Everything about Dundee Scotland totally explained
This charter was later revoked by
Edward I, though it was replaced by a new charter from
Robert the Bruce in 1327. Dundee became a walled city in 1545, owing to a period of hostilities known as the
rough wooing. In July 1547, much of the city was destroyed by an English naval bombardment. In 1645, during the
Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Dundee was again besieged, this time by the Royalist
Marquess of Montrose.
Dundee greatly expanded in size during the
Industrial Revolution mainly because of the flax and then latterly the
jute industry. By the end of the 19th century, a majority of the city's workers were employed in its many jute mills and in related industries. Dundee's location on a major estuary allowed for the easy importation of jute from the
Indian subcontinent as well as
whale oil—needed for the processing of the jute—from the city's large
whaling industry. The industry began to decline in the 20th century as it became cheaper to process the cloth on the Indian subcontinent. The city's last jute mill closed in the 1970s.
In addition to jute the city is also known for
jam and
journalism. The "jam" association refers to
marmalade, which was purportedly invented in the city by
Janet Keiller in 1797 (although in reality, recipes for marmalade have been found dating back to the 1500s).
Keiller's marmalade became a famous brand because of its mass production and its worldwide export. Local firm Mackays still makes marmalade in Dundee. However, the industry was never a major employer compared with the jute trade. Marmalade has since become the preserve of larger businesses, but jars of Keiller's marmalade are still widely available. "Journalism" refers to the publishing firm
DC Thomson & Co., which was founded in the city in 1905 and remains the largest employer after the health and leisure industries. The firm publishes a
variety of newspapers, children's comics and magazines, including
The Sunday Post,
The Courier,
Shout and children's publications,
The Beano and
The Dandy.
Dundee also developed a major maritime and shipbuilding industry in the 19th century. 2,000 ships were built in Dundee between 1871 and 1881, including the Antarctic research ship used by
Robert Falcon Scott, the
RRS Discovery. This ship is now on display at Discovery Point in the city, and the Victorian steel-framed works in which Discovery's engine was built is now home to the city's largest bookstore. The need of the local jute industry for
whale oil also supported a large
whaling industry.
Dundee Island in the Antarctic takes its name from the
Dundee whaling expedition, which discovered it in 1892. Whaling ceased in 1912 and shipbuilding ceased in 1981. The estuary was the location of the first
Tay rail bridge, built by
Thomas Bouch and opened in 1879. At the time it was the longest railway bridge in the world.
The bridge fell down in a storm less than a year later under the weight of a train full of passengers in what is known as
The Tay Bridge Disaster. None of the passengers survived.
Governance
Dundee was first made a
royal burgh in 1191 and became a
unitary council area in 1996 under the
Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, which gave it a single tier of
local government control under the
Dundee City Council. The city has two mottos—
Dei Donum (
Latin: Gift of God) and
Prudentia et Candore (With Thought And Purity), although usually only the latter is used for civic purposes. Dundee is represented in both the
British House of Commons and in the
Scottish Parliament. For elections to the
European Parliament, Dundee is within the
Scotland constituency.
Local government
Dundee is one of 32
council areas of Scotland,
The council was controlled by a minority coalition of
Labour and
Liberal Democrats of 12 councillors, with the support of the
Conservatives who had five. Although the
Scottish National Party (SNP) was the largest party on the council, with 11 councillors. Elections to the council are on a four year cycle, the most recent
as of 2007 being on
3 May,
2007. Previously, Councillors were elected from single-member
wards by the
first past the post system of election, although this changed in the 2007 election, due to the
Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004. Eight new multi-member wards were introduced, each electing three or four councillors by
single transferable vote, to produce a form of
proportional representation. The 2007 election resulting in no single party having overall control, with 13
Scottish National Party, 10
Labour, 3
Conservatives, 2
Liberal Democrats, and 1 Independent Councillors.
