Glenrothes
Encyclopedia
Glenrothes is a large town situated in the heart of Fife
, in east-central Scotland
. It is located approximately 30 miles (48.3 km) from both Edinburgh
, which lies to the south and Dundee
to the north. The town had an estimated population of 38,750 in 2008, making Glenrothes the third largest settlement in Fife. The town's name comes from its historical link with the Earl of Rothes
who owned much of the land upon which the new town was built. "Glen" was added to the name to avoid confusion with Rothes
in Moray
and in recognition that the town lies in a river valley; Glen
being the Scottish word for a valley.
Planned in the late 1940s as one of Scotland's first new town
s its original purpose was to house miners who were to work at a newly established coal mine, the Rothes Colliery. Following the failure of the mine the town developed as an important industrial centre in Scotland's Silicon Glen
between 1961 and 2000 with several major electronics and hi-tech companies setting up facilities in the town. The Glenrothes Development Corporation (GDC), a non-departmental public body, was established to develop, manage and promote the new town. The GDC supported by the local authority oversaw the governance of the new town until the wind-up of the GDC in 1995, after which responsibility was transferred to Fife Council.
Glenrothes is the administrative capital of Fife containing both the Fife Council and Fife Constabulary
headquarters. Manufacturing and engineering industries, public services and service industries are particularly important to the town's economy. Major employers include Adam Smith College
(education), Bosch Rexroth
(hydraulics manufacturing), Brand Rex (fibre optics manufacturing), Raytheon
(defence industry) and Tullis Russell (papermakers). Glenrothes is unique in Fife as the majority of the town's centre
is contained indoors, within Fife's largest indoor shopping centre
, the Kingdom Shopping Centre
.
The town has won multiple awards in the "Beautiful Scotland" and "Britain in Bloom
" contests for the quality of its parks and landscaping. It has numerous outdoor sculptures and artworks, a result of the appointment of town artists in the early development of the town. Public facilities include a sports centre, two golf courses, a civic centre and theatre
, a cinema
and a college campus. The A92 trunk road provides the principal access to the town passing through Glenrothes and connecting it to the wider Scottish motorway and trunk road network. A major bus station is located in the town centre providing regional and local bus services to surrounding settlements.
as Scotland's second post-war
new town. The name Rothes comes from the association with the north-east Scotland Earl of Rothes
, family name Leslie. The Leslie family historically owned much of the land upon which Glenrothes has been built. Glen
(from the Scottish Gaelic word 'gleann' meaning valley) was added to prevent confusion with Rothes
in Moray
, and because the town lies on the Leven
valley.
The original town plan was to build a new settlement for a population of 32,000 to 35,000 people. The intention of the new town for the developers was: "to establish a self-contained and balanced community for working and living". The land where Glenrothes now sits was largely agricultural and once contained a number of small rural communities and the hamlets
of Cadham and Woodside which were established to house workers at the local paper mills. Originally the new town was going to be centred on Markinch
, however the village's infrastructure
was deemed unable to withstand the substantial growth required to realise a new town. Leslie
and Thornton
were also considered as possible locations, but finally an area of 5320 acres (2,153 ha) between all of these villages was designated as new town zone. Aytoun, Balfour, Balgonie and Rothes estates were all incorporated in Glenrothes' assigned area along with the historical stately homes Balbirnie House
, Balgeddie House and Leslie House. The different areas (precincts) of Glenrothes have been named after the hamlets already established (e.g. Cadham, Woodside), the farms which once occupied the land (e.g. Caskieberran, Collydean, Rimbleton) or historical stately homes in the area (e.g. Balbirnie, Balgeddie, Leslie Parks).
The planning, development, management and promotion of Glenrothes was the responsibility of the Glenrothes Development Corporation (GDC), a quango
appointed by the Secretary of State for Scotland
. The corporation board consisted of eight members including a chairman and deputy chairman. The first meeting of the GDC was in Auchmuty House, provided by Tullis Russell on 20 June 1949. The first town masterplan sub-divided the town's designated area into self-contained residential precincts with their own primary schools, local shops and community facilities. Separating industry as far as possible from housing areas in planned industrial estates was a key element of the plan. This was a step change from the unplanned, congested and polluted industrial towns and cities of the previous centuries where cramped unsanitary housing and dirty industries were built in close proximity to one another. The vision for Glenrothes was to provide a clean, healthy and safe environment for the town's residents.
The primary reason for the designation of Glenrothes was to house miners who were to work at a new coal mine and their families. This was partially driven by a national energy strategy developed by the Government following the war and was further developed in a report produced in 1946 by Sir Frank Mears to the Central and South-East Scotland Planning Committee which made the case for a new town in Leslie-Markinch area to support growth in the coal mining industry in Fife. The new mine was to be the most technologically advanced in Scotland and was built west of Thornton, an established village south of Glenrothes. It was named the Rothes Colliery and was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957. It was expected that 2,500 miners would be employed at the mine who would produce 5,000 tonnes of coal per day and huge railway yards were established to transport the extracted coal from the site. However, at its peak the Rothes Colliery employed only over 1,500 miners. The pit was supposed to stay operational for 100 years and was expected to be a key driver for the economic regeneration of central Fife. In 1961, only four years after opening, the huge investment was written off and the mine closed as a result of un-stemmable flooding and geological problems. Ironically, miners who had worked in older deep pits in the area had fore-warned against the development of the Rothes Pit for this very reason. The closure of the state-of-the-art facility left the huge enclosed concrete wheel-towers standing at Thornton for many years as a forlorn symbol of what could have been until demolished in the early 1990s. While the establishment of the new town was to be based upon the development of the mine it was intended that a "mixed community" would be housed in Glenrothes and that other forms of employment would be attracted to the area. In 1944 the Scottish Coalfield Authority condemned the segregation of miners in mining villages and emerging paradigms sought to encourage miners to be housed away from collieries and to integrate with a mixed community where members of their family would also be able to find suitable employment. An additional benefit to this form of social engineering was communities would be less vulnerable to depressions in the coal industry.
Prior to the development of Glenrothes the main industries in the area were papermaking
, coal mining and farming. Unlike Cumbernauld
, East Kilbride
or Livingston
Glenrothes was not originally to be a Glasgow
overspill new town, although it did later take this role. It was however populated in the early 1950s in part by mining families moving from the declining West of Scotland coalfield areas. The coal mine's closure almost resulted in further development of Glenrothes being stopped. However shortly following the closure Central Government decided to change the town's role by appointing Glenrothes as one of the economic focal points for Central Scotland as part of a National Plan for economic growth and development. The Glenrothes Development Corporation were successful in attracting a plethora of modern electronics factories to the town as a consequence. The first big overseas electronic investor was Beckmans Instruments
in 1959 followed by Hughes Industries in the early 1960s. A number of other important companies followed establishing Glenrothes as a major hub in Scotland's Silicon Glen
. During the middle of the 1970s, the town also became the headquarters of Fife Regional Council; effectively the county town of Fife, taking over the role from Cupar
.
Major industrial estates were developed to the south of Glenrothes, largely as a result of the proximity to the proposed East Fife Regional Road (A92) which was developed in 1989 giving dual carriageway access to the main central Scotland road network. The Silicon Glen era peaked in the 1990s with Canon developing their first UK manufacturing plant at Westwood Park in Glenrothes in 1992. ADC Telecommunications
, a major American electronics company, established a base at Bankhead in early 2000 with the promise of a substantial number of jobs. By 2004 both companies had closed their Glenrothes operations with the promised jobs growth never materialising to any substantial level. The electronics industry in Glenrothes was dependant upon an inward investment strategy that led to almost 43% of employment in foreign-owned plants which were susceptible to changes in global economic markets. The turn of the century marked the decline of major electronics manufacturing in Scotland with a consolidation in the sector as a whole affecting towns like Glenrothes who built much of their economic base on electronics industries. Following the loss of Canon and ADC in Glenrothes other companies have established their operations in the vacant units. The former ADC building was occupied by online retailer Amazon.co.uk in 2005. The latest proposals for the facility will see Fife Council convert the building for use as a new super depot, with Amazon.co.uk relocating to a larger facility in nearby Dunfermline
.
The GDC left a lasting legacy on the town by overseeing the development of 15,378 houses, 5174125 ft2 of industrial floorspace, 735476 ft2 of office floorspace and 576977 ft2 of shopping floorspace. Since the demise of the GDC Glenrothes continues to serve as Fife's principle administrative centre and serves a wide area as a service, employment and retail centre. Glenrothes gained national publicity in 2009 by winning the Carbuncle Award following an unofficial contest operated by Urban Realm and Carnyx Group which was set up to criticise the quality of built environment
s in Scotland. Glenrothes was awarded the category of the most dismal place in Scotland for its "depressed and investment starved town centre". This generated mixed views from locals and built environment professions alike. Contrary to this the town has also won awards for the "Best Kept Large Town" and the most "Clean, sustainable and beautiful community" in Scotland in the Beautiful Scotland competition and was the winner in the "large town" category in the 2011 Royal Horticultural Society
Britain in Bloom
competition achieving a Gold award in the UK finals.
UK Government established a wind-up order for all of the UK's new town development corporations. Responsibilities for the assets, management and governance of all of the new towns were to be transferred to either private sector companies or to the local authorities or other government organisations. The GDC was finally wound up in 1995 after which responsibility for Glenrothes was largely transferred to Fife Council.
Glenrothes is currently represented by a number of tiers of elected government. North Glenrothes Community Council and Pitteuchar, Stenton and Finglassie Community Council form the lowest tier of governance whose statutory role is to communicate local opinion to local and central government. Glenrothes now lies within one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. The town is headquarters of Fife Council which is the executive
, deliberative
and legislative body responsible for local governance. Council meetings take place in Fife House (formerly known as Glenrothes House) in the town centre. The west wing of the building was built by the Glenrothes Development Corporation (GDC) as their offices in 1969, which was later used as the headquarters of Fife Regional Council. Since the last Scottish election in 2007, the council is jointly run by a Scottish National Party
/Liberal Democrats
coalition with 44 seats together. Local councillor, Peter Grant was elected as leader of Fife Council.
Glenrothes forms part of the county constituency
of Glenrothes
, electing one Member of Parliament
(MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom by the first past the post system. Lindsay Roy
of the Labour Party
is the MP for Glenrothes. For the purposes of the Scottish Parliament
, Glenrothes forms part of the Mid Fife and Glenrothes
constituency following the 2011 Scottish elections. This newly formed constituency replaces the former Central Fife constituency taking in the Leven, Largo and Kennoway ward and excluding the Buckhaven, Methil and Wemyss Villages ward. Each constituency elects one Member of the Scottish Parliament
(MSP) by the first past the post system of election, and the region elects seven additional members to produce a form of proportional representation. The constituency is represented by Tricia Marwick, MSP, of the Scottish National Party (SNP), who is also the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament
.
and Dundee
are located almost equidistantly from Glenrothes at 32 miles (51.5 km) and 27 miles (43.5 km) away, respectively. Its OS Grid reference
is NO281015. The boundaries of the town are virtually indistinguishable between its neighbouring small towns and villages forming a contiguous urban area. The neighbouring settlements are Coaltown of Balgonie, Leslie
, Markinch
and Thornton
. The villages of Kinglassie, Milton of Balgonie and Star of Markinch are located slightly further away and are physically separated from Glenrothes by farmland.
