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Kirkcaldy
KY1 1GL
About
Discover Seafield Tower, Kirkcaldy. Scotland is littered with ruined fortresses, but this sixteenth-century castle on the Fife coastal path tells its own unique story.
Seafield was granted to Robert Multrare by James II of Scotland in 1443. The Multrare family seat was at Moutray Hill near Edinburgh broadly south from Seafield across the Firth of Forth. In an age where travel via water was quicker and easier that movement along land, it is not surprising they decided to build a Tower House at Seafield although work did not start on the structure until the early sixteenth century.
Originally five storeys high, it was constructed in an 'L' shape configuration using local red sandstone. The Tower would have had a vaulted storage area on the ground floor, a Great Hall on the first floor and the upper levels would have been the lord's accommodation. A plan of 1774 suggests ancillary buildings - including a brewhouse, bakehouse and stables - were located in an enclosure to the west of the Tower. The norm would be for these have been protected by a barmkin (curtain wall) but unfortunately any evidence of such a structure has now been lost due to coastal erosion.
In 1631 the Seafield estate was sold to James Law, Archbishop of Glasgow. After his death the following year, it passed through various owners ultimately ending up with the Methven family. They abandoned it as a residence in the early eighteenth century and the tower was left to drift into ruin. Following a storm in January 2013 a significant part of the north-west corner of the tower collapsed.