Westminster and Holyrood
For elections to the
British House of Commons at
Westminster, the city area and portions of the
Angus council area are divided in two
constituencies. The constituencies of
Dundee East and
Dundee West are
as of 2007 represented by
Stewart Hosie (
Scottish National Party (SNP)) and
James McGovern (
Labour), respectively. For elections to the
Scottish Parliament at
Holyrood, the city area is divided between three constituencies. The
Dundee East (Holyrood) constituency and the
Dundee West (Holyrood) constituency are entirely within the city area. The
Angus (Holyrood) constituency includes north-eastern and north-western portions of the city area.
In addition, the
Scottish Episcopalian Diocese of
Brechin (centred on
St Paul’s Cathedral in Dundee) is twinned with the diocese of
Iowa,
USA and the diocese of
Swaziland.
Geography
Dundee is located on the north bank of the
Firth of Tay and near the
North Sea. The city surrounds the
basalt plug of an extinct
volcano, called
Dundee Law or simply
The Law (174 metres (571 ft)). Dundee is Scotland's only south-facing city, giving it a claim to being Scotland's sunniest and warmest city. Temperatures tend to be a couple of degrees higher than Aberdeen to the north or the coastal areas of Angus. Dundee suffers less severe winters than other parts of Scotland due to the close proximity to the North sea and the salt air and a range of protective hills at the back of the city, which are often snow covered while the city itself remains clear.
The city, being on a relatively small landspace, is the most densely populated area in
Scotland after
Glasgow and around fifth in the
U.K. overall. It is characterised by tall tenements, mainly four storeys high,
Victorian, and built from a honey or brown sandstone. The inner districts of the city, as well as some of the outer estates, are home to a large number of multi storey tower blocks from the 1960s. The outer estates are among some of the poorest urban districts in the
United Kingdom. To the east of the city area is the distinct but incorporated suburb of
Broughty Ferry with its yacht club, wide ranging and upmarket services and expensive houses—many of architectural note, developed during the
Industrial Revolution, housing professionals, footballers, and the
GMTV presenter
Lorraine Kelly. A recent apartment in Broughty Ferry entered the market with an asking price of
£750,000, far higher than the Scottish average.
Dundee lies close to
Perth (20 miles) and the southern
Highlands to the west.
St Andrews (14 miles) and north-east
Fife are situated to the south, while the
Sidlaw Hills,
Angus Glens and the
Glamis Castle are located to the north. Two of Scotland's most prestigious
links golf courses,
St Andrews and
Carnoustie are located nearby. The towns of
Invergowrie in
Perthshire,
Newport on Tay in
Fife and
Monifieth and
Birkhill in
Angus are outside of local government control of Dundee but are
de facto suburbs of the city.
Demography
Natives of Dundee are called Dundonians and are recognisable by their distinct
accent, which most noticeably substitutes the
monophthong /e/ in place of the
diphthong /ai/.
A significant proportion of the population are on a lower than average income or receive
social security benefits. More than half of the city's council
wards are among Scotland's most deprived and fewer than half of the homes in Dundee are owner-occupied, a slight majority being owned by housing associations and the council, although it does rank higher than Glasgow. For all its social problems, neither do Dundonians die as early as
Glaswegians. The
Whitfield area in particular has the highest rate of
child poverty in the
UK at 96%. Dundee had the highest rate of
abortions in Scotland in 2004 (24.2 per 1000) and the highest rate of
teenage pregnancy in
Western Europe. (1 in 16; the national average is 1 in 23).
Dundee's population increased substantially with the urbanisation of the Industrial Revolution as did other British cities. The most significant influx occurred in the mid-1800s with the arrival of
Irish workers fleeing from the
Potato Famine and attracted by industrialisation. The city also attracted immigrants from
Italy, fleeing poverty and famine, and
Poland, seeking refuge from the anti-Jewish pogroms in the 19th century, and later,
World War II in the 20th. Today, Dundee has a sizeable
ethnic minority population, and has the third highest Asian population (~3,500) in Scotland after Glasgow and Edinburgh. Dundee has attracted large numbers of Eastern Europeans and is predicted to expand further due to
Bulgarian immigrants.
