Balbirnie Stone Circle
Balbirnie Stone Circle is an archaeological site, a stone circle on the north-eastern edge of Glenrothes, in Fife, Scotland. The site was in use from the late Neolithic period to the late second millennium BC. The prehistoric ceremonial complex of Balfarg is nearby; the scheduling for Balfarg states that "the Balfarg complex, together with the nearby stone circle at Balbirnie and other sites in their vicinity, form one of the most important groups of monuments of Neolithic and Bronze Age date in eastern Scotland."
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414 m
Balfarg
Balfarg is a prehistoric monument complex in Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland. It is protected as a scheduled monument. With the development of Glenrothes new town in the latter half of the 20th Century an adjacent residential area was developed around the complex carrying the same name.
666 m
Balbirnie House
Balbirnie House is an early 19th-century country house in Markinch, near Glenrothes, in central Fife, Scotland. The present house was completed in 1817 as a rebuild of an 18th-century building, itself a replacement for a 17th-century dwelling. The home of the Balfour family from 1640, the house was sold in 1969 and opened as a hotel in 1990. The grounds now comprise a large public park and a golf course. The house is protected as a category A listed building, while the grounds are included in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland.
1.4 km
Pitcoudie
Pitcoudie is a housing area in North Glenrothes in the Kingdom of Fife, Scotland. The area comprises 396 terraced and semi-detached houses. Traditionally, a pitcoudie was a donkey, mule or work-horse which ferried coal and slag from the coal mines – spending most of its life underground. The area of Pitcoudie today exists on what was once an extensive range of mining-shafts and pits.
1.5 km
Pitcairn House
Pitcairn House is a ruined 17th century laird's house, located in the modern Collydean residential area of Glenrothes, in Fife, Scotland. Pitcairn House was not, as is sometimes reported, built by the Picts, a people whose culture disappeared from Scotland around the 10th century. The name Pitcairn does, however, have roots in the Pictish language, combining the common prefix pit, meaning a portion of land or farm, with the Gaelic cairn.
The noble family named for the area - the (de) Pitcairnes, recorded as far back as Henry de Pitcairn in 1426 - built the house around 1650. The family produced several eminent figures, chief among them Archibald Pitcairne (1652-1713), physician, religious playwright, and occasional correspondent of Isaac Newton, who owned the house in the early 1700s. By 1793, statistical accounts of the region describe the house as a ruin.
The ruins are approximately 15 by 5.5 metres (49 ft × 18 ft), with the east gable rising to 6 metres (20 ft). The rest of the building has collapsed to the foundations. It is thought that the building was up to three storeys high.
The site was excavated by archaeologists in 1980, and subsequently designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument. A number of finds are now in the Kirkcaldy Museum. A steading and cottages were once associated with the house, although these were demolished when the housing estate was built.
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