The northern parts of the settlement lie upland on the southern fringes of the Lomond Hills Regional Park
. The central parts of the town extend between the southern edge of the River Leven
valley; a substantial green space which passes east west through the town, and the Warout Ridge. Southern parts of Glenrothes are largely industrial and are situated on land which gently slopes south towards the Lochty Burn and the village of Thornton.
The height above mean sea level at the town centre is 300 feet (91.4 m). Temperatures in Glenrothes, like the rest of Scotland, are relatively moderate given its northern latitude. Fife is a peninsula, located between the Firth of Tay
in the north, the Firth of Forth
in the south and the North Sea
in the east. Summers are relatively cool and the warming of the water over the summer results in warm winters. Average annual temperatures in Glenrothes range from a maximum of 18 °C (64.4 °F) to a minimum of 9 °C (48.2 °F).
The Glenrothes area's geology is predominantly made up by glacial deposits with the subsoil largely consisting of boulder clay
with a band of sand and gravel in the area to the north of the River Leven. The river valley largely comprises alluvium
deposits and there are also igneous intrusions of olivine
dolerite throughout the area. Productive coal measures were largely recorded to the south of the designated area, south of the line of the B921 Kinglassie road. These coal measures form part of the East Fife coalfield
and prior to 1962 the deposits there were to be worked by the Rothes Colliery, until it was found that there were severe issues with water penetration and subsequent flooding. Smaller limestone coal outcrops that had been historically worked were recorded around the Balbirnie and Cadham/Balfarg areas with the land that is now Gilvenbank Park found particularly to be heavily undermined.
Landscaping around the town has included the blending of housing into the northern hillside through the use of structural planting and tree belts. A linked network of semi-natural landscape areas throughout the town allow for a mix of biodiversity
with different flora
and fauna
and wildlife habitats. Areas of ancient woodland
are found in Riverside Park and Balbirnie Park, both of which are also designated historic gardens and designed landscapes. Balbirnie Park is renowned for having a large collection of rhododendron
species. Protected wildlife species found in the Glenrothes area include red squirrels, water voles and various types of bats. Landscape areas also act as natural drainage systems
, reducing the likelihood of flooding in the built up areas of the town, with rainwater flows channelled to the River Leven, or to the Lochty Burn. Landscape planning
has also ensured that Glenrothes' road network, with particular focuses on the town's many roundabouts, provides green networks throughout the town.
The settlement has been purposely planned using a series of masterplans. Development of Glenrothes started in Woodside in the east and progressed westwards. The first town masterplan was implemented as far as South Parks and Rimbleton housing precincts. The early residential precincts, developed under the first masterplan, were based on Ebenezer Howard
's Garden City
philosophy, using relatively tried and tested principles of town planning and architecture which is reflected in their housing styles and layouts.
A second town masterplan was developed in the late 1960s following Glenrothes' change of role and was to accommodate an increased population target of 50,000-70,000. New areas of land in the north and south of the designated area were brought into production for new development. The road network was upgraded to deal with projected increases in car ownership and new housing estates were developed to the west, then to the south and finally to the north of the designated area. The housing precincts of the 1960s and 1970s, developed under the second masterplan, departed from the garden city principles instead adopting Radburn principles; separating as far as possible footpaths from roads. The townscape changed with a mixture of higher densities and more contemporary architectural styles and new development layouts. The fronts of houses were designed to face onto public footpaths and open spaces with car parking kept either to the rear of properties or in parking bays located nearby. Housing precincts from the 1980s onwards were largely developed by the private sector
with the majority of this housing developed in suburban cul-de-sacs. The Mid Fife Local Plan is guiding the future development of the town and has identified land in the east and west of the settlement and its surrounding villages for the development of approximately 1,800 new houses. There are also proposals for renewal of the town centre and for upgrading the town's industrial estates and business parks.
The 2001 census recorded the population of Glenrothes at 38,679. A more recent population estimate of the town was recorded at 38,750 in 2008. When combined with the adjoining settlements of Leslie
, Markinch
, Thornton
and Coaltown of Balgonie the Glenrothes urban area has a population of 47,280. The demographic make-up of the population is much in line with the rest of Scotland. The age group from 30-44 year olds form the largest portion of the population (23%). The median age of males and females living in Glenrothes in 2001 was 36 and 37 years, compared to 37 and 39 years for those in the whole of Scotland.
The place of birth of the town's residents was 97% United Kingdom (including 88.28% from Scotland), 0.26% Republic of Ireland, 1.04% from other European Union countries, and 1.69% from elsewhere in the world. The economic activity of residents aged 16–74 was 41.35% in full-time employment, 11.61% in part-time employment, 5.69% self-employed, 4.4% unemployed, 2.61% students with jobs, 4.46% students without jobs, 14.56% retired, 5.42% looking after home or family, 6.65% permanently sick or disabled, and 3.22% economically inactive for other reasons. Compared with the average demography of Scotland, Glenrothes has low proportions of people born outside the United Kingdom and has fewer proportions for people over 75 years old.
The Glenrothes area's economy largely comprises service sector and manufacturing jobs with moderate levels of employment in financial and business services, construction and retail. Unemployment and claimant count levels are marginally higher than the Scottish average, however the area has a large net inflow of commuters and provides around 30,000 jobs; approximately 24% of the total number of jobs in Fife. There are large concentrations of employment sites in the south of the town and at sites close to the town centre. Major employment areas in Glenrothes include: Bankhead, Eastfield, Pentland Park, Queensway, Southfield, Viewfield, Westwood Park and Whitehill.
Wholesale and retail distribution jobs accounted for approximately 15% of the total number of jobs in the Glenrothes area in 2009. The majority of shopping, services and administrative facilities in Glenrothes are concentrated in the town centre
(central business district
). The Kingdom Centre
forms the main shopping element of the town centre containing approximately 100 shops as well as a variety of cafes, the town's central library and the Rothes Halls- the town's theatre, civic and exhibition centre. An independent commercial cinema
and bingo hall complex are located adjacent to the Kingdom Centre.
The town centre has expanded beyond its original boundaries into the Queensway employment area. A number of commercial operators including the town's major supermarkets and a large bingohall complex are located in Queensway. A retail park
has also been constructed at the Saltire Centre, approximately half of a mile (1 km) to the southwest of the town centre.
A number of public service agencies and authorities are based in Glenrothes contributing to the town's administrative centre function. Fife Constabulary
has established its headquarters in Glenrothes at Viewfield. HM Revenue and Customs, Kingdom Housing Association and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) also have offices in Glenrothes at Pentland Park; a business park within the town. The Adam Smith College is a key employer in the town with a large campus based adjacent to Viewfield. Fife's prominent local authority headquarters building is located at North Street in the town centre. Many of the other council departments are contained in a number of the town centre's office blocks.
In 2009 manufacturing accounted for 19% of employment in Glenrothes. Traditional industries exist in the area, with paper
manufacturing being one of the town's largest employers. Tullis Russell is a large paper manufacturer which has operated from its current site for over 200 years, pre-dating the designation of Glenrothes. The current facility is made up by an agglomeration of two former mills; the Auchmuty Mill and the Rothes Mill. The plant is in the process of developing a 50 megawatt biomass
powerstation which will generate enough electricity to power the plant and the surrounding town. A smaller paper manufacturer, Fourstones Paper Mill, has established operations at the Fettykil Mill in Leslie to the west of the town.
A number of high tech
industrial companies are located in Glenrothes largely specialised in electronics
manufacturing
. These are what remain of the clustering of Silicon Glen
operations in the area which has gradually reduced and consolidated since the peak in the late 1990s. The number of people employed in the electronics sector in the Glenrothes area in 2009 was 1,425 which constitutes approximately 50% of the number of jobs in this sector in Fife. Companies specialised in this sector include Semefab which produces Micro Electric Mechanical Systems (MEMS
) and Brand Rex which specialises in the development of fibre optic cabling. Other major companies which have established a base in Glenrothes include Bosch Rexroth
(hydraulics
manufacturing), Raytheon
(Defence) and Velux
(roof windows manufacturing).
. "The Good Samaritan" sculpture was produced by Edinburgh based sculptor, Ronald Rae
, who was commissioned by the GDC to produce a piece of art work in celebration of the town's 40th anniversary in 1988. Also in 1988 town artist Malcolm Robertson produced the "Giant Irises" sculpture as Glenrothes' contribution to the Glasgow Garden Festival
. The sculpture was awarded the John Brown Clydebank award for the "Most Original and Amusing Artifact" at the festival. The sculpture was re-erected at Leslie Roundabout in Glenrothes following the festival.
The town has won numerous awards locally and nationally for the quality of its landscaping; something that is promoted by the "Glenrothes in Bloom Group" who were established as a town promotion initiative through the "Take a Pride in Glenrothes" campaign. The Glenrothes Development Corporation devoted around one third of land in Glenrothes to the provision of open space. As a consequence the town has numerous parks, the largest being Balbirnie Park, Carleton Park, Gilvenbank Park, Riverside Park, and Warout Park. The Lomond Hills Regional Park borders and enters the town to the north and east.
The Rothes Halls complex is the town's main theatre, exhibition, conference and civic centre venue. The facility caters for a large variety of regional and local events including theatrical and musical performances, as well as arts and crafts exhibitions. The town's central library and a cafe also form part of the complex and a community cinema has been operating on a monthly basis. The community cinema has had a number of positive benefits on Glenrothes with the town hosting its first film festival in October 2010, since the Rushes Digital Film Festival stopped in 2007, following the closure of the town's only media access centre - MIMAC. The 2010 festival was held in the Rothes Halls and presented a series of short film competition entries and celebrated the film industry. The success of the community cinema also generated private sector interest which resulted in a commercial cinema opening in Glenrothes in 2010 giving the local population access to the latest film releases.
Glenrothes does not have a museum, however there is an aspiration for a permanent heritage centre to be formally established in the town following a successful trial. The establishment of a formal heritage centre would provide a record of the history of Glenrothes and its surrounding communities from the early 19th century to the late 20th century when the new town's development corporation was wound up.
There are a number of social clubs and organisations operating within Glenrothes which contribute to the cultural and community offerings of the town. These include an art
club, various youth clubs, a floral art club, amateur theatre
groups, a choral society and a variety of sports clubs. Glenrothes hosts an annual gala
which is held at Warout Park and has a variety of family activities including a dog show
, highland dancing and a fun fair with stalls. Markinch hosts an annual Highland Games
and the other surrounding villages host their own annual gala days and festivals.
The town has a large variety of established sports facilities including two 18-hole golf courses (Glenrothes and Balbirnie), a football stadium at Warout and a major sports complex, the Fife Institute of Physical and Recreational Education (FIPRE). The local football club is the Glenrothes F.C.
