Knockdavie Castle | |
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Location | Burntisland, Fife, Scotland |
Coordinates | 56°04′50″N 3°16′03″W / 56.08056°N 3.26750°W |
Governing body | Historic Environment Scotland |
Official name | Knockdavie Castle |
Designated | 20 January 1992 |
Reference no. | SM5251 |
Knockdavie Castle is a now-ruined 17th-century house in Burntisland parish, Fife, Scotland.[1] The name probably derives from the Gaelic cnoc dubh -in "(place of the) black hill(ock)",[2] with cnoc dabhoch “the hill farm” another theory.[3] It is recorded under the alternative name of Stenhouse (stone house) in 1561, which survives in the name of the modern day adjacent farmhouse.[4][5] It is said to have belonged, in the seventeenth century, to a Douglas, recorded in an appendix to The Scots Worthies as an opponent of the Covenanters.[6][7][8]
Places like Knockdavie Castle in Fife may not make it on to any Top 10 lists any time soon, but they're still historically significant
…Knockdavie Castle. It is now only a fragment of a ruin. Two patches of blackened wall are all that show its site. Knock a hill and dabhoch, pronounce davoc, a farm, the hill farm, is evidently it's derivation, and its appearance exactly corresponds to this.