Dunfermline Abbey was once one of Scotland’s leading monastic communities, a favourite royal residence and a burial place for Kings.
In 1069 Margaret, Queen of Scotland, invited monks from Canterbury to set up a priory at Dunfermline. In 1128 her son David I enlarged the priory, converting it into a great abbey that visitors can see today. In the 1320s Robert the Bruce (who was later buried at Dunfermline Abbey) funded the rebuilding of the monastery and the abbey’s guesthouse was remodelled as a royal palace in which Charles I was born. In 1821 a new abbey church was built on the site of the previous medieval church.
The abbey church, nave and palace buildings today seem very separate, however they were once all part of a large monastic complex with a cloister attaching the living and working accommodation with the church. The cloister was destroyed after the Protestant Reformation of 1560, which led to the ransacking of the abbey.
SOURCES:
- Information signs at Dunfermline Abbey
