Newhill
Newhill AMY S NO214133 1 362 165m
Newhill 1828 SGF
Newhill 1856 OS 6 inch 1st edn [also New Hill as a hill-name]
Sc or SSE new + Sc or SSE hill
This takes its name from New Hill (NO212137), an OS Pathf. name first appearing on OS 6 inch 1st edn, which rises to 227 m and on whose south-east slopes Newhill lies. It formed part of the Hill of Auchtermuchty, which was common grazing land for the burgh of Auchtermuchty until the modern period. The name may have been coined as recently as the early nineteenth century, perhaps to signify its change from communal to individual ownership at around this time. In the early 1850s it is described as: ‘A dwelling house in good repair two stories high, and slated, with suitable garden, and farm chiefly pasture attached. It is the Property of Mr Balfour of St Andrews, and tenanted by Robert Kilgour’ (OS Name Book 50. 23).
Newhill (farm) may be represented on Ainslie/Fife (1775) by Lordship, which occurs also as such on Ainslie/West Fife (1827). This might, in a more facetious manner, allude to the same above-mentioned transfer of ownership and division of commonty. Ainsle/Fife also shows a settlement called Auchtermuchty Hill nearby, which appears simply as Hill on Ainslie/West Fife.
Two march stones, one with the date 1796, the other 1797, are illustrated by the late Drew Bennett of Auchtermuchty: both are in the dry stane dyke on the south-west side of the Auchtermuchty to Newhill road, the earlier just beyond the Forest Car Park (near Newton), the later a little past The Clink Farm road end. ‘They mark the receding burgh boundary as the Town Council sold off land to help pay for the building of the Calsay Burn retaining walls in the Burnside’ (Bennett 1998, 53).
This place-name appeared in printed volume 4