, a junior
side who play at Warout Park. Glenrothes also has a rugby club based at Carleton Park and a cricket club who play at Riverside Park. A new multi-million pound replacement regional sports centre is currently being built on the site of the existing Fife Institute. The new centre is to be re-named the "Michael Woods Sports and Leisure Centre" following a controversial decision taken by the Glenrothes Area Committee. A majority result of a public consultation suggested that the centre should be named the "Glenrothes Sports and Leisure Centre", but local councillors ignored the result of the consultation and instead decided to name it after the late SNP Councillor Michael Woods. The Road Running Festival in Glenrothes is the largest annual sporting event in the town with over 1500 people of all ages and levels of fitness taking part and has been held annually since 1983.
A war memorial was constructed in Glenrothes in 2007 following the deaths of two local Black Watch
soldiers in Iraq. Prior to this Glenrothes was in the unusual position of not being able to host its own Remembrance Sunday commemorations. Unlike traditional memorials, the Glenrothes war memorial consists of two interlinking rings of standing stones.
Glenrothes has a twin-town link with Böblingen
, a city in Baden-Württemberg
in Germany
since 1971. As early as 1962 a local councillor had suggested that the town might "twin" with a town on the Continent. Some years later a friendship grew up between teachers at Glenrothes High School and the 'Gymnasium' in Böblingen which eventually led to the twinning of the towns. Since then there have been a number of exchanges on official, club and personal levels.
The most prominent landmarks in Glenrothes are the River Leven Bridge, the Tullis Russell factory chimneys, Raeburn Heights; a residential tower block and Fife House; an office block, both of which sit at the western corners of the town centre. The River Leven Bridge, which spans Riverside Park and carries the town's Western Distributor Road, is a cable-stayed bridge
that was completed in 1995. The bridge was designed by Dundee based Nicoll Russell Studios, Architects
and was commissioned by the Glenrothes Development Corporation (GDC) as a landmark creating a gateway into Riverside Park that could be seen from further afield. The bridge was constructed by Balfour Beatty Construction (Scotland) and it was the first reinforced-concrete cable-stayed structure ever built in the UK.
A number of Glenrothes' artworks and sculptures act as landmarks at major gateways into the town, such as the "Giant Irises" at Leslie Roundabout, and the Glenrothes "Gateway Totum" at Bankhead Roundabout. A number of other sculptures have recently been relocated to more visually prominent locations around the town creating new landmarks. Five pieces of Glenrothes artworks have recently been earmarked for listed status by Historic Scotland
. These are "Ex Terra", "The Birds", "The Henge", "The Heritage (Lest We Forget)" and "Work" (or Industry, Past and Present). Historic Scotland has also produced a dedicated website, a video and an information brochure dedicated to the Glenrothes town art.
Glenrothes is home to the remains of ancient stone circles which can be seen at Balbirnie and Balfarg
in the northeast of the town. The Balfarg henge
was constructed around 3,000BC and contains the remnants of a stone circle which has been partly reconstructed. The henge was excavated between 1977 and 1978 prior to the development of a new housing estate, however speculation that there was a henge at Balfarg dated back to 1949 when aerial photos were taken prior to the development of Glenrothes which revealed evidence of a circular ditch with a bank around it. Successive seasons of ploughing are thought to have destroyed much evidence of the original henge. The Balbirnie henge located approximately 500m away was excavated in 1970-71. In order to allow widening of the A92 the stones were moved a short distance to a new location at North Lodge and reconstructed as nearly as possible in the original way. The stone circle has been carbon dated as being from the bronze age
. It is thought that the Balbrinie stone circle and the Balfarg circle once formed part of a larger ceremonial complex.
There are a number of former stately homes located in Glenrothes. Balbirnie House, the category-A listed Georgian
former home of the Balfour family, was bought along with its grounds in 1969 by the GDC from the Balfour family to be developed as Balbirnie Park and golf course. The house was later occupied and restored by the GDC in 1981, to stop the property falling into disrepair. This led to potential interest and the house was converted into a four-star hotel in 1989. The B-listed former stable block of the house was converted into a craft centre. Balgeddie House, a C-Listed former Edwardian
residence of Sir Robert Spencer Nairn located in the northwest of the town, has also been converted into a high quality hotel. Leslie House, the category-A listed 17th century former home of the Rothes family, became a care home for the elderly in 1945; owned by the Church of Scotland. The building was being renovated to become luxury apartments however the interior and roof of the house were destroyed by fire in late 2008 delaying the redevelopment. Much of the former grounds of Leslie House have been used to create Riverside Park. Collydean
precinct hosts a ruin of a 17th-century laird's house called Pitcairn House
.
The town is also home to a number of churches which act as important landmarks as a result of their unique architectural styles and sometimes their locations at key road junctions. The three earliest churches are now listed buildings. These are St. Margaret's Church in Woodside (category C listed), St. Paul's RC Church in Auchmuty (category A listed), and St. Columba's Church on Church Street (category A listed) in the town centre. St. Paul's RC was designed by architects Gillespie, Kidd and Coia and has been described as "the most significant piece of modern church architecture north of the English Channel". In 1993 it was listed as one of sixty key monuments
of post-war
architecture by the international conservation organisation DoCoMoMo. The church sits at a junction between two main distributor roads. St Columba's Church, designed by architects Wheeler & Sproson, has recently undergone significant restoration. Internally the church contains a large mural created by Alberto Morrocco
titled 'The Way of the Cross', which was completed in 1962. Externally the church with its distinctive triangular iron bell tower and Mondrian
inspired stain glass windows acts as a landmark at the south-western gateway to the town centre.
Early precincts in the town were served by their own primary schools which were to be provided on the basis of one school for every 1,000 houses. The first primary school to be opened in Glenrothes was Carleton Primary School, built in 1953 in Woodside. In total thirteen primary schools were developed in the town, twelve of which are non-denominational and one which serves catholic pupils.
There are three secondary schools in Glenrothes, the earliest of which is Auchmuty High School
, opened in 1957. Secondary Schools were to be provided on the basis of one school for every 4,000 houses. Glenwood High School
was built in 1962 to serve the western precincts. Prior to 1966 older pupils had to attend schools in neighbouring towns to continue "Higher"
examinations as Auchmuty and Glenwood only provided for pupils at junior secondary level. Glenrothes High School
was built in 1966 to accommodate pupils at a higher level. However changes in the education system nationally meant that both Auchmuty and Glenwood were raised to full high school status in the 1970s. Auchmuty High School serves the east and southern parts of Glenrothes as well as the villages of Markinch, Coaltown of Balgonie and Thornton. As part of the £126 million Building Fife's Future Project, construction has started on a replacement for Auchmuty and this is scheduled to open in August 2013. Glenrothes High School serves the central and northern areas in the town. Glenwood High School serves the western parts of Glenrothes and the villages of Leslie and Kinglassie. Catholic pupils in Glenrothes attend St Andrew's High School in Kirkcaldy
.
Further education in the town is provided at Adam Smith College
which was created in 2005 from the merger between the former Glenrothes College and Fife College, which was based in Kirkcaldy and is Scotland's third largest college. The Glenrothes campus was constructed in the early 1970s, and originally specialised in paper manufacturing, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. A second institute known as FIPRE (Fife Institute of Physical and Recreational Education) was built adjacent catering for sport and physical education as well as providing a sports centre for the town. The main campus of the college is located at Stenton Road in Viewfield to the south of the town centre. A smaller campus also exists within the Southfield Industrial Estate. The Stenton Road Campus was significantly extended in 2010 with the development of the "Future Skills Centre". This centre includes new departments in engineering, construction, renewables and science to cater for emerging industries specialising in renewable energy
and low carbon technologies as well as provide training for major engineering projects.
Glenrothes has a planned road network which was created to accommodate projected future traffic levels. The original masterplans ensured that "through traffic" is bypassed around the housing precincts by a network of "Freeway" and "Highway" distributor roads which connect each precinct to the purposely designed town centre and to the industrial estates. A purposely designed pedestrian and cycle system was also created using a network of ring and radial routes. Another element that was adopted was the use of roundabouts at junctions instead of traffic lights allowing traffic to flow freely.
The town has direct dual-carriageway access to the M90
via the A92
Trunk Road. The A92 passes north/south through the town and connects Glenrothes with Dundee in the north and Dunfermline in the southwest where it merges with the M90. This gives Glenrothes a continuous dual-carriageway link to Edinburgh, whilst much of the route north to Dundee remains single-carriageway. The A911 road passes east/west through the town and connects it with Levenmouth in the east and Milnathort
and the M90 in the west. The B921 Kinglassie Road, described in early masterplans as the Southern Freeway, links Glenrothes to the former mining communities of Cardenden
and Kinglassie
, and to Westfield. The route is a dual carriageway between Bankhead Roundabout and as far west as Fife Airport. Early masterplans show that this route was originally intended to be upgraded to provide duelled connections to the A92 Chapel junction in Kirkcaldy, however this has never been implemented.
The town has a major bus station in the town centre providing frequent links to the cities of Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow as well as to surrounding towns and villages. Two railway stations outside of the main town serve the Glenrothes area - Glenrothes with Thornton railway station
and Markinch railway station
. Glenrothes is home to an airfield, Fife Airport
(ICAO code EGPJ), which is used for general aviation with private light aircraft. Edinburgh Airport
is the nearest international airport
to Glenrothes, Dundee Airport
operates daily flights to London, Birmingham and Belfast.
Fife
Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...
, in east-central Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. It is located approximately 30 miles (48.3 km) from both Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, which lies to the south and Dundee
Dundee
Dundee is the fourth-largest city in Scotland and the 39th most populous settlement in the United Kingdom. It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea...
to the north. The town had an estimated population of 38,750 in 2008, making Glenrothes the third largest settlement in Fife. The town's name comes from its historical link with the Earl of Rothes
Earl of Rothes
Earl of Rothes is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created in 1458 for George Leslie, 1st Lord Leslie. He had already been created Lord Leslie in 1445, also in the Peerage of Scotland. His grandson, the third Earl, having only succeeded his elder brother in March 1513, was killed at the...
who owned much of the land upon which the new town was built. "Glen" was added to the name to avoid confusion with Rothes
Rothes
Rothes is a town in Moray, Scotland, south of Elgin and on the banks of the River Spey. The village has a population of 1209 .At the south end of the village lie the remains of Rothes Castle, which dates from the 13th century...
in Moray
Moray
Moray is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It lies in the north-east of the country, with coastline on the Moray Firth, and borders the council areas of Aberdeenshire and Highland.- History :...
and in recognition that the town lies in a river valley; Glen
Glen
A glen is a valley, typically one that is long, deep, and often glacially U-shaped; or one with a watercourse running through such a valley. Whittow defines it as a "Scottish term for a deep valley in the Highlands" that is "narrower than a strath."...
being the Scottish word for a valley.
