Dunfermline

Category

Library Item

Item no

24850

Title

Dunfermline

Description

The image shows Dunfermline Abbey in Fife.

Artist / maker

De Cardonnel, Adam

Date

1788

Size

7.0 x 9.0 cm

Type

Etching

Location

Edinburgh and Scottish Collection

The British 19th century engraver and archaeologist Adam de Cardonnel was an educated man who practiced for a short while as a surgeon however his family's wealth gave him the leisure to indulge his interest in antiquities and numismatics. At the end of 1780 he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland where he also served as curator from 1782 to 1784. Cardonnel later went on to produce work titled as 'Numismata Scotiae' which was published in Edinburgh in 1786 and 'Picturesque Antiquities of Scotland' which was published in London in 1788. Soon after this Adam De Cardonnel took over his cousin - Hilton Lawson's - estates in Chirton and Cramlington in Northumberland where he then served as sheriff for the county in 1796 and became knows as 'Adam De Cardonnel-Lawson'. Cardonnel spent his last days in Bath and after dying at age 73 he was buried at Cramlington in June 1820.

Dunfermline Abbey and the ruins around it are all that remain of a Benedictine Abbey founded by Queen Margaret in the eleventh century. The foundations of her church are under the present nave (or 'Old Church'), built in the twelfth century.

King Robert the Bruce is buried here, and the tower of the church bears the words 'King Robert the Bruce' in carved stone around the top and inside, beneath the pulpit, is Bruce's tomb, with its fine brass cover dating from 1889.

After the reformation Dunfermline ceased to be an Abbey, but since the nave of the church continued to be used as the local parish church, much of the Abbey has survived to this day. The present parish church, to the east of the Old Church, was added in the nineteenth century.

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Related subjects

Architecture > Architectural features > Courtyards

Architecture > Architectural features > Tracery windows

Architecture > Architectural features > Walls

Places > Scotland > Fife

Places > United Kingdom > Scotland

Religion > Religious facilities > Abbeys

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