After nearly a thousand years, Dunfermline Abbey, the burial place of Scotland's warrior King Robert the Bruce, could be heading into state control, as its dwindling congregation admits it can no longer shoulder the cost of maintaining a national monument alone.
The Church of Scotland is exploring a new vision, the "Dunfermline Abbey Reimagined" plan, developed with Fife Council and Historic Environment Scotland (HES), which it hopes could transform the site into a leading heritage destination. For now, though, it remains only a proposal.
The abbey site is made up of three parts: the graveyard, the ruins of the old Norman Abbey, and the "New Church," opened in 1821. Ownership has been split since 1925, when HES took over the nave, leaving the congregation responsible for the New Church.
Speaking to Premier Christian News, Joint Session Clerk for the abbey David Williams said: "The buildings are joined... from outside, they look entirely as one building."
That arrangement has become increasingly hard to sustain with congregation numbers dwindling but the cost of maintaining and operating that building has increased.
"It's now come to the point where it's in excess of £60,000 just to operate the building and carry out basic repairs...If we could just get the burden of maintaining this building away from us, then we could concentrate on being a parish church, which is really what we're about as a congregation," he said.
With the General Trustees, the church has now submitted an application for state care, though Williams is careful to stress there is no certainty that will happen.
The case raises a wider question facing churches across Britain: who should pay to preserve historic buildings that serve more than their congregations?
"You need to look at who benefits from having churches. And it's not just the congregation; it's the community roundabout," Williams argues, pointing to the more than 40,000 visitors who come to see Robert the Bruce's tomb each year. "There's the well-being benefit that comes from it as well. So why should the congregation solely be expected to pay?"
Even so, Williams is realistic about the limits of state intervention. "Public finances [are] under extreme pressure, as we all know. So I suspect there's a limit to how many buildings could be taken into state care," he added.
The abbey's history stretches back to Queen Margaret, who founded a church on the site around 1022 after arriving in Scotland from exile. Her son, David I, later built a much larger abbey, Scotland's third largest at the time, which became a royal burial ground for seven kings before Robert the Bruce was laid to rest there in 1329, earning it the local moniker "Scotland's Westminster".
The historical significance of Robert the Bruce is also relevant. He led Scotland to victory over England at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and secured Scottish independence, becoming one of the nation's greatest warrior-kings.