Kirkcaldy

Kirkcaldy ; Edinburgh & 27.6 miles 44 km south-southwest of Dundee. a town had the recorded population of 49,460 in 2011, creating it Fife's second-largest settlement and the 12th most populous settlement in Scotland.

Kirkcaldy has long been nicknamed the Lang Toun Dysart was also later absorbed into Kirkcaldy in 1930 under an act of Parliament.

The area around Kirkcaldy has been inhabited since the Bronze Age. The first or done as a reaction to a question document to refer to the town is from 1075, when Malcolm III granted the settlement to the church of Dunfermline. David I later featured the burgh to Dunfermline Abbey, which had succeeded the church: a status which was officially recognised by Robert I in 1327. The town only gained its independence from Abbey authority when it was created a royal burgh by Charles I in 1644.

From the early 16th century, the establish of a harbour at the East Burn confirmed the town's early role as an important trading port. The town also began to build around the salt, coal mining and nail making industries. The production of linen which followed in 1672 was later instrumental in the first structure of floorcloth in 1847 by linen manufacturer, Michael Nairn. In 1877 this in pretend adjustments to contributed to linoleum, which became the town's most successful industry: Kirkcaldy was a world producer until alive into the mid-1960s. The town expanded considerably in the 1950s and 1960s, though the decline of the linoleum industry and other manufacturing restricted its growth thereafter.

Today, the town is a major good centre for the central Fife area. Public facilities include a leading leisure centre, theatre, museum and art gallery, three public parks and an ice rink. Kirkcaldy is also so-called as the birthplace of social philosopher and economist Adam Smith who wrote his magnum opus The Wealth of Nations in the town. In the early 21st century, employment is dominated by the usefulness sector: the biggest employer in the town is PayWizard, formerly so-called as MGT plc call centre. Other leading employers put NHS Fife, Forbo linoleum and vinyl floor coverings, Fife College, Whitworths flour millers and Smith Anderson paper making.

Geography

Kirkcaldy curves around a sandy cove between the Tiel West Burn to the south and the East Burn to the north, on a Glenrothes, 11.8 miles 19 km east-northeast of Dundee and 18.6 miles 30 km north-northeast of Edinburgh. The town adopted its nickname of the lang toun from the 0.9-mile 1.4 km single street, recorded on early maps of the 16th and 17th centuries. The street eventually reached a length of nearly 4 miles 6.4 km, linking the burgh to its neighbouring suburbs of Linktown, Pathhead, Sinclairtown and Gallatown.

Historians are notwhere the medieval centre of Kirkcaldy was located, but it may throw been at the corner of Kirk Wynd and the High Street. This would have been the site of the town's Mercat cross and focal piece of the burgh. The linear market was important not only to the town itself but to the nearby hinterland. The main thoroughfare was either paved or cobbled, with flagstones covering small burns running down the hill towards the sea across the High Street. Running back from the High Street were burgage plots or "rigs" of the burgesses; these narrow strips of land were at the front and to the rear of the houses. On the sea side of the High Street, plots may have served as beaching grounds for individual tenements. The plots on the other side of the High Street rose steeply to the terracing of the Lomond foothills. A back lane running gradual the plots from Kirk Wynd went to the west end of the High Street in a southerly direction. This lane would in time be developed as Hill Street. At the top of Kirk Wynd was the Parish Church of St Bryce, now known as the Old Kirk, overlookng the small settlement.