- Location: Burleigh Rd, Milnathort, Kinross KY13 9GG
- Opening times: Every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, and the first Saturday and Sunday of the month, from 1 April to 30 September. Closed 1 October to 30 March.
- Entry: Free admission
- Access: Roadside parking.
I only became aware of Burleigh Castle a couple of days ago, when it popped up at the bottom of the entry for Lochleven Castle on Historic Scotland’s website. I was immediately struck by the unusual shape of two distinct towers connected by a curtain wall. One was a typical rectangular Scottish tower house and the other was altogether more fanciful, a circular tower topped by a rectangular ‘house’, a squatter, slightly less bonkers version of those found on Claypotts Castle in Dundee. Historic Scotland was flagging up Burleigh Castle as it was close to Lochleven Castle, so I set off for it after finishing visiting the latter.
I had initially assumed the two towers and connecting wall was the whole castle but are instead all that remains of a much larger complex, its asymmetrical twin-towered look today no more than a twist of fate. The roofless rectangular tower is the oldest part of the castle, built in the late 15th or early 16th century. Its more ornate round tower dates from 1582.
There is no record of Mary Queen of Scots staying here, a surprise considering she seems to have visited every other Scottish castle at one time or another. However, her mother Mary of Guise dined here 9 January 1540, and her son James VI was a semi-regular, known to have stayed at least three times between 1587 and 1596.
The castle was once the seat of the Balfours of Burleigh, “an ambitious dynasty”, according to the sole information board, “who fought their way through two centuries of Scottish history”. Amongst their number was Robert Balfour, 5th Lord Balfour of Burleigh, or Blackhearted Bob, as no one ever called him. He fell in love with a woman considered well below his station, so his family sent him away on some travels in the hope he would forget her. Before leaving, he informed the lady in question that he would kill her husband, should she marry while he was away.
In time she married a schoolmaster from Inverkeithing named Henry Stenhouse, but only after warning him of Black Bob’s threat. When Balfour returned and heard his love interest had married he fulfilled his vow, shooting Stenhouse on 9 April 1707; the schoolmaster died twelve days later. Burleigh was found guilty and sentenced to death, but he escaped from Edinburgh Tolbooth by exchanging clothes with his sister.
He laid low at Burleigh, at times reputedly evading recapture by hiding in a hollowed ash tree later dubbed ‘Burleigh’s Hole’, although where this tree was located appears to have gone unrecorded. When the coast was clear, our villain hightailed it to the continent but returned to Scotland in time to take part in the 1715 Jacobite Rising, for which his estates and title were forfeited to the Crown. One would have expected justice to catch up with Balfour considering he was a murderer, an escaped convict, and a traitor, but remarkably he lived for over forty more years, dying in 1757. He was buried in Edinburgh’s Greyfriars Kirkyard, where he single-handedly failed to lend his name to a Harry Potter character.
Destination or Diversion?
It really doesn’t take long to view both towers and the grounds, so Burleigh Castle is a diversion only. Note: The towers are only open during the spring and summer months, at the times listed above, and the site is unattended, unless one counts the castle’s resident ghost Grey Maggie.
