Culture
Pittencrieff Park forms the western boundary of the town centre covering 76 acres (310,000 m2). It was gifted by Andrew Carnegie to the people of Dunfermline in 1903. The park is known locally as the Glen and was created from the estate of Pittencrieff and the lands of the house, owned by the Lairds of Pittencrieff. A £1.4 million project to regenerate, restore and re-establish the park began in 2009 and is ongoing. In December 2011 Pittencrieff Park was awarded £710,000 through the Heritage Lottery Fund's Parks for People programme for essential maintenance work. A previous award of £27,000 was made under this scheme in 2010. The work will include the restoration of historic buildings and bridges; new lighting and the refurbishment of the greenhouse to create a classroom. A separate £1 million project will revamp and extend the Glen Pavilion to provide a new 120 seat cafe and linking corridor to the rear of the building.
The Bruce Festival is an annual attraction held in Pittencrieff Park every August. The festival which promotes Robert The Bruce's links to Dunfermline centres around a medieval village and is home to a food fayre, battle reenactments and displays of arts and crafts.
The Andrew Carnegie birthplace museum at the corner of Moodie Street and Priory Lane is dedicated to the well-known businessman and philanthropist. The museum is made up of two buildings; the weaver's cottage, his birthplace and the memorial hall which tells his life story. Annual heritage walks organised by the museum take place each summer. The Abbot House heritage centre on Maygate tells the story of the history that the house played within Dunfermline over a period of five and a half centuries. There is also a cafe on the ground floor and part of the garden recreates the feel of a 17th century herb garden.
Despite its rich history, Dunfermline has never had a museum to highlight this. Plans are in progress to create a £10 million Museum and Art Gallery for the town on land between a disued Victorian bank and the existing Carnegie library building. Both the library and former bank buildings will be redeveloped with a new extension creating a substantial development which will include the museum, art gallery, archive and library space. Fife Council have pledged £6.8 million towards the project with a further £2.8 million of the costs being met by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Dunfermline has also been bequeathed two theatres, Carnegie Hall on East Port and the Alhambra on Canmore Street. Carnegie Hall hosts a range of theatrical and musical productions including an annual Christmas show. The Music Institute, adjacent to the Hall also provides workshops, classes and children's groups. The Alhambra, which opened in 1922, originally served as a dual-purpose role hosting both theatrical productions and films. In 2008, the theatre re-opened as a theatre and live music venue.
Local groups include the Dunfermline Folk Club, Dunfermline Abbey Choir and Dunfermline district pipe band. Dunfermline is home to professional football, rugby and cricket teams. The senior football team, Dunfermline Athletic play their games at East End Park in the Scottish Football League First Division. The team have became famous for winning the Scottish Cup twice in the 1960s (1961 and 1968) gaining a reputation as a side for competitive football in both England and mainland Europe. The senior rugby team, Dunfermline RFC play their games at McKane Park in the National League Division 1.
There is also a cricket club based at Carnegie Cricket Ground, an athletics ground at Pitreavie and three golf courses (Dunfermline, Canmore and Pitreavie). Carnegie Leisure Centre (originally Carnegie swimming baths) is the main sports centre. A £17.2 million major refurbishment and extension to the centre was completed in November 2011. The work has included the conversion of a 25 yard Edwardian training pool into a modern 25 metre 6 lane, deck level pool with movable floor; an improved entrance and reception area with a new cafe and a new state-of-the-art gym with 80 stations.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“There is something terribly wrong with a culture inebriated by noise and gregariousness.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)