Planned in the late 1940s as one of Scotland's first new town
New town
A new town is a specific type of a planned community, or planned city, that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed in a previously undeveloped area. This contrasts with settlements that evolve in a more ad hoc fashion. Land use conflicts are uncommon in new...
s its original purpose was to house miners who were to work at a newly established coal mine, the Rothes Colliery. Following the failure of the mine the town developed as an important industrial centre in Scotland's Silicon Glen
Silicon Glen
Silicon Glen is a nickname for the high tech sector of Scotland. It is applied to the Central Belt triangle between Dundee, Inverclyde and Edinburgh, which includes Fife, Glasgow and Stirling; although electronics facilities outside this area may also be included in the term. The term has been in...
between 1961 and 2000 with several major electronics and hi-tech companies setting up facilities in the town. The Glenrothes Development Corporation (GDC), a non-departmental public body, was established to develop, manage and promote the new town. The GDC supported by the local authority oversaw the governance of the new town until the wind-up of the GDC in 1995, after which responsibility was transferred to Fife Council.
Glenrothes is the administrative capital of Fife containing both the Fife Council and Fife Constabulary
Fife Constabulary
Fife Constabulary is the territorial police force responsible for the Scottish council area of Fife.The area policed by Fife Constabulary has a resident population of just over 350,000, almost a third of whom live in one of the three principal towns of Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes...
headquarters. Manufacturing and engineering industries, public services and service industries are particularly important to the town's economy. Major employers include Adam Smith College
Adam Smith College
Adam Smith College is a Scottish further and higher education college located over various campuses across the county of Fife.-History:The college was formed on August 1, 2005 by the merger of Glenrothes College and Fife College and is named after Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, who...
(education), Bosch Rexroth
Bosch Rexroth
Bosch Rexroth is an engineering firm based in Lohr am Main in Germany. It is the result of a merger on 1 May 2001 between Mannesmann Rexroth AG and the Automation Technology Business Unit of Robert Bosch GmbH, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH. Rexroth in turn consisted of a...
(hydraulics manufacturing), Brand Rex (fibre optics manufacturing), Raytheon
Raytheon
Raytheon Company is a major American defense contractor and industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. It was previously involved in corporate and special-mission aircraft until early 2007...
(defence industry) and Tullis Russell (papermakers). Glenrothes is unique in Fife as the majority of the town's centre
Town centre
The town centre is the term used to refer to the commercial or geographical centre or core area of a town.Town centres are traditionally associated with shopping or retail. They are also the centre of communications with major public transport hubs such as train or bus stations...
is contained indoors, within Fife's largest indoor shopping centre
Shopping mall
A shopping mall, shopping centre, shopping arcade, shopping precinct or simply mall is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area — a modern, indoor version...
, the Kingdom Shopping Centre
Kingdom Shopping Centre
The Kingdom Centre forms the main shopping element of Glenrothes town centre. It is the largest indoor shopping centre in Fife and is one of the largest single-level indoor shopping centres in Scotland with around 40,000 sq m of floorspace.The centre is popular locally and has some of the highest...
.
The town has won multiple awards in the "Beautiful Scotland" and "Britain in Bloom
Britain in Bloom
RHS Britain in Bloom, supported by Anglian Home Improvements, is the largest horticultural campaign in the United Kingdom. It was first held in 1963, initiated by the British Tourist Board based on the example set by Fleurissement de France. It has been organised by the Royal Horticultural Society ...
" contests for the quality of its parks and landscaping. It has numerous outdoor sculptures and artworks, a result of the appointment of town artists in the early development of the town. Public facilities include a sports centre, two golf courses, a civic centre and theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
, a cinema
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and a college campus. The A92 trunk road provides the principal access to the town passing through Glenrothes and connecting it to the wider Scottish motorway and trunk road network. A major bus station is located in the town centre providing regional and local bus services to surrounding settlements.
History
Glenrothes was designated in 1948 under the New Towns (Scotland) Act 1946New Towns Act 1946
The New Towns Act 1946 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which allowed the government to designate areas as new towns, and passing development control functions to a Development Corporation. Several new towns were created in the years following its passing...
as Scotland's second post-war
Post-war
A post-war period or postwar period is the interval immediately following the ending of a war and enduring as long as war does not resume. A post-war period can become an interwar period or interbellum when a war between the same parties resumes at a later date...
new town. The name Rothes comes from the association with the north-east Scotland Earl of Rothes
Earl of Rothes
Earl of Rothes is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created in 1458 for George Leslie, 1st Lord Leslie. He had already been created Lord Leslie in 1445, also in the Peerage of Scotland. His grandson, the third Earl, having only succeeded his elder brother in March 1513, was killed at the...
, family name Leslie. The Leslie family historically owned much of the land upon which Glenrothes has been built. Glen
Glen
A glen is a valley, typically one that is long, deep, and often glacially U-shaped; or one with a watercourse running through such a valley. Whittow defines it as a "Scottish term for a deep valley in the Highlands" that is "narrower than a strath."...
(from the Scottish Gaelic word 'gleann' meaning valley) was added to prevent confusion with Rothes
Rothes
Rothes is a town in Moray, Scotland, south of Elgin and on the banks of the River Spey. The village has a population of 1209 .At the south end of the village lie the remains of Rothes Castle, which dates from the 13th century...
in Moray
Moray
Moray is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It lies in the north-east of the country, with coastline on the Moray Firth, and borders the council areas of Aberdeenshire and Highland.- History :...
, and because the town lies on the Leven
Leven, Fife
Leven is a seaside town in Fife, set in the east Central Lowlands of Scotland. It lies on the coast of the Firth of Forth at the mouth of the River Leven, north-east of Kirkcaldy and east of Glenrothes....
valley.
Hamlet (place)
A hamlet is usually a rural settlement which is too small to be considered a village, though sometimes the word is used for a different sort of community. Historically, when a hamlet became large enough to justify building a church, it was then classified as a village...
of Cadham and Woodside which were established to house workers at the local paper mills. Originally the new town was going to be centred on Markinch
Markinch
Markinch is a small town situated in the heart of Fife, in the eastern central lowlands of Scotland. According to an estimate taken in 2008, the town...
, however the village's infrastructure
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
was deemed unable to withstand the substantial growth required to realise a new town. Leslie
Leslie, Fife
Leslie is a large village on the northern tip of the River Leven Valley, to the west of Glenrothes in Fife. According to the population estimates , the village has a population of 3,092. The village was granted burgh of barony status by James II in 1458 for George Leslie who became the first Earl...
and Thornton
Thornton, Fife
Thornton is a village in Fife, Scotland. It is between Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes, and stands between the River Ore and Lochty Burn, which are at opposite ends of the main street.- Transport :...
were also considered as possible locations, but finally an area of 5320 acres (2,153 ha) between all of these villages was designated as new town zone. Aytoun, Balfour, Balgonie and Rothes estates were all incorporated in Glenrothes' assigned area along with the historical stately homes Balbirnie House
Balbirnie House
Balbirnie House is an early 19th-century country house in Glenrothes, in central Fife, Scotland. The present house was completed in 1817 as a rebuild of an 18th-century building, itself a replacement for a 17th-century dwelling. The home of the Balfour family from 1640, the house was sold in 1969...
, Balgeddie House and Leslie House. The different areas (precincts) of Glenrothes have been named after the hamlets already established (e.g. Cadham, Woodside), the farms which once occupied the land (e.g. Caskieberran, Collydean, Rimbleton) or historical stately homes in the area (e.g. Balbirnie, Balgeddie, Leslie Parks).
The planning, development, management and promotion of Glenrothes was the responsibility of the Glenrothes Development Corporation (GDC), a quango
Quango
Quango or qango is an acronym used notably in the United Kingdom, Ireland and elsewhere to label an organisation to which government has devolved power...
appointed by the Secretary of State for Scotland
Secretary of State for Scotland
The Secretary of State for Scotland is the principal minister of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom with responsibilities for Scotland. He heads the Scotland Office , a government department based in London and Edinburgh. The post was created soon after the Union of the Crowns, but was...
. The corporation board consisted of eight members including a chairman and deputy chairman. The first meeting of the GDC was in Auchmuty House, provided by Tullis Russell on 20 June 1949. The first town masterplan sub-divided the town's designated area into self-contained residential precincts with their own primary schools, local shops and community facilities. Separating industry as far as possible from housing areas in planned industrial estates was a key element of the plan. This was a step change from the unplanned, congested and polluted industrial towns and cities of the previous centuries where cramped unsanitary housing and dirty industries were built in close proximity to one another. The vision for Glenrothes was to provide a clean, healthy and safe environment for the town's residents.
The primary reason for the designation of Glenrothes was to house miners who were to work at a new coal mine and their families. This was partially driven by a national energy strategy developed by the Government following the war and was further developed in a report produced in 1946 by Sir Frank Mears to the Central and South-East Scotland Planning Committee which made the case for a new town in Leslie-Markinch area to support growth in the coal mining industry in Fife. The new mine was to be the most technologically advanced in Scotland and was built west of Thornton, an established village south of Glenrothes. It was named the Rothes Colliery and was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957. It was expected that 2,500 miners would be employed at the mine who would produce 5,000 tonnes of coal per day and huge railway yards were established to transport the extracted coal from the site. However, at its peak the Rothes Colliery employed only over 1,500 miners. The pit was supposed to stay operational for 100 years and was expected to be a key driver for the economic regeneration of central Fife. In 1961, only four years after opening, the huge investment was written off and the mine closed as a result of un-stemmable flooding and geological problems. Ironically, miners who had worked in older deep pits in the area had fore-warned against the development of the Rothes Pit for this very reason. The closure of the state-of-the-art facility left the huge enclosed concrete wheel-towers standing at Thornton for many years as a forlorn symbol of what could have been until demolished in the early 1990s. While the establishment of the new town was to be based upon the development of the mine it was intended that a "mixed community" would be housed in Glenrothes and that other forms of employment would be attracted to the area. In 1944 the Scottish Coalfield Authority condemned the segregation of miners in mining villages and emerging paradigms sought to encourage miners to be housed away from collieries and to integrate with a mixed community where members of their family would also be able to find suitable employment. An additional benefit to this form of social engineering was communities would be less vulnerable to depressions in the coal industry.
Prior to the development of Glenrothes the main industries in the area were papermaking
Papermaking
Papermaking is the process of making paper, a substance which is used universally today for writing and packaging.In papermaking a dilute suspension of fibres in water is drained through a screen, so that a mat of randomly interwoven fibres is laid down. Water is removed from this mat of fibres by...
, coal mining and farming. Unlike Cumbernauld
Cumbernauld
Cumbernauld is a Scottish new town in North Lanarkshire. It was created in 1956 as a population overspill for Glasgow City. It is the eighth most populous settlement in Scotland and the largest in North Lanarkshire...
, East Kilbride
East Kilbride
East Kilbride is a large suburban town in the South Lanarkshire council area, in the West Central Lowlands of Scotland. Designated as Scotland's first new town in 1947, it forms part of the Greater Glasgow conurbation...
or Livingston
Livingston, Scotland
Livingston is a town in West Lothian, Scotland. It is the fourth post-WWII new town to be built in Scotland, designated in 1962. It is about 15 miles west of Edinburgh and 30 miles east of Glasgow, and is bordered by the towns of Broxburn to the northeast and Bathgate to the northwest.Livingston...
