Balmerino Abbey

Balmerino Abbey stands in ruin on the southern shore of the Tay estuary in north Fife, the remains of a Cistercian house colonised from Melrose Abbey between 1227 and 1229. Its foundation was the work of Ermengarde de Beaumont, widow of King William the Lion, together with her son Alexander II; the church was finished by 1233, and Ermengarde herself was buried within it. At its height in the early sixteenth century the community numbered around twenty monks. The abbey suffered heavily in the turbulence of the mid-1500s, burned in December 1547 during the Rough Wooing by English forces under Thomas Wyndham and later damaged as the Reformation took hold. In 1561 John Hay, holding the abbey as lay commendator, converted its buildings into a private residence, and in 1603 the estate passed to Sir James Elphinstone as the temporal lordship of Balmerino. What survives today is chiefly the eastern range of the cloister, preserved because it was reused as a dwelling, including a vaulted sacristy and two chapter houses of different dates. Excavation in 1896 recovered the plan of the vanished church, and repairs followed in 1910. The site is now cared for by the National Trust for Scotland.