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Field Visit
Date 29 May 1925
Event ID 1099012
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1099012
Seafield Tower.
Seafield Tower, built on a rock on the foreshore, beside a burn, a mile northward of Kinghorn, is now a mere shell. The rock has been cut in places to a vertical face, as much to provide building material as for protection, and is surmounted by the remains of a boundary wall, forming an enclosure which has a salient circular tower at the northernangle. The survey prepared in 1774 and reproduced in Fig. 310 shows the extent of the castle at that date, while Fig. 311 represents its present condition.
The tower itself stands free from the boundary walls and is L-shaped on plan, comprising a main block 30 ¾ by 25 ¾ feet and a wing 10 ½ by 12 ¾ feet, the latter being an addition to contain the staircase. Apparently the addition replaced a smaller stair-wing, the dimensions of which cannot now be ascertained. Its building blocked up the original entrance to the ground floor, and a new entrance had to be formed in the eastern wall. The masonry is rubble, very weather-worn but regularly coursed and heavily grouted; the only moulding noted is the chamfer. The present height of the tower is almost that of the original wall-head, but no trace is left of parapet or walk. The ground floor is vaulted and has had an entresol floor of wood inserted at the springing-level. The lower part has been subdivided. At its south-west corner the remains of a hatch through the vault can be traced, and a small fireplace at the same corner seems to have been inserted; the two narrow windows looking northward, which light the upper and lower part of the ground floor, are original. The first floor was a single chamber with a large fireplace in the north gable and windows to east and south, the latter provided with window seats in the deep embrasures. At the southern corners of the room are ruinous mural chambers, the western probably a garderobe, the eastern a lobby served by the original stair. Above are two upper floors, in which the arrangement has been roughly similar.
This tower probably dates from the early 16th century. It is in bad repair.
HISTORICAL NOTE. Sibbald refers to this house as "the ancient Seat of the Moutrays" (1). John "Multrare of Seyfield" is on record in 1514 (2), and John "Multray" of Seafield in 1543 (3).
RCAHMS 1933, 29 May 1925.
(1) History of Fife etc. (ed. 1803), p. 314. (2) Sheriff Court Book of Fife (S.H.S.), p. 6. (3) Laing Charters, No. 476.
