Abbot House is a heritage centre located on the Maygate in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
Abbot House is a heritage centre located on the Maygate in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. It lies in the shadow of Dunfermline's great abbey church. Located in a building with a 16th-century core, Abbot House offers a view of Scotland's history from early beginnings through the 19th century, provided to visitors by guided tour. The heritage centre closed in August 2015 after attempts, by Abbot House Heritage Centre Trust, to find alternative funding for the centre failed.
In March 2016 it was announced that the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust had taken over ownership of Abbot House, and that they intend to re-open the building to the public. In November 2016 it was announced that Fire Station Creative had been earmarked as the preferred operator, although plans had yet to be finalised and no indication of a possible re-opening date was given. In May 2017 it was reported that a re-opened Abbot House would provide a cafe, restaurant, meeting rooms and suites, and that it was the intention to re-open the cafe "as soon as possible".
As the oldest surviving building within Dunfermline town, and a survivor of the Great Fire of Dunfermline in 1624, the building is indicative of the changing styles of Scottish architecture from the 16th to the 20th centuries.
The earliest phase of the house was a two-story rectangular block of at least two storeys, built into the existing precinct wall. This house incorporated a small Z-plan tower house. The tour of the house reveals many early features of the changing form of the house, including crow-stepped gabling from an early exterior wall within the 'Industrial Room', and a number of excavated fireplaces and ranges now within the cafe area.
Highlights include a frescoed wall painting, dated to 1571, which may depict scenes from a middle-Scots translation of Virgil,in the principal room of the first floor of the house, as well as a 14th-century tracery window.
Trial excavations were begun in the garden of the house in 1988, followed by further work in 1992, and again in 1993 and 1994, excavating eleven separate areas in total. Excavations within the garden in the 1990s revealed various finds, including a very large dog, likely a deer or wolfhound, that measured approximately 86 cm at the shoulder. Other finds included a selection of medieval glazed and unglazed pottery sherds, costume fittings and personal accessories, and ironwork. Two ceramic 'counters', associated with medieval and early modern games and gambling, and a selection of clay pipes, were found on site. Early coinage, from the 14th to the 17th century, was also discovered.
The now greatly ruined castle stands in its woodland policies amidst a series of stone-walled parks, the walls of which are mainly in a state of collapse. The building and the park walls were in the main constructed using stone robbed from Dundonald Castle. A vast number of valuable Eglinton family papers were discovered in one of the apartments in the 1880s, rescued as the building was in a terminal state of decay. Many had already been destroyed through neglect.
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