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Culross
Culross (/ˈkurəs/) (Scottish Gaelic: ''Cuileann Ros'', 'holly point or promontory') is a village and former royal burgh, and parish, in Fife, Scotland. According to the 2006 estimate, the village has a population of 395. Originally, Culross served as a port city on the Firth of Forth and is believed to have been founded by Saint Serf during the 6th century. The civil parish had a population of 4,348 in 2011.Census of Scotland 2011, Table KS101SC – Usually Resident Population, publ. by National Records of Scotland. Web site http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/ retrieved March 2016. See "Standard Outputs", Table KS101SC, Area type: Civil Parish 1930 Founding legend A legend states that when the Brittonic princess (and future saint) Teneu, daughter of the king of Lothian, became pregnant before marriage, her family threw her from a cliff. She survived the fall unharmed, and was soon met by an unmanned boat. She knew she had no home to go to, so she got into the boat; it sai ...
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Culross Town House
Culross Town House, also known as Culross Tolbooth, is a municipal structure in the Sandhaven area of Culross, Fife, Scotland. The building, which now serves as a visitor centre, is Category A listed. History The town house was commissioned to replace an earlier tolbooth on the same site. It was designed in the Scottish medieval style, built in sandstone and was completed in 1626. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of five bays facing Back Causeway; there was an external double forestair containing a blind oculus leading up to a central doorway with a rectangular fanlight on the first floor. The staircase was flanked, on the ground floor, by two small windows and, beyond that, by two small doorways. The first floor was fenestrated with four square-headed sash windows. A three-stage clock tower was installed in 1783: the first stage involved a round headed window, the second stage featured a clock designed and manufactured by Laurence Dalgleish and the third stage fe ...
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George Bruce Of Carnock
Sir George Bruce of Carnock (c. 1550 – 1625) was a Scottish merchant, ship-owner, and mining engineer. Family George Bruce was a son of Edward Bruce of Blairhall and Alison Reid, a sister of Robert Reid, Bishop of Orkney. His older brother Edward Bruce (1548-1610), was created Lord Bruce of Kinloss in 1602. Edward Bruce built the large mansion known as Culross House or Abbey House (now reduced in size) and George built Culross Palace. Coal, salt, and silver Bruce was an innovator in coal mining techniques, introducing undersea mining into the Upper Hirst seam with use of new drainage technology. These innovations attracted much interest, including a visit from King James VI in 1617. Sir George Bruce invited him to visit one of his mines which tunnelled down beneath the sea bed. James ventured into the tunnel which went far out into the Firth of Forth and found himself at a shaft point where the coal was loaded onto the ships. Alarmed to find himself surrounded by water ...
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Culross Palace
Culross Palace is a late 16th to early 17th century merchant's house in Culross, Fife, Scotland. The palace, or "Great Lodging", was constructed between 1597 and 1611 by Sir George Bruce, the Laird of Carnock. The house was mainly built in two campaigns. The south block in 1597 and the north building in 1611, the year when George Bruce was knighted. Bruce was a successful merchant who had a flourishing trade with other Forth ports, the Low Countries and Sweden. He had interests in coal mining, salt production, and shipping, and is credited with sinking the world's first coal mine to extend under the sea. Many of the materials used in the construction of the palace were obtained during the course of Bruce's foreign trade. Baltic pine, red pantiles, and Dutch floor tiles and glass were all used. The exterior boasts the use of crow-stepped gables, including a statue of a veiled woman posing on the gable step. The palace features fine interiors, with decorative mural and c ...
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Fife
Fife (, ; gd, Fìobha, ; sco, Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross (i.e. the historic counties of Perthshire and Kinross-shire) and Clackmannanshire. By custom it is widely held to have been one of the major Pictish kingdoms, known as ''Fib'', and is still commonly known as the Kingdom of Fife within Scotland. A person from Fife is known as a ''Fifer''. In older documents the county was very occasionally known by the anglicisation Fifeshire. Fife is Scotland's third largest local authority area by population. It has a resident population of just under 367,000, over a third of whom live in the three principal towns, Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes. The historic town of St Andrews is located on the northeast coast of Fife. It is well known for the University of St Andrews, the most ancient univers ...
