A rare survival among Scottish tower houses, standing near-complete rather than ruined and tied to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Inglis and Scot families of Fife.
Scotstarvit Tower stands in the fields of Fife, a couple of miles south of Cupar and set between Tarvit Hill and Walton Hill. It is a tall, L-plan tower house of six storeys, raised in the third quarter of the sixteenth century by the Inglis family and still remarkably complete. In 1611 the property passed to Sir John Scot, a scholar and man of affairs who reworked the tower during the 1620s and gave it the name it carries today. Scot is remembered as the author of a sharp-eyed political satire, The Staggering State of the Scots Statesmen, and the tower was long a seat of his family. Major General John Scott inherited it from his father David in 1766 and died here in 1775, after which the estate eventually descended to the Wemyss family. Unlike so many Scottish tower houses, Scotstarvit was never reduced to a shell; its stair and floors survive largely intact, offering a clear sense of how such a household was arranged from cellar to garret. Placed in guardianship in 1948, it is today cared for as a scheduled monument, a plain and dignified example of the fortified laird’s house.
What follows is drawn from published sources, with each claim labelled by how firmly it is established.
What to look for
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The L-plan form, where a projecting wing gives the tower its distinctive stepped footprint
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Six storeys rising from cellar to garret, with the internal stair still in place
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Stonework and detailing from Sir John Scot's 1620s reworking of the earlier Inglis tower
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Its unusually intact condition, allowing the layout of a laird's household to be read floor by floor
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The upland setting between Tarvit Hill and Walton Hill, south of Cupar
Plan your visit
- Location
- General area near Fife, Fife
This is a sensitive or fragile site, so we show only its general area. Please check official heritage sources for access before visiting, and take care not to disturb it.
Nearby places
Fortified place · Medieval
Dairsie Castle
Fife
A stronghold of the bishops of St Andrews that hosted a medieval Scottish parliament and sheltered the young James VI, later rebuilt from ruin.
Minor monument · Medieval
Dovecot, Creich Castle
Fife
Dovecote with HES-listed pre-1800 evidence (1723).
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