Rires Castle
Rires Castle – from an 'Ink sketch of Rires Historic Environment Scotland Castle in 1805 by Rev John Sime, the originals of which are held in the Historic Environment Scotland Archive.
There are a number of explanations of where the name
Rires, comes from (see Fife place names Data)
; the one that I favour being “that it
refers to some kind of compensation or reward by the King”. That would fit in with Macduff. Being King Malcolm’s ‘right hand man’... with
the dubious honour of leading the Scottish Army into battle, Rires would be the
reward for such an honour (?). Anyway
by 1294 there was a ‘Shire’ of Rires,
containing Easter and Wester Rires, Balcarres,
Balniel and the other bits and pieces that made up a Scottish shire; including a coal mine.... probably a ‘bell
pit’. The remains of a pithead, about 200
metres to the Northwest of Sprattyhall Farm, were visible until the 1980’s....
a small patch of trees in a field.... but that would be part of the 19th
century Balcarres coal workings and has been filled in.
In 1393 King
Robert III gave Sir John of Wemyss permission to build a castle on the site
of ‘Macduff’s Castle’, the ruins of which (the original castle) would be visible
in 1393 and would have been re-cycled into the new Sir John of Wemyss castle. There is a crop mark photo that shows the
defensive ditch round the original castle.
In 1805 Rev. Sime did a drawing of Sir John’s 1393 castle, by this time (1805) in a ruinous state, and it is from his sketch that I created my drawing. The original Rev. Sime sketch is in the Canmore archives.
By 1840 the castle had been demolished; and Rires Farm cottar houses had been built close to the site by 1850. One ‘block’ of
three (of six) cottar houses has been converted into a single house to
rent. The other three original cottar
houses were demolished and a bungalow now sits on that site. Two ‘modern’ cottar houses were built in the
1950’s immediately to the East of the original 1850’s ones. There was also a new Rires farm steading by
1850; Sir John’s castle, like its
predecessor Macduff’s castle, had been re-cycled; albeit this time as farm buildings and cottar
houses.
Sir John founded the Blessed Mary Chapel of Rires in
1404; it stood about 200 yards Southeast of Rires Castle on what was called ‘Castle
Park’.... fields had names in those days.
About quarter of a mile south of the Castle stood
the ‘Bicker’ tree. The local folk
always regarded this tree as the place where the farm workers etc. from the
surrounding area would meet to chat and ‘bicker’.... a gathering place.
