Balgonie Castle

A 15th-century tower house on the south bank of the River Leven a mile to the SE of Markinch in central Fife.

Associated with the Sibbald and Lundy families and once occupied by Rob Roy Macgregor, its most famous owner was the covenanting General Sir Alexander Leslie who fought with Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years War. He bought the estate in 1635 six years before being created 1st Earl of Leven and Lord Balgonie. Restoration of the tower began in the late 1970s.

A turbine house using water from the River Leven was built nearby in 1922 by the Balgonie Colliery Co. The turbine was used as a source of power by a local paper mill in the 1980s and was brought back into action in the 1990s by a private power generating company.

If you would like to visit this area as part of a highly personalized small group tour of my native Scotland please e-mail me:

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