Inverkeithing

The town was also the last place that Alexander III was seen before he died in a fall from his horse at Kinghorn in 1286. Some texts say he fell off a cliff, and although there are no cliffs where his body was found, there is a very steep rocky embankment, which “would have been fatal in the dark.” Edward I of England (“Longshanks”) stayed in Inverkeithing on 2 March 1304 on his return to Scotland during the First War of Scottish Independence. This is evidenced by letters written here as he made his way from Dunfermline to St Andrews. A Franciscan friary was established in Inverkeithing around the mid-14th century, and the upstanding remains may have been the guesthouse or hospitium, but were remodelled as a tenement in the 17th century. The friary garden contains other remains of the original complex, such as stone vaults which were probably storage cellars. The friary would have been a convenient stopping-off point for pilgrims crossing by the Queen’s Ferry en route to St Andrews, and would have contributed to the burgh’s prosperity. It is one of the few remnants of a house of the Greyfriars to have survived in Scotland.