Queen’s Seat
Queen’s Seat FAL R NO250092 1 373 40m
Queen’s Seat 1850s OS Name Book 27, 53 [
Queen’s Seat 1856 OS 6 inch 1st edn [on the west side of the road, at 250092]
SSE queen + SSE seat
OS Name Book (27, 53) records Queen’s Seat as ‘a small knowe ... on which it is said Queen Mary sat, she being fatigued while walking. The knowe has been partially levelled by the farmer who occupies the land, but the place is still [illegible word] and bears the name’. It is on the lands of Woodmill farm, and therefore within the former hunting park or wood of Falkland. The queen in question is probably Mary, Queen of Scots: in the mid-nineteenth century a story is told of her escaping from her court for hunting and hawking here, like her father (James V) before her. ‘She was in the habit of resorting daily to a wood in the vicinity of Falkland, where the stags were kept, and where she could be seized without difficulty’ NSA ix, 928. Another Queen Mary with connections to Falkland was the Burgundian Mary of Guelders (a territory now in the Netherlands), the queen of James II. In 1451: two years after their marriage, James II granted her the earldom of Fife, including ‘the manor or castle of Falkland, with its park’. On her husband’s death in 1460, she became the effective ruler of Scotland until her own death three years later. In the late nineteenth century the Third Marquis of Bute created an avenue lined with beach hedges to the west of Falkland House and named it Guelderland Walk in her honour. It runs between Queen’s Quarries (shown on OS Pathf. both north and south of this walk).
This place-name appeared in printed volume 2