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Glenfarg and Arngask
Glen Farg is a place of delight and much interest, and a wonderful base from which to tour much of Scotland. Queen Victoria, for instance, described it as 'really lovely'. Travel road that probes through the glen's winding, falling, wooded course for 4 twisting miles, and admire the hanging woods, tumbling river and romantic prospects of what is in fact a Perthshire beauty-spot.
The Glen of the River Farg is one of the eastmost gaps in the Ochil Hills, and its descent, from the Kinross-shire boundary near the attractive, quiet and unspoiled hamlet of Duncrevie, northwards to the level plain of the Earn, makes a notable drop of almost five hundred feet. The Farg rises at a little-known but quite large reservoir-loch amongst the Ochils just 2 miles west of Glenfarg village, in the Deuglie area, a pleasant setting. Glenfarg village is fairly modern, and used to be known as Damhead. Here is a hotel, garages, shops and the modern parish church.
The original settlement and parish kirkton was at Arngask, half a mile to the east. Here, behind Arngask House, is the ruined former church, secluded in woodland, ivy-grown now, and in a kirkyard with ancient tombstones. In this is the belfry of a still earlier church, with its bell dated 1710. Also, beside the roofless mort-house, is a massive red-sandstone effigy of the Virgin and Child. The original kirk was a private chapel of the Balvaird family, whose fine castle stands about two miles to the east, almost on the Fife border, on an isolated site east of the junction at The Famous Bein Inn.
Balvaird is one of the most interesting castles in the land, well preserved, and highly advanced for a late 5th century structure, with many excellent features--even an ingenious arrangement of stone spouts from the roof, enabling wall-closets to be flushed out by rain-water. Balvaird was a Barclay property, which went with an heiress to Sir Andrew Murray, youngest son of Tullibardine, ancestor of the Dukes of Atholl, in the 15th century. Oddly enough a descendant, the Reverend Andrew Murray of Balvaird, minister of Abdie, was created Lord Balvaird by Charles I purely to spite the Kirk, with whom he was unpopular.
In the lower glen of the Farg, is the Bein Inn, a famed hostelry. Glenfarg only a few miles from Perth is also ideally located for easy trips to St Andrews, Dunfermline, Culross, Perth, Edinburgh, Falkland Palace, and all of historic Fife and Perthshire.
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