Save Our Glen

I would like to express my happiness at the fact that Angus Munro Hogg, chairman of the Carnegie UK Trust, and trustee/ex-chairman of the Carnegie Dunfermline & Hero Trust has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list for services to the Carnegie Trust and to the community in Dunfermline – I would like to, but I can’t, considering his role in secretly changing the charter terms of the Dunfermline Trust in a way that is repugnant to the wishes of the founder.

The people of Fife who subsidise the work that the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust were tasked to carry out at “The Glen” (Pittencrieff Park), Dunfermline, are the ones who deserve an honour in recognition of their long-term financial subsidy of the Carnegie Trusts.

Then there is the matter of the Trusts as a partner with the profligate and cash-strapped Fife Council jostling with other, small, and more deserving, applicants for the finite resources of the Heritage Lottery Funds!

More recently, Mr Hogg, the Dunfermline trust chairman was again courting the New York Corporation and dedicating a walk in honour of their chairman, Vartan Gregorian.

I am not sure that “Vartan’s Way”, a road in a prime site at the top of The Glen is an appropriate accolade to the success of the New York Corporation as a whole, but if it is, then there should be an unkempt corner at the bottom of The Glen named “Hogg’s Botton” as testimony to the failures of various trustees of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust (See, Chapter 8).

Stop Press! Carnegie Dunfermline Trust are part of a 10 -strong consortium called First Dunfermline (voluntary trading arm of Dunfermline First, which is said to be well-advanced in its efforts to achieve charitable status) which will again be draining even more money from the council-tax payers of Fife by way of funding.

The campaign to keep Pittencrieff Park for the purpose for which it was intended.

This tomminogue website, was set up as a result of the recent attempts to commercially develop Pittencrieff Park (The Glen) and the massive outpouring of public opposition to that move. In a short space of time almost 10,000 people signed a petition opposing any development of the Glen and though the original potential developer abandoned their plans there are signs that the Trust who look after the Glen on behalf of the people will consider further proposals for commercial development.

I had spent some time researching the charters governing the stewardship of the Glen and felt that the information I had gathered should be made available to the general public, so that anyone could see the terms under which their gift from Andrew Carnegie is governed, and the manner in which they have recently been changed.

The charter changes have their genesis in a Report and 10-year Action Plan prepared for Fife Council in 2004. The Trust are on the record in stating that the cost of maintaining the Glen is the driving force behind the need to maximise the income potential in the Glen. However as the costs of the upkeep of the Glen are borne by Fife Council, they are the driving force that propels the Trust in their push for commercial development.

Whatever the motive, the existing terms of the Royal Charter have undergone a radical overhaul as a result of the Supplemental Charter that the Trust applied for in secret in 2005 and which was granted in 2006.

There seems to have been a major miscarriage of justice in the process by which the Privy Council Office approved the charter changes, and granted the terms of the Supplemental Charter. Many of the new terms are diametrically opposed to the wishes of Andrew Carnegie as expressed clearly in his Trust Deed and Letter of 1903.

I thought it only right that the recipients of Carnegie’s gift of the Glen (Pittencrieff Park) –the people of Dunfermline–should be aware of these facts and decided to set them out on this website for the record. The story is told in Chapters 1–7 (Links above under “Save Our Glen”).

The Pittencrieff Park Support (PPS) steering committee agreed that I should do this as we considered that the 10,000 people who had signed the petition had in a way given us a mandate to act in a responsible manner to oppose any future attempts to commercially develop the Glen. The terms of the petition that was signed are:

Pittencrieff Park Support group

Business School YES, but NOT in the Glen

We, the inheritors of Pittencrieff Glen and Park, given to us
in 1903 by ANDREW CARNEGIE, petition the Trustees of the Glen to keep it intact and ask that neither business nor developers be allowed to spoil the tranquil and peaceful atmosphere.
Mr Carnegie’s intention in donating land and money was that Pittencrieff with its lovely glen, should be a recreation park for the adults and children of his home town.

If there has to be a new building within Pittencrieff let it be a MUSEUM for the people of Dunfermline, wherein young and old can learn to appreciate the heritage of our ancient city.

I took part in The Common Good Awareness Project which made a video of the experiences of people across Scotland who fought to preserve our common good heritage. The video was dedicated to the late SNP Councillor, Ken Ferguson, (Greenock) who devoted his life and life savings in attempting to keep Greenock Docks from the hands of the developers, much like what we did in relation to The Glen. LINK

I hope that you find this website informative. Yours in the common good, Tom Minogue, Chair, Save Our Glen.

P.S. Chapter 8, which will deal with the impact of the charter changes, whereby schemes that the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust are involved in are denying the voluntary sector of Heritage Lottery Fund monies, is published in part and poses the question: “Is the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust acting in a manner that is repugnant to the benefactor’s wishes?”