A vision of Britain through time
A vision of Britain from 1801 to now.
Including maps, statistical trends and historical descriptions.
A vision of Britain through time
A vision of Britain from 1801 to now.
Including maps, statistical trends and historical descriptions.
Balcarres (Gael. baile-carrais, 'town of the contest'), a mansion in Kilconquhar parish, East Neuk of Fife, ¾ mile NNW of Colinsburgh. It stands, engirt by trees, on a sunward slope, 300 feet above and 3 miles to the N of the Firth of Forth, across whose waters it looks away to the Bass, the Lammermuirs, and Edinburgh. Originally built in 1595, in the Scoto-Flemish Gothic of the period, it retains its fine dining-room, its turnpike stair, and its thick-walled bedchamber, ' Oliver Cromwell's Room; ' but otherwise was much enlarged and altered in the first half of the present century. A ruined ivy-clad chapel, hard by, erected about 1635, serves as the family burial-place; and, 200 yards to the E, Balcarres Craig, a turreted rock of clinkstone, rises abruptly from the Den Burn's deep ravine. The estate was purchased in 1587 by the lawyer-statesman John Lindsay (1552-98), Lord Menmuir, second son of the ninth Earl of Crawford, who in 1592 obtained a royal charter uniting the lands of Balcarres, Balneill, and Pitcorthie into a free barony. His second son, David, the Rosicrucian (1586-1641), became Lord Lindsay of Balcarres in 1633; and his son, Alexander, feasted Charles II. here in 1651, the year that he was created Earl of Balcarres, and died an exile at Breda in 1659. The third Earl, Colin (d. 1722), was a Jacobite, though cousin by marriage to William of Orange, saw Claverhouse's ghost, and founded Colinsburgh; the fifth Earl, James (d. 1768), was ` the first that brought Fifeshire agriculture to any degree of perfection. ' His daughter, Lady Ann Barnard (1750-1825), composed in 1771 Auld Robin Gray, the name of the old Balcarres herdsman; and his eldest son, Alexander, sixth Earl (d. 1825), fought a duel with the traitor Arnold, and in 1789 sold the lands of Balcarres to a younger son, the Hon. Rt. Lindsay (d. 1836). Title and lands were thus dissevered, the former now being held by Jas. Ludovic Lindsay, twenty-sixth Earl of Crawford and ninth of Balcarres (b. 1847; suc. 1880; seat, Dunecht house); and the latter by Sir Coutts Trotter Lindsay, second Bart. since 1821 (b. 1824; suc. 1837), who is seventh in lineal descent from Lord Menmuir, and owner of 4672 acres in the shire, valued at £9619 per annum. See the late Earl of Crawford's Lives of the -Lindsays (3 vols., Lond. 1849).
(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)
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| Feature Description: | "a mansion" (ADL Feature Type: "residential sites") |
| Administrative units: | Kilconquhar ScoP Fife ScoCnty |
| Place names: | BAILE CARRAIS | BALCARRES |
Pages for linked administrative units may contain historical statistics and information on boundaries.