Tour
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.
