Tour Scotland Spring travel video of an April road trip drive, with Scottish accordion music, East on the A994 road from Cairneyhill through Crossford on visit to Dunfermline in Fife. The name Cairneyhill is Scots language for rocky hill, though the village is not on any noticeable hill. The village grew in the 18th century as a settlement for local weavers and was served by the parish church that was built in 1752 and is still used today. This was a hotbed of dissenters and the village was a central point for the religious disputes in Scotland in the early 19th Century.
Crossford is said to take its name from the ford crossed by monks on their way between the abbeys of Dunfermline and Culross, and together with the early agricultural activity this seems to form the main part of the activity in the village. In the 16th century the village found a new life as coal and ironstone were mined from the lands of Pitfirrane under a charter granted to the Lairds of Pitfirrane by Queen Mary. The introduction of the Turnpike Act in 1796 brought about the installation of a tollbar on the Waggon Road in Crossford. The building housing this still exists on the crossroads in the centre of the village. At the beginning of the 19th century, it is recorded that some 50 handlooms were in use in the village with a population of 380 persons.
Dunfermline's most famous son is the entrepreneur and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie who was born in the town in 1835. Among the gifts he gave to his home town, include a free library and public swimming baths. In 1888, two Dunfermline men, John Reid and Robert Lockhart, first demonstrated golf in the USA by setting up a hole in an orchard, before Reid set up America's first golf club the same year, St. Andrews Golf Club in Yonkers, New York, with Andrew Carnegie one of the first members.
All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.
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