Posts Tagged ‘Dundee’

Shipping Containers for sale in Dundee Scotland

Estimated Population: 154,674

William the Lion granted the town the status of burgh by royal charter in 1191. His brother, David, 8th Earl of Huntingdon is said to have named the town Donum Dei (’God’s gift’) upon narrowly escaping death during his return from the Crusades. However, this is probably folk etymology, as the name appears to come from Dun Dèagh meaning Fort on the Tay (”Dun” is a common prefix in Scottish placenames, cf Dunfermline and Dunkeld)

Dundee suffered periods of occupation and destruction in the late 13th and early 14th Centuries. Following John Balliol’s renunciation (1295) of Edward I’s authority over Scotland, the English King twice visited Scotland with hostile intent. Edward (the ‘Hammer of the Scots’) removed Dundee’s royal charter — denying the town’s people the right to control local government and the judiciary. He occupied the Castle at Dundee in 1296, but was successfully removed by William Wallace in 1297. From 1303 to 1312 the city was occupied again. This time, Edward’s removal resulted in the complete destruction of the Castle by Robert the Bruce (who had been proclaimed King of Scots at nearby Scone in 1309). In 1327, the Bruce granted the town a new charter. Later in the 14th Century, during the Hundred Years War, the French invoked the Auld Alliance. Richard II marched North and reduced Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee to ashes.

Dundee became a walled city in 1545 during a period of English hostilities known as the ‘rough wooing’ (Henry VIII’s violent attempt to extend his Protestant ambitions North by marrying his youngest son Edward, Duke of Cornwall to Mary, Queen of Scots). Mary maintained an alliance with the French, who successfully captured Protestant rebels (including John Knox) at St Andrews Castle, near Dundee, in July 1547. That year, however, buoyed by victory at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, the English occupied Edinburgh and went on to destroy much of Dundee by naval bombardment. The Howff Burial Ground, granted to the people of Dundee in 1546, is the city’s lasting gift from Mary.

Shipping Containers for sale in Dundee scotland