Dunfermline Abbey, one of Scotland’s most important cultural sites, has received more of Caledonia’s royal dead than any other place in the kingdom, excepting Iona.

Its first abbot was Geoffrey of Canterbury, former prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, the Kent religious house that probably supplied Dunfermline’s first Benedictine monks. At the peak of its power it controlled four burghs, three courts of regality and a large portfolio of lands from Moray in the north down into Berwickshire.