[2] The first element of the town's name comes from the surname Colden or Cowden, often indicated in early forms as a possessor by the addition of -(i)s, for example Cowdennyes Baith.

An article by eminent archaeologist A.D. Lacaille F.S.A Scot[4] details the find of a late bronze-age cemetery near Tollie Hill.

One of the urns found contained fragments of processed Arran pitchstone, indicating some economic activity and commerce.

There is no evidence of a permanent settlement establishing itself around the current site of Cowdenbeath until the designation of the original Beath Kirk as a parish church in 1429-30 to act as a focal point to serve the surrounding area.

The earliest written record of Beath (Beth) was found in a charter of Inchcolm Abbey, dated 6 March 1178.

This significant date followed the building of a new church in 1640 at Beath, to replace the ruins of a sanctuary, which had fallen into sad disrepair.

[7] It is alleged that the infamous graverobbers Burke and Hare sourced some of their cadavers from Beath Cemetery, to supply to the Scottish surgeon Robert Knox for dissection.

[7] Precautions were taken at Beath Cemetery to prevent body-snatching and for many years what were taken to be two iron coffins without lids dug up from the old churchyard lay near the old hearse house.

[10] However, it is thought to have originated when turnpike roads were first made and that it marked the spot of an inn and later of a tollhouse erected in the 17th century.

Indeed, Queen Victoria's entourage stopped at the Cowdenbeath Coaching Inn to change horses on her first trip to Scotland in 1842, en route for Balmoral.

The arrival of the Oakley Iron Company around 1850 was to have a long-lasting impact upon Cowdenbeath and make the name synonymous with coal mining for almost 100 years.

[14] By 1850, the flourishing coal pits of Kelty, Lochgelly, Donibristle, Fordell and Hill of Beath surrounded the hamlet of Cowdenbeath.

The opening of the Dunfermline–Thornton railway, via Cowdenbeath, in 1848, enhanced the prospects for mining and pits were sunk in every corner of the area, primarily for ironstone but, when this became uneconomic around the late 1870s, for coal alone.

Such was the upsurge in mining activity that the population of Cowdenbeath doubled (4,000–8,000) in the ten years between 1890 and 1900 and gave rise to the nickname "Chicago of Fife".

[16] The Central Works, Cowdenbeath, (commonly referred to as "the Workshops") were built in 1924 by the Fife Coal Company Limited in order to centralise its supervisory staff and to cope with the greater amount of manufacturing and maintenance work caused by the intensive mechanisation programme which was being introduced in its mines.

It was not until 1936 that Fife Mining School acquired its own custom-built building on the site of the old Woodside House on Broad Street.

This is impossible today, as the subsidence on the High Street has been so great that the railway bridge now obscures the view from one end to the other.

The proximity of the A92 to the south of Cowdenbeath, and to a lesser extent to the east, also serves to define its lower boundary.

The northern boundary of Cowdenbeath is characterised by a rural landscape, which merges into the Lochore Meadows Country Park ("The Meadies").

This formerly industrial/mining landscape, which was host to a number of pit-heads (including the Mary Pit, whose winding gear structure dominates the park as a monument to its mining legacy), is now a very picturesque area which provides leisure and recreational outdoor amenities.

Cowdenbeath also has a golf club, originally built as a nine-hole course on the old Dora Coal mine site.

The stadium has a tarmac track encircling the football pitch, one of Britain's fastest, used for stock car racing.

The speedway track, which staged eight meetings every year, including a world championship qualifying round, was unusual in that it featured a brick wall safety fence.

This sandstone is the same as that used to clad the original Beath High School (the basic structure of which was reinforced concrete) on Stenhouse street.

The mine works of the No.7 pit, whose original pit-head was in close proximity to the school, caused significant subsidence in latter years.

She was awarded £11,846 by the European Court of Human Rights, plus costs, as recompense for her son's suspension from Beath High School for refusing to be belted.