's kings, and for more than two centuries their place of sepulture. Malcolm Canmore here founded in 1072 a priory, which David I. remodelled in 1124 as a Benedictine abbey. The nave alone of its church, Romanesque to Third Pointed in style, was spared at the Reformation, and now forms a stately vestibule to the New Abbey Church (1818-21), in building which Robert Bruce's grave was discovered. There are ruins of the 'frater-house' or refectory, of the 'pendent tower,' and of the royal palace (circa 1540); but of Malcolm's Tower only a shapeless fragment is left, and the 'Queen's House' (1600) was wholly demolished in 1797. Nor otherwise is there anything older than the great fire of 1624; indeed, the churches and the public buildings are almost all of quite recent erection. There are the Gothic corporation buildings (1876-79), with their peaked clock-tower; the spired county building (1807-50); St Margaret's Hall (1878), with a fine organ; the Carnegie Public Library (1881); the Carnegie Baths (1877); the high school (1886), and the Roman Catholic church (1895). The town has been lighted with gas since 1829, a drainage system was completed in 1877, and a new water-supply introduced in 1878. The staple industry is damask linen-weaving, which, dating from 1716, now in some years turns out goods to the value of a million sterling, nearly one-half being exported to the
United States. St Leonard's (1851) is the largest of the factories, which in all employ some 6000 persons, and render Dunfermline the chief seat of the table-linen manufacture in the United Kingdom. Bleaching, iron-founding, &c. are also carried on; and in the neighbourhood are many collieries. Dunfermline was made a royal burgh in 1588, and unites with the other four Stirling burghs to return one member to parliament. Pop. (1801) 5484; (1881) 17,085; (1891) 19,647. For Dunfermline's worthies, reference may be made to our own articles on St Margaret, Robert Henrysoun, Charles I., Ralph Erskine, Sir Noel Paton, and Mr Andrew Carnegie; for its many memories, of kings, Scottish and English, of Cromwellian victory, and Jacobite skirmish, to Dr E. Henderson's Annals of Dunfermline (1879), and D. Beveridge's Between the Ochils and the Forth (1888).