Economy
Dundee is a regional employment and education centre, with over 300,000 persons within 30 minutes drive of the city centre and 700,000 people within one hour. Many people from
North East Fife,
Angus and
Perth and Kinross commute to the city. In 2006 the city itself had an economically active population of 76.7% of the working age population, about 20% of the working age population are full time students. The city sustains just under 95,000 jobs in around 4,000 companies. The number of jobs in the city has grown by around 10% since 1996. Recent and current investment levels in the city are at a record level. Since 1997 Dundee has been the focus of investment approaching an estimated £1 billion.
Despite this economic growth the proportion of Dundee’s population whose lives are affected by poverty and who are classed as socially excluded is second only to Glasgow. Median weekly earnings were £409 in February 2006, an increase of 33% since 1998, on a par with the Scottish median. Total house sales in the city have more than trebled since 1990 from £115,915,391 to £376,999,716 in 2004. House prices rose by over 15% between 2001–2002 and 2002–2003 and between 2005 and 2006 by 16.6%. primarily because of the lack of damage the city had sustained in the war, good transport links and high productivity from long hours of sunshine. Production started in the year before the official opening of the plant on
June 11,
1947. A fortnight after the 10th anniversary of the plant, the 250,000
th cash machine was produced. By the 1960s, NCR had become the principal employer of the city and produced
ATMs at several of its Dundee plants. The firm, developed magnetic-strip readers for
cash registers and produced early computers. Astral, a Dundee-based firm that manufactured and sold
refrigerators and
spin dryers was merged into
Morphy Richards and rapidly expanded to employ over 1,000 people. The development in Dundee of a
Michelin tyre-production facility helped to absorb the unemployment caused by the decline of the jute industry, particularly with the abolition of the jute control by the
Board of Trade on
April 30 1969.
Employment in Dundee changed dramatically during the 1980s with the loss of nearly 10,000 manufacturing jobs due to closure of the shipyards, cessation of carpet manufacturing and the disappearance of the jute trade. To combat growing unemployment and declining economic conditions, Dundee was declared an
Enterprise Zone in January 1984. In 1983, the first
Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computers were produced in Dundee by
Timex. In the same year the company broke production records, despite a
sit-in by workers protesting job cuts and plans to demolish one of the factory buildings to make way for a supermarket. Timex closed its Dundee plant in 1993 following an acrimonious six month
industrial dispute. In January 2007, NCR announced its intention to cut 650 jobs at its Gourdie facility, and to turn the facility over for low volume production. The company has pledged to retain R&D, software, sales and support functions in Dundee.
Modern day
As in the rest of Scotland manufacturing industries are being gradually replaced by a
mixed economy, although 13.5% of the workforce still work in the manufacturing sector, higher than the Scottish and UK average, and more than double that of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. The main new growth sectors have been
software development and
biotechnology along with retail. The city has a small financial, banking and insurance sector, employing 11% of the workforce.
In 2006, 29 companies employed 300 or more staff these include limited and private companies
NCR Corporation,
Michelin,
Tesco,
D. C. Thomson & Co,
BT, SiTEL,
Norwich Union,
Royal Bank of Scotland,
ASDA,
Strathtay Scottish, Tayside Contracts, Tokheim,
Scottish Citylink, W H Brown Construction, C J Lang & Son, Joinery and Timber Creations,
HBOS,
Debenhams,
Travel Dundee,
WL Gore and Associates, In Practice Systems,
The Wood Group, Simclar, Millipore Life Sciences, Alchemy (antibody technology),
Cypex
(manufacturers of recombinant drug metabolising enzymes, including cytochrome P450s, and in vitro drug metabolism specialists). Major employers in the public sector and non profit sector are
NHS Tayside, the
University of Dundee,
Tayside Police,
Dundee College,
Tayside Fire Brigade,
HM Revenue and Customs,
University of Abertay Dundee and
Wellcome Trust.
The largest employers in Dundee are the
city council and the
National Health Service, which make up over 10% of the city's workforce. The
biomedical and
biotechnology sectors, including start-up biomedical companies arising from university research, employ just under 1,000 people directly and nearly 2,000 indirectly.
Information technology and
software for computer games have been important industries in the city for more than twenty years.
