A town in Central Fife, situated between the Lochty Burn and the River Ore 2 miles (3 km) south southeast of Glenrothes. Formerly an important staging post on a coaching route, it developed during the 19th Century at a railway junction associated with the coalfields of Fife. The Rothes 'Super Pit', which lay immediately to the west, was opened by HRH Queen Elizabeth II with great optimism in 1957 but closed due to geological and flooding problems just five years later, leaving much political embarrassment. The distinctive modernist wheel houses by Egon Riss (1901-64) were demolished in 1993. Thornton Junction railway station closed in 1969, but a new station - Glenrothes with Thornton - opened in 1992 on the Fife Circle Line. The junctions between the Fife Circle, East Coast Main Line and Leven Branch all remain here.
Thornton has an 18-hole golf course.
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