Dunfermline Abbey harks back to the 11th century though its centrepiece Romanesque nave is 12th-century. But the building's glory days abruptly in 1560 when it was sacked during the Scottish Reformation and thereafter left in tatters.

The city of Dunfermline itself shared a similar fate some 43 years later when in 1603 it ceased to be Scotland’s capital. But before then it was a place of real consequence, as the 22 tombs of Scottish kings and queens in the abbey church attest.

The Abbey was founded by the devout Saint Margaret of Scotland – the mother to three kings of Scotland and responsible for establishing the first ferry service over the Firth of Forth: between North and South Queensferry, as they became known. The ferry was there in order ease the journey of pilgrims the Abbey.

Robert the Bruce