Glenrothes was not originally to be a Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
overspill new town, although it did later take this role. It was however populated in the early 1950s in part by mining families moving from the declining West of Scotland coalfield areas. The coal mine's closure almost resulted in further development of Glenrothes being stopped. However shortly following the closure Central Government decided to change the town's role by appointing Glenrothes as one of the economic focal points for Central Scotland as part of a National Plan for economic growth and development. The Glenrothes Development Corporation were successful in attracting a plethora of modern electronics factories to the town as a consequence. The first big overseas electronic investor was Beckmans Instruments
Beckman Coulter
Beckman Coulter Inc., is a company that makes biomedical laboratory instruments. Founded by Caltech professor Arnold O. Beckman in 1935 as National Technical Laboratories to commercialize a pH meter that he had invented, the company eventually grew to employ over 10,000 people, with $2.4 billion in...
in 1959 followed by Hughes Industries in the early 1960s. A number of other important companies followed establishing Glenrothes as a major hub in Scotland's Silicon Glen
Silicon Glen
Silicon Glen is a nickname for the high tech sector of Scotland. It is applied to the Central Belt triangle between Dundee, Inverclyde and Edinburgh, which includes Fife, Glasgow and Stirling; although electronics facilities outside this area may also be included in the term. The term has been in...
. During the middle of the 1970s, the town also became the headquarters of Fife Regional Council; effectively the county town of Fife, taking over the role from Cupar
Cupar
Cupar is a town and former royal burgh in Fife, Scotland. The town is situated between Dundee and the New Town of Glenrothes.According to a recent population estimate , Cupar had a population around 8,980 making the town the ninth largest settlement in Fife.-History:The town is believed to have...
.
Major industrial estates were developed to the south of Glenrothes, largely as a result of the proximity to the proposed East Fife Regional Road (A92) which was developed in 1989 giving dual carriageway access to the main central Scotland road network. The Silicon Glen era peaked in the 1990s with Canon developing their first UK manufacturing plant at Westwood Park in Glenrothes in 1992. ADC Telecommunications
ADC Telecommunications
ADC Telecommunications was a communications company located in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, a southwest suburb of Minneapolis. It was acquired by TE Connectivity in December 2010 and now ceases to exist as a separate entity...
, a major American electronics company, established a base at Bankhead in early 2000 with the promise of a substantial number of jobs. By 2004 both companies had closed their Glenrothes operations with the promised jobs growth never materialising to any substantial level. The electronics industry in Glenrothes was dependant upon an inward investment strategy that led to almost 43% of employment in foreign-owned plants which were susceptible to changes in global economic markets. The turn of the century marked the decline of major electronics manufacturing in Scotland with a consolidation in the sector as a whole affecting towns like Glenrothes who built much of their economic base on electronics industries. Following the loss of Canon and ADC in Glenrothes other companies have established their operations in the vacant units. The former ADC building was occupied by online retailer Amazon.co.uk in 2005. The latest proposals for the facility will see Fife Council convert the building for use as a new super depot, with Amazon.co.uk relocating to a larger facility in nearby Dunfermline
Dunfermline
Dunfermline is a town and former Royal Burgh in Fife, Scotland, on high ground from the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. According to a 2008 estimate, Dunfermline has a population of 46,430, making it the second-biggest settlement in Fife. Part of the town's name comes from the Gaelic word...
.
The GDC left a lasting legacy on the town by overseeing the development of 15,378 houses, 5174125 ft2 of industrial floorspace, 735476 ft2 of office floorspace and 576977 ft2 of shopping floorspace. Since the demise of the GDC Glenrothes continues to serve as Fife's principle administrative centre and serves a wide area as a service, employment and retail centre. Glenrothes gained national publicity in 2009 by winning the Carbuncle Award following an unofficial contest operated by Urban Realm and Carnyx Group which was set up to criticise the quality of built environment
Built environment
The term built environment refers to the human-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging in scale from personal shelter and buildings to neighborhoods and cities that can often include their supporting infrastructure, such as water supply or energy networks.The built...
s in Scotland. Glenrothes was awarded the category of the most dismal place in Scotland for its "depressed and investment starved town centre". This generated mixed views from locals and built environment professions alike. Contrary to this the town has also won awards for the "Best Kept Large Town" and the most "Clean, sustainable and beautiful community" in Scotland in the Beautiful Scotland competition and was the winner in the "large town" category in the 2011 Royal Horticultural Society
Royal Horticultural Society
The Royal Horticultural Society was founded in 1804 in London, England as the Horticultural Society of London, and gained its present name in a Royal Charter granted in 1861 by Prince Albert...
Britain in Bloom
Britain in Bloom
RHS Britain in Bloom, supported by Anglian Home Improvements, is the largest horticultural campaign in the United Kingdom. It was first held in 1963, initiated by the British Tourist Board based on the example set by Fleurissement de France. It has been organised by the Royal Horticultural Society ...
competition achieving a Gold award in the UK finals.
Governance
In the early years of the creation of the new town the Glenrothes Development Corporation (GDC) with input from the local authority, then Fife County Council, oversaw the governance of the new town. In the early 1990s the then ConservativeConservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
UK Government established a wind-up order for all of the UK's new town development corporations. Responsibilities for the assets, management and governance of all of the new towns were to be transferred to either private sector companies or to the local authorities or other government organisations. The GDC was finally wound up in 1995 after which responsibility for Glenrothes was largely transferred to Fife Council.
Glenrothes is currently represented by a number of tiers of elected government. North Glenrothes Community Council and Pitteuchar, Stenton and Finglassie Community Council form the lowest tier of governance whose statutory role is to communicate local opinion to local and central government. Glenrothes now lies within one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. The town is headquarters of Fife Council which is the executive
Executive (government)
Executive branch of Government is the part of government that has sole authority and responsibility for the daily administration of the state bureaucracy. The division of power into separate branches of government is central to the idea of the separation of powers.In many countries, the term...
, deliberative
Deliberation
Deliberation is a process of thoughtfully weighing options, usually prior to voting. In legal settings a jury famously uses deliberation because it is given specific options, like guilty or not guilty, along with information and arguments to evaluate. Deliberation emphasizes the use of logic and...
and legislative body responsible for local governance. Council meetings take place in Fife House (formerly known as Glenrothes House) in the town centre. The west wing of the building was built by the Glenrothes Development Corporation (GDC) as their offices in 1969, which was later used as the headquarters of Fife Regional Council. Since the last Scottish election in 2007, the council is jointly run by a Scottish National Party
Scottish National Party
The Scottish National Party is a social-democratic political party in Scotland which campaigns for Scottish independence from the United Kingdom....
/Liberal Democrats
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...
coalition with 44 seats together. Local councillor, Peter Grant was elected as leader of Fife Council.
Glenrothes forms part of the county constituency
United Kingdom constituencies
In the United Kingdom , each of the electoral areas or divisions called constituencies elects one or more members to a parliament or assembly.Within the United Kingdom there are now five bodies with members elected by constituencies:...
of Glenrothes
Glenrothes (UK Parliament constituency)
Glenrothes is a British Parliamentary constituency represented in the House of Commons. It was created for the 2005 general election.The seat is currently held by Lindsay Roy, of the Scottish Labour party...
, electing one Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
(MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom by the first past the post system. Lindsay Roy
Lindsay Roy
Lindsay Allan Roy, CBE, FRSA is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Glenrothes since 2008, and is the former Rector of Inverkeithing High School and Kirkcaldy High School.-Teaching career:...
of the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
is the MP for Glenrothes. For the purposes of the Scottish Parliament
Scottish Parliament
The Scottish Parliament is the devolved national, unicameral legislature of Scotland, located in the Holyrood area of the capital, Edinburgh. The Parliament, informally referred to as "Holyrood", is a democratically elected body comprising 129 members known as Members of the Scottish Parliament...
, Glenrothes forms part of the Mid Fife and Glenrothes
Mid Fife and Glenrothes (Scottish Parliament constituency)
Mid Fife and Glenrothes is a constituency of the Scottish Parliament . It elects one Member of the Scottish Parliament by the plurality method of election...
constituency following the 2011 Scottish elections. This newly formed constituency replaces the former Central Fife constituency taking in the Leven, Largo and Kennoway ward and excluding the Buckhaven, Methil and Wemyss Villages ward. Each constituency elects one Member of the Scottish Parliament
Member of the Scottish Parliament
Member of the Scottish Parliament is the title given to any one of the 129 individuals elected to serve in the Scottish Parliament.-Methods of Election:MSPs are elected in one of two ways:...
(MSP) by the first past the post system of election, and the region elects seven additional members to produce a form of proportional representation. The constituency is represented by Tricia Marwick, MSP, of the Scottish National Party (SNP), who is also the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament
Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament
The Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament is the speaker of the Scottish Parliament, elected by the Members of the Scottish Parliament, by means of an exhaustive ballot. He or she also heads the Corporate Body of the Scottish Parliament and as such is viewed as a figurehead for the entire...
.
Geography
Glenrothes lies in mid-Fife between the agricultural "Howe of Fife" in the north and east and Fife's industrial heartland in the south and west. EdinburghEdinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
and Dundee
Dundee
Dundee is the fourth-largest city in Scotland and the 39th most populous settlement in the United Kingdom. It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea...
are located almost equidistantly from Glenrothes at 32 miles (51.5 km) and 27 miles (43.5 km) away, respectively. Its OS Grid reference
British national grid reference system
The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references used in Great Britain, different from using latitude and longitude....
is NO281015. The boundaries of the town are virtually indistinguishable between its neighbouring small towns and villages forming a contiguous urban area. The neighbouring settlements are Coaltown of Balgonie, Leslie
Leslie, Fife
Leslie is a large village on the northern tip of the River Leven Valley, to the west of Glenrothes in Fife. According to the population estimates , the village has a population of 3,092. The village was granted burgh of barony status by James II in 1458 for George Leslie who became the first Earl...
, Markinch
Markinch
Markinch is a small town situated in the heart of Fife, in the eastern central lowlands of Scotland. According to an estimate taken in 2008, the town...
and Thornton
Thornton, Fife
Thornton is a village in Fife, Scotland. It is between Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes, and stands between the River Ore and Lochty Burn, which are at opposite ends of the main street.- Transport :...
. The villages of Kinglassie, Milton of Balgonie and Star of Markinch are located slightly further away and are physically separated from Glenrothes by farmland.
The northern parts of the settlement lie upland on the southern fringes of the Lomond Hills Regional Park
Lomond Hills
The Lomond Hills , also known as the Paps of Fife lie in the centre of Fife, Scotland. At 522m West Lomond is the highest point in the county of Fife.-Natural geography:...
. The central parts of the town extend between the southern edge of the River Leven
River Leven, Fife
The River Leven is a river in Fife in Scotland. It flows from Loch Leven into the Firth of Forth at the town of Leven. The river is home to brown trout and hosts a run of sea trout and atlantic salmon...
valley; a substantial green space which passes east west through the town, and the Warout Ridge. Southern parts of Glenrothes are largely industrial and are situated on land which gently slopes south towards the Lochty Burn and the village of Thornton.
