Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
A large town of 56,053 in Fife, Scotland. Band D council tax is £1,574.
Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Dunfermline has no Safety Grade and, without it, no overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below. Its strongest subject is cost of living (A): the 188th most affordable of 296 Scottish towns: median sale £183,700, 4.2 years of area income; rent £868 a month. Its weakest is health (C−): life expectancy 79 for men, 82.6 for women.
The 3 things Dunfermline does most differently from other towns.
Each subject compared with the 2,160 UK towns with an overall grade (schools within Scotland), ordered by how far Dunfermline is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Dunfermline has no Safety Grade and, without it, no overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Historic Environment Scotland lists 166 buildings inside Dunfermline’s locality, 10 of them in the top category, and 7 scheduled monuments.
The archive holds 1 old photo or postcard going back to 1905 and a map from 1945.
Explore the history →Museums, castles, gardens and days out in and near Dunfermline. Best known first.
Castle · Historic Environment ScotlandDunfermline Palace & Abbey (ruins)in town
Abbey or prioryDunfermline Abbeyin town
MuseumAbbot House, Dunfermlinein town
CastleRosyth Castle2.4 km outside town, to the south
AquariumDeep Sea World3.9 km outside town, to the south
CastleFordell Castle800 m outside town, to the southeastPhotos: each place’s Wikidata image, from Wikimedia Commons under the licence below (our copy, resized).
Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Dunfermline.
For Dunfermline, that is above both Fife’s towns (63%) and Scotland’s towns (60%). 18% of households live in social housing.
Registers of Scotland data-zone sale prices · Scottish Government council tax · Scotland’s Census 2022 tenure · OGL
Three of its 19 schools are below, each with why it’s listed. The grade uses the secondaries its children go to; Scotland publishes no primary results by school.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carnegie Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 609 | – |
| Queen Anne High SchoolLargest secondary schoolSecondary | Secondary | 1,803 | C+ |
| Dunfermline High SchoolTop results in townSecondary | Secondary | 1,381 | A− |
Scotland’s Census was taken on 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census; 34% of workers were mainly at home, and shares here are of those who travelled.
77% of commuters drove, below Fife’s towns (78%) but above Scotland’s towns (70%). 34% of workers worked mainly from home at the census.
Scotland’s Census 2022 (NRS), method of travel and distance to work · DWP claimant count · OGL
Dunfermline sits below both Fife’s towns (26%) and Scotland’s towns (24%) on this measure. Women here live to 82.6 on average and men to 79 (2020–24). These answers aren’t adjusted for age, so young towns look healthier; the Health Grade uses age-adjusted measures, including life expectancy and early deaths.
| Census 2022 | Dunfermline | Fife | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 81% | 77% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 5.7% | 7.2% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 22% | 26% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL
The heritage lists give each building’s grade but not its age, so we don’t say which is oldest.
Dunfermline has 166 listed buildings on Historic Environment Scotland’s list: 10 Category A, 77 Category B. Conservation areas cover 5% of Dunfermline’s land, above both Fife’s towns (0%) and Scotland’s towns (1%).
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
That puts Dunfermline above both Fife’s towns (16%) and Scotland’s towns (15%). 10% of residents are aged 15 to 24. Half the people of Dunfermline are older than 41.3.
51% women, 49% men
About an even split. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women.
| Dunfermline | Fife | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 18% | 16% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 10% | 13% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 27% | 24% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 28% | 27% | 27% |
| 65+ | 17% | 20% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 13% | 17% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 7.4% | 8.2% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 11% | 12% | 11% |
| Degree level | 34% | 27% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · Fife and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
166 listed buildings in Dunfermline, 10 of them in the top category.
Off Queensferry Road, Pitreavie Castle: Photo: David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross · Public domain · Dunfermline Abbey: Photo: Chiswick Chap · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Pittencrieff Park, Pittencrieff House, Including Parapet Wall to North: Photo: Kilnburn · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Foundry Street, St Margaret's Works (Castleblair Ltd): Photo: Tom Parnell · CC BY-SA 4.0
186 notable people were born in Dunfermline.
Andrew Carnegie: Theodore C. Marceau, Public domain · Charles I of England: Anthony van Dyck, Public domain · David II of Scotland: Silvester Harding / Edward Harding, Public domain · Iain Banks: Pasi Välkkynen, CC BY-SA 2.0
The nearest towns and villages, from National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities. See them on the map →
| Town | People | Miles | Overall | Cost | Safety | Health |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dunfermline | 56,053 | — | — | A | — | C− |
| Rosyth | 13,309 | 2.3 | — | A | — | D |
| Crossgates | 2,993 | 2.6 | — | A | — | C− |
| Inverkeithing | 5,273 | 3 | — | A | — | D |
| Dalgety Bay and Hillend | 9,452 | 3.7 | — | A− | — | B+ |
| Cairneyhill | 2,657 | 3.9 | — | A | — | B− |
| Cowdenbeath and Lumphinnans | 11,979 | 4.1 | — | A | — | D− |
| Kelty | 6,898 | 5 | — | A | — | D |
No Scottish town has a Safety Grade or an overall grade yet: Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime. People: Census 2022. Miles: centre to centre.
Band D council tax in Dunfermline is £1,574 for 2026–27, less than in 97% of UK towns (council, county, police and fire). Your own bill depends on your home’s band; check it on GOV.UK.
That is 1.2 times the typical town in England and Wales for its size. It also has 7 scheduled monuments.
Homes cost less than in most UK towns: the median sale over three years was £183,700, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 188th most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
Large town in Fife, Scotland
Dunfermline is a locality of 56,053 people, in the Fife council area. TownRatings uses National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities as Scotland’s towns: the physical town, as people mean the word, rather than a council area, so its figures cover the town itself. Localities split the big settlements into their towns, as ONS’s 2022 boundaries split conurbations in England and Wales.
Built from NRS geography and Census 2022
Sources: Scotland’s Census 2022 (National Records of Scotland), output areas summed to the NRS 2022 locality · Registers of Scotland house price statistics, medians and quartiles of residential sales by 2022 data zone, 2004 to 2025 (the 2023 to 2025 headline brought to early-2025 prices with each council’s medians) · Scottish Government, Council Tax by band 2026-27; Scottish Water charges 2026-27 · Scottish Government, Recorded Crime in Scotland (crimes, offences and clear-up rates by council area, 2016-17 to 2025-26); Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020v2 crime domain and SIMD crime indicators (2014/15, 2017/18), 2011 data zones with Census 2022 residents · ONS gross disposable household income by council (2022), scaled to household income on England and Wales’s councils, with Scotland’s Census 2022 households · DWP / ONS Claimant Count via Nomis (2022 data zones, January to August 2026), over residents aged 16 to 64 at Scotland’s Census 2022; council series since 2015 · Scottish Government school contact list (31 July 2026) and school summary statistics (pupil census, September 2025); School Information Dashboard leavers’ attainment by school, 2022-23 to 2024-25 (data.gov.scot) · TownRatings grades: our own summary of the data, ranked against UK towns only. All under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (ONS boundaries). Northern Ireland: Source: NISRA; contains Land & Property Services data and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland information, © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scotland: contains National Records of Scotland data, Registers of Scotland data and SEPA data, © Crown copyright / © SEPA 2025, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.