Rockstar North, developer of
Lemmings and the
Grand Theft Auto series was founded in Dundee as DMA Design by
David Jones; an undergraduate of the
University of Abertay Dundee.
David Jones is now the CEO of
Realtime Worlds, which has recently (2007) released Crackdown for the Xbox 360, and is responsible for employing over 140 people of multi national origin, primarily in Dundee.
Dundee is responsible for 10% of Britain’s digital entertainment industry, with an annual turnover of £100 million. Outside of specialised fields of medicine, science and technology, the proportion of Dundonians employed in the
manufacturing sector is higher than that found in the larger Scottish cities; nearly 12% of workers. Manufacturing income per head in Dundee was £19,700 in 1999, compared to £16,700 in
Glasgow. The insolvency rate for businesses in Dundee is lower than other Scottish cities, accounting for only 2.3% of all liquidations in Scotland, compared to 22% and 61.4% for Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively.
The airport is capable of serving small aircraft and is located 3 kilometres west of the city centre, adjacent to the Tay river. The nearest major international airport is
Edinburgh Airport, to the south.
The nearest passenger seaport is
Rosyth, about to the south on the
Firth of Forth.
Education
Schools
Schools in Dundee have a pupil enrollment of over 20,300. Standards in Dundee's primary schools have shown continuous improvement since 2001, with most meeting or exceeding the national average for rates of improvement. Educational performance at standard and higher grade in secondary schools had been well below the national average in 1997 to 1999, The average number of graduates who continued on to
further or
higher education was 56% in the school year 2004/5, 4% higher than the national average of 52%. The university also incorporates the
Duncan of Jordanstone School of Art and Design. In October 2005, the university became the first
UNESCO centre in the UK; the centre will be involved in research regarding the management of the world's water resources on behalf of the
United Nations. The University of Dundee was ranked third for
social work, seventh for
architecture and eighth for
biological sciences. The university is also home to the Dundee Business School. In May 2002, University of Abertay Dundee was ranked number one in the United Kingdom for its investment in IT facilities by the
Financial Times.
Dundee College is the city's umbrella
further education college, which was established in 1985 as an institution of higher education and vocational training. The college is noted for its
New Media centre and incorporates the
Scottish School of Contemporary Dance. In a 2005
HMIE inspection, the college's teaching and learning process were rated "very good" in six of the seven subject areas and overall evaluations.
Religious sites
The City Churches,
Dundee Parish Church (St Mary's) and the
Steeple Church, are the most prominent
Church of Scotland buildings in Dundee. They are on the site of the medieval parish kirk of
St Mary, of which only the 15th century west tower survives. The attached church was once the largest parish church in medieval Scotland. Dundee was unusual among Scottish medieval burghs in having two parish kirks; the second, dedicated to
St Clement, has disappeared, but its site was approximately that of the present City Square. In the
Middle Ages Dundee was also the site of houses of the
Dominicans (Blackfriars), and
Franciscans (Greyfriars), and had a number of hospitals and chapels. These establishments were sacked during the
Reformation in the 16th century and have been reduced to sites.
The Church of Scotland
Presbytery of Dundee currently consists of 45 congregations although, due to dwindling numbers, many now share a
minister.
Robert Murray McCheyne, who was the minister of St Peter's (now
Free Church of Scotland) from 1838 until his death in 1843, led a significant religious revival in Dundee. There are two
cathedrals in the city:
St. Paul's (
Scottish Episcopal) and St. Andrew's (
Roman Catholic).
The
Catholic community is part of the
Diocese of Dunkeld which is led by Bishop
Vincent Paul Logan. The fact that 3 of the city's 10 secondary schools are Roman Catholic attests to a sizable Catholic community, an unusual occurrence in the East of Scotland. By way of comparison, Edinburgh (almost 3 times the size of Dundee) also has 3 Catholic secondary schools and Aberdeen only 1. There are 19 Catholic parishes (including two university chaplaincies) within the boundaries of Dundee City. A recent influx of people from Poland has led to the
Pallotines establishing a presence in the community, and they've taken up residence in the parish dedicated to
Saint Francis of Assisi.