The height above mean sea level at the town centre is 300 feet (91.4 m). Temperatures in Glenrothes, like the rest of Scotland, are relatively moderate given its northern latitude. Fife is a peninsula, located between the Firth of Tay
Firth of Tay
The Firth of Tay is a firth in Scotland between the council areas of Fife, Perth and Kinross, the City of Dundee and Angus, into which Scotland's largest river in terms of flow, the River Tay, empties....
in the north, the Firth of Forth
Firth of Forth
The Firth of Forth is the estuary or firth of Scotland's River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea, between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh and East Lothian to the south...
in the south and the North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...
in the east. Summers are relatively cool and the warming of the water over the summer results in warm winters. Average annual temperatures in Glenrothes range from a maximum of 18 °C (64.4 °F) to a minimum of 9 °C (48.2 °F).
The Glenrothes area's geology is predominantly made up by glacial deposits with the subsoil largely consisting of boulder clay
Boulder clay
Boulder clay, in geology, is a deposit of clay, often full of boulders, which is formed in and beneath glaciers and ice-sheets wherever they are found, but is in a special sense the typical deposit of the Glacial Period in northern Europe and North America...
with a band of sand and gravel in the area to the north of the River Leven. The river valley largely comprises alluvium
Alluvium
Alluvium is loose, unconsolidated soil or sediments, eroded, deposited, and reshaped by water in some form in a non-marine setting. Alluvium is typically made up of a variety of materials, including fine particles of silt and clay and larger particles of sand and gravel...
deposits and there are also igneous intrusions of olivine
Olivine
The mineral olivine is a magnesium iron silicate with the formula 2SiO4. It is a common mineral in the Earth's subsurface but weathers quickly on the surface....
dolerite throughout the area. Productive coal measures were largely recorded to the south of the designated area, south of the line of the B921 Kinglassie road. These coal measures form part of the East Fife coalfield
Fife Coalfield
The Fife Coalfield was one of the principal coalfields in Scotland. Over fifty collieries were in operation at various times between the middle of the nineteenth century and the closure of the last pit in 1988...
and prior to 1962 the deposits there were to be worked by the Rothes Colliery, until it was found that there were severe issues with water penetration and subsequent flooding. Smaller limestone coal outcrops that had been historically worked were recorded around the Balbirnie and Cadham/Balfarg areas with the land that is now Gilvenbank Park found particularly to be heavily undermined.
Landscaping around the town has included the blending of housing into the northern hillside through the use of structural planting and tree belts. A linked network of semi-natural landscape areas throughout the town allow for a mix of biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
with different flora
Flora
Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animals is fauna.-Etymology:...
and fauna
Fauna
Fauna or faunæ is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna"...
and wildlife habitats. Areas of ancient woodland
Ancient woodland
Ancient woodland is a term used in the United Kingdom to refer specifically to woodland that has existed continuously since 1600 or before in England and Wales . Before those dates, planting of new woodland was uncommon, so a wood present in 1600 was likely to have developed naturally...
are found in Riverside Park and Balbirnie Park, both of which are also designated historic gardens and designed landscapes. Balbirnie Park is renowned for having a large collection of rhododendron
Rhododendron
Rhododendron is a genus of over 1 000 species of woody plants in the heath family, most with showy flowers...
species. Protected wildlife species found in the Glenrothes area include red squirrels, water voles and various types of bats. Landscape areas also act as natural drainage systems
Sustainable urban drainage systems
Sustainable Drainage Systems , sometimes known as Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems , are designed to reduce the potential impact of new and existing developments with respect to surface water drainage discharges.-Background:...
, reducing the likelihood of flooding in the built up areas of the town, with rainwater flows channelled to the River Leven, or to the Lochty Burn. Landscape planning
Landscape planning
Landscape planning is a branch of landscape architecture. Urban park systems and greenway of the type planned by Frederick Law Olmsted are key examples of urban landscape planning. Landscape designers tend to work for clients who wish to commission construction work...
has also ensured that Glenrothes' road network, with particular focuses on the town's many roundabouts, provides green networks throughout the town.
The settlement has been purposely planned using a series of masterplans. Development of Glenrothes started in Woodside in the east and progressed westwards. The first town masterplan was implemented as far as South Parks and Rimbleton housing precincts. The early residential precincts, developed under the first masterplan, were based on Ebenezer Howard
Ebenezer Howard
Sir Ebenezer Howard is known for his publication Garden Cities of To-morrow , the description of a utopian city in which people live harmoniously together with nature. The publication resulted in the founding of the garden city movement, that realized several Garden Cities in Great Britain at the...
's Garden City
Garden city movement
The garden city movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts" , containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and...
philosophy, using relatively tried and tested principles of town planning and architecture which is reflected in their housing styles and layouts.
A second town masterplan was developed in the late 1960s following Glenrothes' change of role and was to accommodate an increased population target of 50,000-70,000. New areas of land in the north and south of the designated area were brought into production for new development. The road network was upgraded to deal with projected increases in car ownership and new housing estates were developed to the west, then to the south and finally to the north of the designated area. The housing precincts of the 1960s and 1970s, developed under the second masterplan, departed from the garden city principles instead adopting Radburn principles; separating as far as possible footpaths from roads. The townscape changed with a mixture of higher densities and more contemporary architectural styles and new development layouts. The fronts of houses were designed to face onto public footpaths and open spaces with car parking kept either to the rear of properties or in parking bays located nearby. Housing precincts from the 1980s onwards were largely developed by the private sector
Private sector
In economics, the private sector is that part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is run by private individuals or groups, usually as a means of enterprise for profit, and is not controlled by the state...
with the majority of this housing developed in suburban cul-de-sacs. The Mid Fife Local Plan is guiding the future development of the town and has identified land in the east and west of the settlement and its surrounding villages for the development of approximately 1,800 new houses. There are also proposals for renewal of the town centre and for upgrading the town's industrial estates and business parks.
Demographics
In 1950 the population in the Glenrothes designated area was approximately 1,000 people who were located in the hamlets of Woodside and Cadham and in the numerous farm steadings that were spread throughout the area. Population growth in the early phases of the town was described as being slow due to the dependence on the growth of work places at the Rothes Colliery. In 1960 the town population was shown to have increased to 12,499 people rising to 28,098 by 1969. The town experienced its greatest levels of population growth between 1964 and 1969 with an average inward migration level of 1,900 persons per annum. In 1981 Glenrothes' population was estimated to have risen to 35,000 and at the time the GDC was disbanded in 1995 it was estimated that the town's population stood at just over 40,000 people.| Glenrothes | Fife | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total population | 38,679 | 349,429 | 5,062,011 |
| Foreign born British nationality law British nationality law is the law of the United Kingdom that concerns citizenship and other categories of British nationality. The law is complex because of the United Kingdom's former status as an imperial power.-History:... |
1.04% | 1.7% | 3.8% |
| Over 75 years old | 5.1% | 7.46% | 7.1% |
| Unemployed | 4.4% | 3.97% | 4.0% |
The 2001 census recorded the population of Glenrothes at 38,679. A more recent population estimate of the town was recorded at 38,750 in 2008. When combined with the adjoining settlements of Leslie
Leslie, Fife
Leslie is a large village on the northern tip of the River Leven Valley, to the west of Glenrothes in Fife. According to the population estimates , the village has a population of 3,092. The village was granted burgh of barony status by James II in 1458 for George Leslie who became the first Earl...
, Markinch
Markinch
Markinch is a small town situated in the heart of Fife, in the eastern central lowlands of Scotland. According to an estimate taken in 2008, the town...
, Thornton
Thornton, Fife
Thornton is a village in Fife, Scotland. It is between Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes, and stands between the River Ore and Lochty Burn, which are at opposite ends of the main street.- Transport :...
and Coaltown of Balgonie the Glenrothes urban area has a population of 47,280. The demographic make-up of the population is much in line with the rest of Scotland. The age group from 30-44 year olds form the largest portion of the population (23%). The median age of males and females living in Glenrothes in 2001 was 36 and 37 years, compared to 37 and 39 years for those in the whole of Scotland.
The place of birth of the town's residents was 97% United Kingdom (including 88.28% from Scotland), 0.26% Republic of Ireland, 1.04% from other European Union countries, and 1.69% from elsewhere in the world. The economic activity of residents aged 16–74 was 41.35% in full-time employment, 11.61% in part-time employment, 5.69% self-employed, 4.4% unemployed, 2.61% students with jobs, 4.46% students without jobs, 14.56% retired, 5.42% looking after home or family, 6.65% permanently sick or disabled, and 3.22% economically inactive for other reasons. Compared with the average demography of Scotland, Glenrothes has low proportions of people born outside the United Kingdom and has fewer proportions for people over 75 years old.
Economy
Wholesale and retail distribution jobs accounted for approximately 15% of the total number of jobs in the Glenrothes area in 2009. The majority of shopping, services and administrative facilities in Glenrothes are concentrated in the town centre
Town centre
The town centre is the term used to refer to the commercial or geographical centre or core area of a town.Town centres are traditionally associated with shopping or retail. They are also the centre of communications with major public transport hubs such as train or bus stations...
(central business district
Central business district
A central business district is the commercial and often geographic heart of a city. In North America this part of a city is commonly referred to as "downtown" or "city center"...
). The Kingdom Centre
Kingdom Shopping Centre
The Kingdom Centre forms the main shopping element of Glenrothes town centre. It is the largest indoor shopping centre in Fife and is one of the largest single-level indoor shopping centres in Scotland with around 40,000 sq m of floorspace.The centre is popular locally and has some of the highest...
forms the main shopping element of the town centre containing approximately 100 shops as well as a variety of cafes, the town's central library and the Rothes Halls- the town's theatre, civic and exhibition centre. An independent commercial cinema
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and bingo hall complex are located adjacent to the Kingdom Centre.
Retail park
In the United Kingdom, a retail park is a grouping of many retail warehouses and superstores with associated car parking. Its North American equivalent is a power centre. Retail parks are found on the fringes of most large towns and cities in highly accessible locations and are aimed at households...
has also been constructed at the Saltire Centre, approximately half of a mile (1 km) to the southwest of the town centre.
A number of public service agencies and authorities are based in Glenrothes contributing to the town's administrative centre function. Fife Constabulary
Fife Constabulary
Fife Constabulary is the territorial police force responsible for the Scottish council area of Fife.The area policed by Fife Constabulary has a resident population of just over 350,000, almost a third of whom live in one of the three principal towns of Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes...
has established its headquarters in Glenrothes at Viewfield. HM Revenue and Customs, Kingdom Housing Association and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) also have offices in Glenrothes at Pentland Park; a business park within the town. The Adam Smith College is a key employer in the town with a large campus based adjacent to Viewfield. Fife's prominent local authority headquarters building is located at North Street in the town centre. Many of the other council departments are contained in a number of the town centre's office blocks.
