Qualla: Dunfermline Palace

Dunfermline Palace: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Otter, CC BY-SA 3.0. On a wet November day in 1600, Anne of Denmark gave birth to a small, sickly boy at Dunfermline Palace. A new bed of green velvet and taffeta had been built for the occasion in one of the palace's upper rooms. The child was slow to learn to walk and had to be trained with an oak stool fitted with wheels, described in Scots as a "tymber stule with rynand quheillis to gang in." When he finally walked the length of the great chamber unaided, his physician wrote proudly that he managed it "like a gallant soldier all alone." That sickly child was Charles I, and he was the last reigning monarch to be born in Scotland.

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Image: Otter | CC BY-SA 3.0

Dunfermline Palace: From Guest House to Palace

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mcwesty (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Dunfermline Palace stands on the southern slope of a hill in Fife, attached to Dunfermline Abbey by a covered gatehouse called a pend. The building was originally the guest house of the abbey, the place where wealthy travellers, royalty among them, were lodged when they came to p...

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Image: Mcwesty (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Dunfermline Palace: Anne of Denmark's Palace

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul McIlroy, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1589, when James VI married Anne of Denmark, he gave her Dunfermline Palace as a wedding present. He had to compensate the Master of Gray, who held the title of Commendator of Dunfermline, with 12,000 merks. Anne loved the place. She gave birth to three of her children here: E...

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Image: Paul McIlroy | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dunfermline Palace: Prince Charles

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit McPhail, CC0. After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI became James I of England and moved his court to London, Dunfermline Palace fell quiet. The new Prince Charles, too frail to travel south with his parents, was left at Dunfermline for a year in the care of Alexander Seton and h...

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Image: McPhail | CC0

Dunfermline Palace: Abandonment

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0. Charles I returned to his birthplace only once after that, briefly, for his Scottish coronation in 1633. The last monarch to use the palace was his son Charles II, who stayed here in 1650 just before the Battle of Pitreavie. Soon afterward, during Cromwell's occupation of Scotlan...

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Image: Kim Traynor | CC BY-SA 3.0