Arnot Tower

Arnot Tower, Fife
Photo © Chris Newman, 7 July 2006

Arnot Tower ruins (15th century)and Arnot House. Arnot Tower Gardens are now a wedding venue.

--ARNOT TOWER, KINROSS-SHIRE.

A tower situated in the parish of Portmoak, about one and a half miles east of the village of Scotlandwell, and three miles west of the town of Leslie in Fife. It stands on the southern slope of the Lomond Hills, on a small knoll overlooking the River Leven as it issues from Loch Leven, and close to a modern mansion-house. It is a small rectangular building, about 31 feet by 24 feet, and has had a courtyard on the south, one wall of which remains. The tower has been very substantially constructed, the walls being about 6 feet 6 inches thick, and built with coursed ashlar. The ground floor has been vaulted, and the inside facing of the walls of that floor has also been of ashlar. All the floors are gone, and the whole building much dilapidated no doubt the work of violence. The doorway seems to have been at the south-east angle, which is now demolished, and a circular staircase was doubtless carried up in the same angle.

Little can be learned of the history of the tower, but "Michael de Arnot" was at the siege of Loch Leven Castle for Baliol in 1334. The present tower, however, looks like fifteenth-century work, and was probably erected by his successors on the site of an older one.

THE CASTELLATED AND DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF SCOTLAND BY DAVID MACGIBBON AND THOMAS ROSS, 1889--