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Saint Serf
Saint Serf or Serbán (''Servanus'') () is a saint of Scotland. Serf was venerated in western Fife. He is called the apostle of Orkney, with less historical plausibility. Saint Serf is connected with Saint Mungo's Church near Simonburn, Northumberland (off the Bellingham Road, north of Chollerford). His feast day is 1 July. Legends David Hugh Farmer wrote that the legend of Serf is "a farrago of wild impossibilities" stating that Serf was the son of Eliud, King of Canaan, and his wife Alphia, daughter of a King of Arabia. Childless for a long time, they at last had two sons: the second was Serf. Serf came to Rome, carrying with him such a reputation for sanctity that he was elected and served as Pope for seven years. He travelled to Gaul and Britain after vacating the Holy See, returning to Scotland. There, he met Adomnán, Abbot of Iona, who showed him an island in Loch Leven (later called St Serf's Inch). At the time, this island was part of the Pictish kingdom of ''Fib'' (F ...
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James Fraser Of Brea
James Fraser of Brea (1639–1699) was a Covenanter. Early life He was born in the parish of Kirkmichael, Ross-shire, on 29 July 1639. His father, Sir James Fraser, was the second son of Simon Fraser, 6th Lord Lovat, by his second wife, Jane Stewart, daughter of James Stewart, 1st Lord Doune. Sir James Fraser, a devout man, was elder for the presbytery of Inverness in the general assembly of 1638 which abolished episcopacy, and sat in several other general assemblies. James was educated at a grammar school, and suffered much from his father's financial difficulties. At the Siege of Inverness his father Sir James Fraser held Inverness Castle for the Covenanters of the Clan Fraser of Lovat against the royalist James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose. In 1658 he graduated MA from Marischal College, Aberdeen and then began to study Law. However he abandoned his study of the law, and obtained license as a preacher of the gospel as a Presbyterian minister in 1672 by the presbyter ...
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Saint Kentigern
Kentigern ( cy, Cyndeyrn Garthwys; la, Kentigernus), known as Mungo, was a missionary in the Brittonic Kingdom of Strathclyde in the late sixth century, and the founder and patron saint of the city of Glasgow. Name In Wales and England, this saint is known by his birth and baptismal name Kentigern ( cy, Cyndeyrn). This name probably comes from the British *''Cuno-tigernos'', which is composed of the elements *''cun'', a hound, and *''tigerno'', a lord, prince, or king. The evidence is based on the Old Welsh record ''Conthigirn(i)''. Other etymologies have been suggested, including British *''Kintu-tigernos'' 'chief prince' based on the English form Kentigern, but the Old Welsh form above and Old English ''Cundiʒeorn'' do not appear to support this. Particularly in Scotland, he is known by the pet name Mungo, possibly derived from the Cumbric equivalent of the cy, fy nghu 'my dear (one)'. The Mungo pet name or hypocorism has a Gaelic parallel in the form Mo Choe or Mo Cha, und ...
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Firth Of Forth
The Firth of Forth () is the estuary, or firth, of several Scottish rivers including the River Forth. It meets the North Sea with Fife on the north coast and Lothian on the south. Name ''Firth'' is a cognate of ''fjord'', a Norse word meaning a narrow inlet. ''Forth'' stems from the name of the river; this is ''*Vo-rit-ia'' (slow running) in Proto-Celtic, yielding '' Foirthe'' in Old Gaelic and '' Gweryd'' in Welsh. It was known as ''Bodotria'' in Roman times. In the Norse sagas it was known as the ''Myrkvifiörd''. An early Welsh name is ''Merin Iodeo'', or the "Sea of Iudeu". Geography and economy Geologically, the Firth of Forth is a fjord, formed by the Forth Glacier in the last glacial period. The drainage basin for the Firth of Forth covers a wide geographic area including places as far from the shore as Ben Lomond, Cumbernauld, Harthill, Penicuik and the edges of Gleneagles Golf Course. Many towns line the shores, as well as the petrochemical complexes at Gr ...