In 2009 manufacturing accounted for 19% of employment in Glenrothes. Traditional industries exist in the area, with paper
Paper
Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....
manufacturing being one of the town's largest employers. Tullis Russell is a large paper manufacturer which has operated from its current site for over 200 years, pre-dating the designation of Glenrothes. The current facility is made up by an agglomeration of two former mills; the Auchmuty Mill and the Rothes Mill. The plant is in the process of developing a 50 megawatt biomass
Biomass
Biomass, as a renewable energy source, is biological material from living, or recently living organisms. As an energy source, biomass can either be used directly, or converted into other energy products such as biofuel....
powerstation which will generate enough electricity to power the plant and the surrounding town. A smaller paper manufacturer, Fourstones Paper Mill, has established operations at the Fettykil Mill in Leslie to the west of the town.
A number of high tech
High tech
High tech is technology that is at the cutting edge: the most advanced technology currently available. It is often used in reference to micro-electronics, rather than other technologies. The adjective form is hyphenated: high-tech or high-technology...
industrial companies are located in Glenrothes largely specialised in electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
manufacturing
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...
. These are what remain of the clustering of Silicon Glen
Silicon Glen
Silicon Glen is a nickname for the high tech sector of Scotland. It is applied to the Central Belt triangle between Dundee, Inverclyde and Edinburgh, which includes Fife, Glasgow and Stirling; although electronics facilities outside this area may also be included in the term. The term has been in...
operations in the area which has gradually reduced and consolidated since the peak in the late 1990s. The number of people employed in the electronics sector in the Glenrothes area in 2009 was 1,425 which constitutes approximately 50% of the number of jobs in this sector in Fife. Companies specialised in this sector include Semefab which produces Micro Electric Mechanical Systems (MEMS
Microelectromechanical systems
Microelectromechanical systems is the technology of very small mechanical devices driven by electricity; it merges at the nano-scale into nanoelectromechanical systems and nanotechnology...
) and Brand Rex which specialises in the development of fibre optic cabling. Other major companies which have established a base in Glenrothes include Bosch Rexroth
Bosch Rexroth
Bosch Rexroth is an engineering firm based in Lohr am Main in Germany. It is the result of a merger on 1 May 2001 between Mannesmann Rexroth AG and the Automation Technology Business Unit of Robert Bosch GmbH, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH. Rexroth in turn consisted of a...
(hydraulics
Hydraulics
Hydraulics is a topic in applied science and engineering dealing with the mechanical properties of liquids. Fluid mechanics provides the theoretical foundation for hydraulics, which focuses on the engineering uses of fluid properties. In fluid power, hydraulics is used for the generation, control,...
manufacturing), Raytheon
Raytheon
Raytheon Company is a major American defense contractor and industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. It was previously involved in corporate and special-mission aircraft until early 2007...
(Defence) and Velux
VELUX
VELUX is a Danish company that specializes in windows and skylights.In addition, VELUX offers many types of decoration and sun screening, roller shutters, installation products, products for remote control and thermal solar panels for installation in roofs...
(roof windows manufacturing).
Culture and community
Glenrothes was the first Scottish new town to appoint a town artist in 1968. Two town artists, David Harding (1968–78) and Malcolm Roberston (1978–91), were employed in the lifetime of the GDC. Both artists, supported by a number of assistants, created a large variety of artworks and sculptures that are scattered throughout the town. Other artists have also contributed to the creation of the town's artworks. The first sculpture erected in Glenrothes was "Ex Terra", created by Benno SchotzBenno Schotz
Benno Schotz was a Scottish artist.-Early life:Schotz was the youngest of six children of Jewish parents, Jacob Schotz, a watchmaker, and Cherna Tischa Abramovitch...
. "The Good Samaritan" sculpture was produced by Edinburgh based sculptor, Ronald Rae
Ronald Rae
Ronald Rae is a British sculptor born in Ayr, Scotland, in 1946. Works, by hand, in granite. His largest work to date is the 20 tonne Lion of Scotland. Solo exhibitions include Regents Park, London and Holyrood Park, Edinburgh...
, who was commissioned by the GDC to produce a piece of art work in celebration of the town's 40th anniversary in 1988. Also in 1988 town artist Malcolm Robertson produced the "Giant Irises" sculpture as Glenrothes' contribution to the Glasgow Garden Festival
Glasgow Garden Festival
The Glasgow Garden Festival was the third of the United Kingdom's five National Garden Festivals, and the only one to take place in Scotland.It was held in Glasgow between 26 April and 26 September 1988...
. The sculpture was awarded the John Brown Clydebank award for the "Most Original and Amusing Artifact" at the festival. The sculpture was re-erected at Leslie Roundabout in Glenrothes following the festival.
The town has won numerous awards locally and nationally for the quality of its landscaping; something that is promoted by the "Glenrothes in Bloom Group" who were established as a town promotion initiative through the "Take a Pride in Glenrothes" campaign. The Glenrothes Development Corporation devoted around one third of land in Glenrothes to the provision of open space. As a consequence the town has numerous parks, the largest being Balbirnie Park, Carleton Park, Gilvenbank Park, Riverside Park, and Warout Park. The Lomond Hills Regional Park borders and enters the town to the north and east.
Glenrothes does not have a museum, however there is an aspiration for a permanent heritage centre to be formally established in the town following a successful trial. The establishment of a formal heritage centre would provide a record of the history of Glenrothes and its surrounding communities from the early 19th century to the late 20th century when the new town's development corporation was wound up.
There are a number of social clubs and organisations operating within Glenrothes which contribute to the cultural and community offerings of the town. These include an art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
club, various youth clubs, a floral art club, amateur theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
groups, a choral society and a variety of sports clubs. Glenrothes hosts an annual gala
Festival
A festival or gala is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on and celebrates some unique aspect of that community and the Festival....
which is held at Warout Park and has a variety of family activities including a dog show
Conformation show
Conformation shows, also referred to as breed shows, are a kind of dog show in which a judge familiar with a specific dog breed evaluates individual purebred dogs for how well the dogs conform to the established breed type for their breed, as described in a breed's individual breed standard.A...
, highland dancing and a fun fair with stalls. Markinch hosts an annual Highland Games
Highland games
Highland games are events held throughout the &Highland games are events held throughout the &Highland games are events held throughout the &(-è_çà in Scotland and other countries as a way of celebrating Scottish and Celtic culture and heritage, especially that of the Scottish Highlands. Certain...
and the other surrounding villages host their own annual gala days and festivals.
Glenrothes F.C.
Glenrothes Football Club are a Scottish junior football club based in the new town of Glenrothes, Fife. Formed in 1964 and nicknamed "Glens", they play their home games at the Warout Stadium, one of the larger grounds in junior football, with room for around 5,000 spectators, 730 of whom can be...
, a junior
Scottish Junior Football Association
The Scottish Junior Football Association is an affiliated national association of the Scottish Football Association and is the governing body for the Junior grade of football in Scotland. The term "Junior" refers to the level of football played...
side who play at Warout Park. Glenrothes also has a rugby club based at Carleton Park and a cricket club who play at Riverside Park. A new multi-million pound replacement regional sports centre is currently being built on the site of the existing Fife Institute. The new centre is to be re-named the "Michael Woods Sports and Leisure Centre" following a controversial decision taken by the Glenrothes Area Committee. A majority result of a public consultation suggested that the centre should be named the "Glenrothes Sports and Leisure Centre", but local councillors ignored the result of the consultation and instead decided to name it after the late SNP Councillor Michael Woods. The Road Running Festival in Glenrothes is the largest annual sporting event in the town with over 1500 people of all ages and levels of fitness taking part and has been held annually since 1983.
A war memorial was constructed in Glenrothes in 2007 following the deaths of two local Black Watch
Black Watch
The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland is an infantry battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. The unit's traditional colours were retired in 2011 in a ceremony led by Queen Elizabeth II....
soldiers in Iraq. Prior to this Glenrothes was in the unusual position of not being able to host its own Remembrance Sunday commemorations. Unlike traditional memorials, the Glenrothes war memorial consists of two interlinking rings of standing stones.
Glenrothes has a twin-town link with Böblingen
Böblingen
Böblingen is a town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, seat of Böblingen District. Physically Sindelfingen and Böblingen are continuous.-History:Böblingen was founded by Count Wilhelm von Tübingen-Böblingen in 1253. Württemberg acquired the town in 1357, and on 12 May 1525 one of the bloodiest battles...
, a city in Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg is one of the 16 states of Germany. Baden-Württemberg is in the southwestern part of the country to the east of the Upper Rhine, and is the third largest in both area and population of Germany's sixteen states, with an area of and 10.7 million inhabitants...
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
since 1971. As early as 1962 a local councillor had suggested that the town might "twin" with a town on the Continent. Some years later a friendship grew up between teachers at Glenrothes High School and the 'Gymnasium' in Böblingen which eventually led to the twinning of the towns. Since then there have been a number of exchanges on official, club and personal levels.
Landmarks
Cable-stayed bridge
A cable-stayed bridge is a bridge that consists of one or more columns , with cables supporting the bridge deck....
that was completed in 1995. The bridge was designed by Dundee based Nicoll Russell Studios, Architects
Nicoll Russell Studios, Architects
Nicoll Russell Studios, Architects is an architecture practice based in Dundee, Scotland. The firm was established in 1982 by Andrew Nicoll and Ric Russell as a result of the completion of Dundee Repertory Theatre. Andrew Nicoll has since retired, and the practice is now led by Professor Ric...
and was commissioned by the Glenrothes Development Corporation (GDC) as a landmark creating a gateway into Riverside Park that could be seen from further afield. The bridge was constructed by Balfour Beatty Construction (Scotland) and it was the first reinforced-concrete cable-stayed structure ever built in the UK.
A number of Glenrothes' artworks and sculptures act as landmarks at major gateways into the town, such as the "Giant Irises" at Leslie Roundabout, and the Glenrothes "Gateway Totum" at Bankhead Roundabout. A number of other sculptures have recently been relocated to more visually prominent locations around the town creating new landmarks. Five pieces of Glenrothes artworks have recently been earmarked for listed status by Historic Scotland
Historic Scotland
Historic Scotland is an executive agency of the Scottish Government, responsible for historic monuments in Scotland.-Role:As its website states:...
. These are "Ex Terra", "The Birds", "The Henge", "The Heritage (Lest We Forget)" and "Work" (or Industry, Past and Present). Historic Scotland has also produced a dedicated website, a video and an information brochure dedicated to the Glenrothes town art.
Glenrothes is home to the remains of ancient stone circles which can be seen at Balbirnie and Balfarg
Balfarg
Balfarg is a prehistoric monument complex in Glenrothes in Fife, Scotland .The Balfarg henge is part of a larger prehistoric ceremonial complex...
in the northeast of the town. The Balfarg henge
Henge
There are three related types of Neolithic earthwork which are all sometimes loosely called henges. The essential characteristic of all three types is that they feature a ring bank and ditch but with the ditch inside the bank rather than outside...
was constructed around 3,000BC and contains the remnants of a stone circle which has been partly reconstructed. The henge was excavated between 1977 and 1978 prior to the development of a new housing estate, however speculation that there was a henge at Balfarg dated back to 1949 when aerial photos were taken prior to the development of Glenrothes which revealed evidence of a circular ditch with a bank around it. Successive seasons of ploughing are thought to have destroyed much evidence of the original henge. The Balbirnie henge located approximately 500m away was excavated in 1970-71. In order to allow widening of the A92 the stones were moved a short distance to a new location at North Lodge and reconstructed as nearly as possible in the original way. The stone circle has been carbon dated as being from the bronze age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
. It is thought that the Balbrinie stone circle and the Balfarg circle once formed part of a larger ceremonial complex.
