Dunfermline City Chambers is a municipal facility at the corner of Bridge Street and Kirkgate in

Dunfermline Dunfermline (; sco, Dunfaurlin, gd, Dùn Phàrlain) is a city, parish and former Royal Burgh, in Fife, Scotland, on high ground from the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. The city currently has an estimated population of 58,508. Accord ...

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 ...

. The building, which serves as home to the local area committee of

Fife Council Fife Council is the local authority for the Fife area of Scotland and is the third largest Scottish council, with 75 elected council members. Councillors are generally elected every five years. At the 2012 election there were 78 councillors ele ...

, is a Category A listed building.

History

The building was commissioned to replace the old town house in Bridge Street which had been completed in 1771. After rapid industrial growth in the local area, civic leaders decided they needed a more substantial facility and the old town house was demolished, to make way for the current building. The foundation stone for the new building was laid on 11 October 1876. It was designed by James Campbell Walker in the

French Gothic style French Gothic architecture is an architectural style which emerged in France in 1140, and was dominant until the mid-16th century. The most notable examples are the great Gothic cathedrals and churches, Gothic cathedrals of France, including Notr ...

, built by Messrs W & J Hutchison and completed in May 1879. The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with twelve bays facing onto Kirkgate; the southern section featured a doorway with an

octagon In geometry, an octagon (from the Greek ὀκτάγωνον ''oktágōnon'', "eight angles") is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon. A '' regular octagon'' has Schläfli symbol and can also be constructed as a quasiregular truncated square, t, whi ...

al turret above in the south east corner, while the northern section featured an elaborate doorway with a balcony and prominent four-face

clock tower Clock towers are a specific type of structure which house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another buildi ...

with bartizans in the north east corner. The structure included heraldic stones, recovered from the demolished 18th century town house, which may have originated from the now derelict Dunfermline Palace, a few hundred yards to the south. The stonework on the Bridge Street façade included busts of Malcolm Canmore, Queen Margaret, Robert the Bruce and

Elizabeth de Burgh Lady Elizabeth de Burgh (; ; c. 1289 – 27 October 1327) was the second wife and the only queen consort of King Robert the Bruce. Elizabeth was born sometime around 1289, probably in what is now County Down or County Antrim in Ulster, the ...

. Internally, the principal room was the council chamber on the first floor: it incorporated an oak

hammerbeam roof A hammerbeam roof is a decorative, open timber roof truss typical of English Gothic architecture and has been called "...the most spectacular endeavour of the English Medieval carpenter". They are traditionally timber framed, using short beams pr ...

. There were police cells in the basement of the building. The building was the headquarters of the royal burgh of Dunfermline until it was replaced by Dunfermline District under the wider

Regional Council in May 1975.McEwan Bert ''Dunfermline: The Post-War Years'' p.16. The building ceased to be a seat of government after the district council was abolished in 1996, under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994. Since then, the building has served as the home of the local area committee of

, as a venue for marriages and civil partnerships and as the local registration office. Works of art in the city chambers include Sir Joseph Paton's painting of Queen Margaret and Malcolm Canmore.

References

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History

See also

References

Further reading