When visiting Balmerino Abbey you might like to take the opportunity to explore its beautiful surroundings. A brief, circular walk from Balmerino helps to build a picture of the immediate area chosen by the monks of old.

Leaving the abbey if you turn right, and take a second right turn, between two cottages, you are going towards Kirkton of Balmerino, the twin hamlet. On reaching the Kirkton go down the lane across from the telephone box to the south bank of the Tay estuary. That’s the direction that local walkers take: once on the riverside track, heading left, the view towards the west is particularly attractive all year round. But let’s start at the beginning:

WHAT YOU WILL PASS BY

The Cistercians were farmers and fishermen, and the group of modern houses, turning right from the abbey, stands on the site of the abbey steadings which included the monks’ granary, a doocot and the Abbot’s House.
The Old Inn, a two-storey building nearby, until l954 was an ale house, thought to date from Cromwellian times. It is now a private residence.
Turning right you reach the bridge over the burn where the monks fished. [Just beyond it you can access the meadow that leads to the Monks’Walk, through a small wood, ending at The Loan, another approach to the Kirkton.]
But continuing on the circular walk, there was a Protestant church where the cemetery is today, hence the Kirkton name. The graves of the Naughton Estate family, the Crawfords, and the Scrymgeour-Wedderburns of Birkhill, are there; and Balmerino church is now at Bottomcraig. Before the Reformation the abbey church was the parish church.
The Kirkton: flax was spun and woven from the l8th century, and by l838 one hundred and fifty men and women were employed at the loom, using flax from Dundee. They wheeled it up from Balmerino pier. Several Kirkton cottages had a workroom or weaving shed. One cottage housed a ‘dame school’ with a single woman teacher.
There was a fishing station on the shore, where today you see down the lane a group of three houses. There was a boiler house, salmon being preserved for the London market. Salted fish from the Tay was exported to the continent, shipments going from Newburgh to Genoa. In the l950s a local Balmerino business went into partnership with Young’s Seafood. The catch was salmon and sea trout in season, whitebait and sparling. Local sparling featured on menus of the famous old liners, the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth.

Turning left to walk by the river you see Samson’s Stone on the shore. Could it have been hurled from across the Tay? That’s one local legend. You can make up your own as you head for Balmerino.
Facing you is the pier, fallen on hard times, but once busy with flax and folk. In the l8th century Balmerino pier, a creek belonging to the Custom House in Dundee, became the main departure point on the south side of the Tay for shipping wheat and barley to the Forth canal. Its first purpose was to ship lime from the Fife hills to Dundee. The Boat of Balmerino, a small packet or mailboat, sailed to Dundee every Friday in the l860s, carrying passengers and merchandise. When Sunday drinking was disallowed except for bona-fide travellers, pleasure boats brought an influx of visitors to the Old Inn. At four o’clock drinkers had to be ready to return to Dundee aboard the Cleopatra or the Maid of Perth.
The Old Mill, the substantial private property on the left as you turn the corner into Balmerino village, references a mill dating from the l8th century. Wheat, barley and oats were ground there and at an earlier mill worked by the monks.
Back to the abbey, and beyond it is Memorial Square with its distinctive cottages dating from l948. It was built by the late Lord Dundee as a memorial to his brother, David Scrymgeour-Wedderburn, who was killed at Anzio in the second world war.