Muslims are served by a large
mosque, several secondary mosques and the Al Maktoum Institute of Islamic and Arabic Studies which opened in 2000. Scotland's only private
Islamic school for girls, the 'Imam Muhammed Zakariya School for Islamic Studies' is located in Broughty Ferry.
Halal stores and restaurants, along with specialist shops selling Asian clothes and accessories can be found in and around the
Hilltown area.
A recorded
Jewish community has existed in the city since the 19th century. The present orthodox
synagogue at Dudhope Park was built in the 1970s, with the Hebrew Burial Grounds located around three miles (5 km) to the east. There is also a
Hindu mandir and
Sikh gurdwara located in the city.
Culture
Dundee is home to Scotland's only full-time
repertory ensemble, established in the 1930s. One of its alumni,
Hollywood actor
Brian Cox is a native of the city. The
Dundee Repertory Theatre, built in 1982 is the base for
Scottish Dance Theatre. Dundee's principal
concert auditorium, the
Caird Hall (named after its benefactor, the jute baron
James Key Caird) regularly hosts the
Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Various smaller venues host local and international musicians during Dundee's annual
Jazz,
Guitar and
Blues Festivals. An art gallery and an art house cinema are located in
Dundee Contemporary Arts, which opened in 1999 in the city's cultural quarter.
McManus Galleries is a
Gothic Revival-style building, located in Albert Square. It houses a museum and art gallery; exhibits include a collection of fine and decorative art, items from Dundee's history and natural history artefacts. Britain’s only full-time public
observatory,
Mills Observatory is located at the summit of the city's
Balgay Hill.
Sensation Dundee,
(External Link), is a science center with over 80 exhibits based on the five senses.
Dundee has a strong literary heritage, with several authors having been born, lived or studied in the city. These include
A. L. Kennedy,
Rosamunde Pilcher,
Kate Atkinson,
Thomas Dick,
Mary Shelley and
John Burnside. The
Dundee International Book Prize is a biennial competition open to new authors, offering a prize of £10,000 and publication by Polygon Books. Past winners have included Andrew Murray Scott, Claire-Marie Watson and Malcolm Archibald.
William McGonagall, regularly cited as the "worlds worst poet", worked and wrote in the city, often giving performances of his work in pubs and bars. Many of his poems are about the city and events therein, such as his work
The Tay Bridge Disaster.
Music
Popular music groups such as the 1970s
soul-funk outfit
Average White Band, the
Associates, the band
Spare Snare,
Danny Wilson and the
Indie rock band
The View hail from Dundee.
The View's debut album went to number one in the UK charts in January 2007. The
Northern Irish indie rock band
Snow Patrol was formed by students at the
University of Dundee,
Brian Molko; lead singer of
Placebo, grew up in the city. At the end of June, Dundee hosts an annual
blues festival known as the
Dundee Blues Bonanza. In May 2006,
BBC Radio 1's
Big Weekend music festival was held in the city's
Camperdown park. There are also six
junior football teams in the area:
Dundee North End,
East Craigie,
Lochee Harp,
Lochee United,
Dundee Violet and
Downfield. In May 2005, two local teams—
Tayport and
Lochee United—qualified for the final of the
Scottish Junior Cup at
Tannadice Park, which was won by Tayport.
Dundee is home to the
Dundee Texol Stars ice hockey team which plays at Dundee Ice Arena. The team participates in the
Scottish National League (SNL) with the
Dundee Tigers and the
Northern League (NL) and in cup competitions. Dundee is home to
Dundee High School Former Pupils rugby club which plays in the First Division of the
BT Premier League rugby club. Menzieshill Hockey Club are one of Scotland's premier field hockey teams and regularly represent Scotland in European competitions. The team plays in the European Indoor Cup A Division and has won the Scottish Indoor National League seven times in the last decade. An outdoor concrete skate park was constructed in Dudhope Park with money from the
Scottish Executive’s Quality of Life Fund. Opened in 2006, the park was nominated for the
Nancy Ovens Award.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Dundee Scotland'.
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