Balfour

Balfour was a castle which was owned by the Balfour family and then the Betons or Beatons.

In 1590 John Betoun of Balfour was granted the lands and town of Kilrenny. In 1590 he received a charter granting him some land in Anstruther Easter and the right to draw water from a spring under the Mothlaw.

In January 1594 John Fermour of Kingsbarns complained to the Privy Council that he had been attacked by Sir John Melville of Carnbee, Sir John’s cousin, Robert Betoun of Balfour, and their servants, and that they had set upon him and shot him in the head with a pistolet, leaving him for dead. Only Sir John was convicted and was merely bound over to keep the peace. Sir John had been denounced a rebel in 1593 for not appearing to answer a charge laid on him by the tenants of “the king’s lands of Kingsbarns” regarding his illegal building of a mill on the same lands.

In 1593 Sir John Melville of Carnbee was denounced a rebel for not appearing to answer a charge laid on him by the tenants of “the king’s lands of Kingsbarns” for illegally constructing a mill on those lands.

In 1621 David Beaton of Balfour held a third part of a quarter of the town and lands of Inuergellie, amolunting to 8 acres of arable land, which were excluded from a grant of Innergellie to Williame Berclay of Inuergellie and his wife.

The castle was remodelled into a castellated mansion by David Bryce in the 19th century but demolished in the 1960s.