Georgian architecture
Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1720 and 1840. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of the United...
former home of the Balfour family, was bought along with its grounds in 1969 by the GDC from the Balfour family to be developed as Balbirnie Park and golf course. The house was later occupied and restored by the GDC in 1981, to stop the property falling into disrepair. This led to potential interest and the house was converted into a four-star hotel in 1989. The B-listed former stable block of the house was converted into a craft centre. Balgeddie House, a C-Listed former Edwardian
Edwardian architecture
Edwardian architecture is the style popular when King Edward VII of the United Kingdom was in power; he reigned from 1901 to 1910, but the architecture style is generally considered to be indicative of the years 1901 to 1914....
residence of Sir Robert Spencer Nairn located in the northwest of the town, has also been converted into a high quality hotel. Leslie House, the category-A listed 17th century former home of the Rothes family, became a care home for the elderly in 1945; owned by the Church of Scotland. The building was being renovated to become luxury apartments however the interior and roof of the house were destroyed by fire in late 2008 delaying the redevelopment. Much of the former grounds of Leslie House have been used to create Riverside Park. Collydean
Collydean
Collydean is a precinct or neighbourhood in Glenrothes, Fife.Collydean has been built up in a number of phases. Early housing has been built into staggered terraces with distinct mono pitched roofs. Collydean has been built with Radburn principles with its public footpaths separated from roads....
precinct hosts a ruin of a 17th-century laird's house called Pitcairn House
Pitcairn House
Pitcairn House is a ruined 17th century laird's house, located in the modern Collydean residential area of Glenrothes, in Fife, Scotland. The ruins are approximately 15 x 5.5m, with the east gable rising to 6m. The rest of the building has collapsed to the foundations. It is thought that the...
.
The town is also home to a number of churches which act as important landmarks as a result of their unique architectural styles and sometimes their locations at key road junctions. The three earliest churches are now listed buildings. These are St. Margaret's Church in Woodside (category C listed), St. Paul's RC Church in Auchmuty (category A listed), and St. Columba's Church on Church Street (category A listed) in the town centre. St. Paul's RC was designed by architects Gillespie, Kidd and Coia and has been described as "the most significant piece of modern church architecture north of the English Channel". In 1993 it was listed as one of sixty key monuments
DoCoMoMo Key Scottish Monuments
DoCoMoMo Key Scottish Monuments is a list of 60 notable post-war buildings in Scotland, compiled in 1993 by the international architectural conservation organisation DoCoMoMo....
of post-war
Post-war
A post-war period or postwar period is the interval immediately following the ending of a war and enduring as long as war does not resume. A post-war period can become an interwar period or interbellum when a war between the same parties resumes at a later date...
architecture by the international conservation organisation DoCoMoMo. The church sits at a junction between two main distributor roads. St Columba's Church, designed by architects Wheeler & Sproson, has recently undergone significant restoration. Internally the church contains a large mural created by Alberto Morrocco
Alberto Morrocco
Alberto Morrocco OBE FRSA FRSE RSW RP RGI LLD was a Scottish artist and teacher. He is famous for his landscapes in Scotland and abroad, still-life, figure painting and interiors, but perhaps his best known works are his beach scenes and views of Venice.-Life and work:Morrocco was born in Aberdeen...
titled 'The Way of the Cross', which was completed in 1962. Externally the church with its distinctive triangular iron bell tower and Mondrian
Piet Mondrian
Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian , was a Dutch painter.He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism...
inspired stain glass windows acts as a landmark at the south-western gateway to the town centre.
Education
There are three secondary schools in Glenrothes, the earliest of which is Auchmuty High School
Auchmuty High School
Auchmuty School is a public secondary school in the town of Glenrothes in the Fife Council area of Scotland. Opened in 1957, it was the first school for secondary education in the area. It quickly outgrew the original building and additions were added about 1970...
, opened in 1957. Secondary Schools were to be provided on the basis of one school for every 4,000 houses. Glenwood High School
Glenwood High School (Glenrothes)
Glenwood High School is a comprehensive, co-educational and non-denominational school serving the western part of the town of Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland together with communities to the north and west.-History of the School:...
was built in 1962 to serve the western precincts. Prior to 1966 older pupils had to attend schools in neighbouring towns to continue "Higher"
Higher (Scottish)
In Scotland the Higher is one of the national school-leaving certificate exams and university entrance qualifications of the Scottish Qualifications Certificate offered by the Scottish Qualifications Authority. It superseded the old Higher Grade on the Scottish Certificate of Education...
examinations as Auchmuty and Glenwood only provided for pupils at junior secondary level. Glenrothes High School
Glenrothes High School
Glenrothes High School is a six year non-denominational secondary school of approximately 860 pupils located in Glenrothes, Fife which opened in 1966. The school serves the western/central and northern precincts of Glenrothes drawing primarily from four feeder Primary Schools; Caskieberran,...
was built in 1966 to accommodate pupils at a higher level. However changes in the education system nationally meant that both Auchmuty and Glenwood were raised to full high school status in the 1970s. Auchmuty High School serves the east and southern parts of Glenrothes as well as the villages of Markinch, Coaltown of Balgonie and Thornton. As part of the £126 million Building Fife's Future Project, construction has started on a replacement for Auchmuty and this is scheduled to open in August 2013. Glenrothes High School serves the central and northern areas in the town. Glenwood High School serves the western parts of Glenrothes and the villages of Leslie and Kinglassie. Catholic pupils in Glenrothes attend St Andrew's High School in Kirkcaldy
Kirkcaldy
Kirkcaldy is a town and former royal burgh in Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. The town lies on a shallow bay on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth; SSE of Glenrothes, ENE of Dunfermline, WSW of Dundee and NNE of Edinburgh...
.
Further education in the town is provided at Adam Smith College
Adam Smith College
Adam Smith College is a Scottish further and higher education college located over various campuses across the county of Fife.-History:The college was formed on August 1, 2005 by the merger of Glenrothes College and Fife College and is named after Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, who...
which was created in 2005 from the merger between the former Glenrothes College and Fife College, which was based in Kirkcaldy and is Scotland's third largest college. The Glenrothes campus was constructed in the early 1970s, and originally specialised in paper manufacturing, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. A second institute known as FIPRE (Fife Institute of Physical and Recreational Education) was built adjacent catering for sport and physical education as well as providing a sports centre for the town. The main campus of the college is located at Stenton Road in Viewfield to the south of the town centre. A smaller campus also exists within the Southfield Industrial Estate. The Stenton Road Campus was significantly extended in 2010 with the development of the "Future Skills Centre". This centre includes new departments in engineering, construction, renewables and science to cater for emerging industries specialising in renewable energy
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
and low carbon technologies as well as provide training for major engineering projects.
Transport
The town has direct dual-carriageway access to the M90
M90 motorway
The M90 is a motorway in Scotland. It runs from Inverkeithing, at the north end of the Forth Road Bridge, to Perth, passing Dunfermline, Cowdenbeath and Kinross on the way...
via the A92
A92 road
The A92 is a major road in Fife and Angus, Scotland. It runs from Dunfermline to Stonehaven.Starting at its junction with the M90 motorway near Dunfermline, it runs north east past Cowdenbeath, Lochgelly, Kirkcaldy, Glenrothes, Ladybank and Newport-on-Tay...
Trunk Road. The A92 passes north/south through the town and connects Glenrothes with Dundee in the north and Dunfermline in the southwest where it merges with the M90. This gives Glenrothes a continuous dual-carriageway link to Edinburgh, whilst much of the route north to Dundee remains single-carriageway. The A911 road passes east/west through the town and connects it with Levenmouth in the east and Milnathort
Milnathort
Milnathort is a small village in the Perth & Kinross region of central Scotland.The smaller neighbour of nearby Kinross, Milnathort has a small population of roughly 1000 people. It is situated amidst picturesque countryside at the foot of the Ochil Hills, and near the north shore of Loch Leven...
and the M90 in the west. The B921 Kinglassie Road, described in early masterplans as the Southern Freeway, links Glenrothes to the former mining communities of Cardenden
Cardenden
Cardenden is a Scottish town located on the South bank of the River Ore in the parish of Auchterderran, Fife. It is approximately North-West of Kirkcaldy. Cardenden was named in 1848 by the Edinburgh and Northern Railway for its new railway station...
and Kinglassie
Kinglassie
Kinglassie is a small village in central Fife, Scotland.It is located 0.5 miles to the southwest of Glenrothes...
, and to Westfield. The route is a dual carriageway between Bankhead Roundabout and as far west as Fife Airport. Early masterplans show that this route was originally intended to be upgraded to provide duelled connections to the A92 Chapel junction in Kirkcaldy, however this has never been implemented.
Glenrothes with Thornton railway station
Glenrothes with Thornton railway station serves the communities of Glenrothes and Thornton in Fife, Scotland. The station is managed by First ScotRail and is on the Fife Circle Line, 51 km north of .- Services :...
and Markinch railway station
Markinch railway station
Markinch railway station is a railway station in Markinch, Fife, Scotland and currently serves the Glenrothes and Levenmouth areas of Fife.The station is managed by First ScotRail and is located on the main Edinburgh to Aberdeen Line, 54 km north of Edinburgh Waverley...
. Glenrothes is home to an airfield, Fife Airport
Fife Airport
Fife Airport is located west of Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland.Fife Aerodrome has a CAA Ordinary Licence that allows flights for the public transport of passengers or for flying instruction as authorised by the licensee .The airfield is used by Tayside Aviation to train pilots...
(ICAO code EGPJ), which is used for general aviation with private light aircraft. Edinburgh Airport
Edinburgh Airport
Edinburgh Airport is located at Turnhouse in the City of Edinburgh, Scotland, and was the busiest airport in Scotland in 2010, handling just under 8.6 million passengers in that year. It was also the sixth busiest airport in the UK by passengers and the fifth busiest by aircraft movements...
is the nearest international airport
International airport
An international airport is any airport that can accommodate flights from other countries and are typically equipped with customs and immigration facilities to handle these flights to and from other countries...
to Glenrothes, Dundee Airport
Dundee Airport
-Road:The airport lies on the main A85 Riverside Drive, which links the city centre to the Kingsway and the A90, with the airport barely a couple of kilometers from the city centre itself. Taxis are available from outside the airport.-Bus:...
operates daily flights to London, Birmingham and Belfast.
External links
- Fife News
- Undiscovered Scotland on Glenrothes
- National Library of Scotland: SCOTTISH SCREEN ARCHIVE (A selection of archive films about Glenrothes)