Mountquhanie Castle

Mountquhanie Castle, Fife
Photo © James Allen, 27 February 2006

Ruined castle surrounded by farm buildings.

MOUNTQUHANIE CASTLE, Fifeshire.

This castle is situated in the parish of Kilmany, a few miles north from Cupar. It is described by Sir Robert Sibbald as "a pretty good house, with inclosures." The original castle was a keep, to which later structures have been added. The keep is now in a ruinous condition, and so enveloped in ivy that its walls can hardly be seen. It measures about 42 feet by 26 feet, and has been four stories high. Considerable alterations have been made on it, so that the original arrangements are not quite evident. The ground floor is vaulted, and appears not to have had any connection with the upper floors, which were probably reached by a ladder and a high door on the first floor. From this level no stairs now lead to the upper floors, so that we infer there must have been some kind of turret or wing containing a stair where the gap now is on the north side of the building. The first floor is lighted on the south side by two long narrow slits and a central low wide window, placed near the ceiling. There are two small lighted closets in the thickness of the walls, one of which probably served as a sleeping place; it seems to have had some kind of enclosing porch projecting into the hall from the rybat remaining on the west wall. The angle turrets occur on three corners.

In the seventeenth century an addition was made to the castle. The turret at the south-west angle, is a pigeon-house, with a stone-constructed perch and entrance for the birds. At the time these alterations were made, an outside stair was put up to the first floor of the keep; its ruins indicate that it has been a handsome one.

In one of the outbuildings there is a stone, carelessly built into the wall upside down. It contains what can be made out to have been the Balfour arms — a chevron charged with an otter's head, erased, and a saltier in base couped; there are also the initials A.B., and the date 1597. This stone was probably built over the old doorway of some of the additions to the castle, and is doubtless the date of the erection of some part of the structure. The initials are probably those of Sir Andrew Balfour of Strathor and Mountquhanie, son of Sir Michael Balfour, and whose mother was a daughter of Patrick, Archbishop of St. Andrews. The enlarged castle was thus, apparently, not built by Sir James Balfour of Mountquhanie, so well known during the reign of Queen Mary, but he doubtless occupied the older keep. The date 1683 is built into a doorway filling up an old arch in the adjoining farm-steading. At that date Mountquhanie was in the possession of the Crawford family, by whom further additions were probably made.

Reference

The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland by David Macgibbon and Thomas Ross, 1889