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Valleyfield, Fife
Valleyfield consists of High Valleyfield and Low Valleyfield which are neighbouring villages in Fife, Scotland, midway between Dunfermline and Kincardine-on-Forth. Low Valleyfield is on the shore of the Firth of Forth, High Valleyfield on the ridge immediately to the north. The population of High Valleyfield was 2,940 in the 2001 Census; separate figures for the smaller settlement of Low Valleyfield were not published. In 1801, merchant and politician Sir Robert 'Floating Bob' Preston, 6th Baronet, commissioned the English landscape architect, Sir Humphry Repton, to design a parkland setting for his classical mansion, Valleyfield House. Botanist David Douglas worked there as an apprentice gardener for a time. The Baronetcy of Valleyfield became dormant in 1873, following the death of the 9th Baron. By 1918, the estate had been abandoned by its owners, the East of Fife Coal Company, who had opened the Valleyfield Colliery in 1912. Valleyfield House was demolished in 1941. Pres ...
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Upper Hirst
The Upper Hirst is a coal seam in central Scotland that was mined in the 1950s through to 2002, mainly to supply Kincardine Power Station, and later, Longannet Power Station, in Fife. This was a low-quality coal, unsuitable for most other purposes, and had mostly been disregarded previously. Its low sulfur content made it very suitable for power station use. The Upper Hirst coal is found within the Upper Limestone Group of strata, above the Limestone Coal Group, but below the Productive Coal Measures. The latter two groups of strata may be separated by up to 1,000 metres. In the Central Coal Field, which is in the form of a basin, the Productive Coal Measures, if they were ever deposited, have been lost by erosion except near the centre, where they outcrop near Alloa and Clackmannan, and have been mined until recently. The Limestone Coal Group of strata have been mined only around the edge of the basin, although in the 1950s there were plans for deep mines at Airth, where two la ...
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Archibald Cochrane, 9th Earl Of Dundonald
Archibald Cochrane, 9th Earl of Dundonald FRSE (1 January 1748 – 1 July 1831) was a Scottish nobleman and inventor. Life The son of Thomas Cochrane, 8th Earl of Dundonald, he joined the British Army as a youth and also served time in the Royal Navy before returning to Culross in 1778 after inheriting the Earldom of Dundonald from his father. He inherited a title and family lands but little money. Left with no other means of support, Archibald turned to invention. Cochrane's most noted invention was a method for making coal tar (patented in 1781) on an industrial scale. The British Tar Company invested in a works; it was managed by John Loudon McAdam. The coke byproduct was used, in part, by an ironworks at Muirkirk, and the flammability of the coal gas byproduct was recognised but not capitalized on. McAdam bought the company, but the deal was troubled. Cochrane hoped that he would be able to sell tar as a sealant for the hulls of ships to the Royal Navy. After contacts with ...
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Royal Burgh
A royal burgh () was a type of Scottish burgh which had been founded by, or subsequently granted, a royal charter. Although abolished by law in 1975, the term is still used by many former royal burghs. Most royal burghs were either created by the Crown, or upgraded from another status, such as burgh of barony. As discrete classes of burgh emerged, the royal burghs—originally distinctive because they were on royal lands—acquired a monopoly of foreign trade. An important document for each burgh was its burgh charter, creating the burgh or confirming the rights of the burgh as laid down (perhaps verbally) by a previous monarch. Each royal burgh (with the exception of four 'inactive burghs') was represented in the Parliament of Scotland and could appoint bailie A bailie or baillie is a civic officer in the local government of Scotland. The position arose in the burghs, where bailies formerly held a post similar to that of an alderman or magistrate (see bailiff). Baillies app ...
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