Ballomill

Ballomill CLS S NO329106 1 362 40m

    de firmis molendini de Bellaugh 1451 ER v, 470 [£6 13 s. 4d. ‘from fermes of mill of Ballo’; listed between mill of Kinloch CLS and land of Woodmill ABE]
    de Beloumyl 1453 ER v, 530 [between mill of Kinloch and land of Collessie]
    de firmis de Belloumyl 1454 ER v, 680
    landis of Bello mylne 1519 Fife Ct. Bk. 137 [with Uthrogle MML these lands belonged to St Paul’s Work (Sanct Paulis werk), a hospital in Edinburgh]
    molendinum de Bello-mylne 1526 RMS iii no. 399 [‘the mill of Ballomill’]
    molendinum de Bello 1528 RMS iii no. 619 [William, John, James and Thomas Turpie, Thomas Beaton and James Wallace]
    Bello-miln 1542 RMS iii no. 2762 [Bello- also nos. 2764, 2765]
    Ballo-miln 1542 RMS iii no. 2763 [Ballo- also nos. 2766, 2767]
    Bellow Mylne c.1560 s Assumption, 33
    Bello-mylne 1565 RMS iv no. 1591
    (an eighth part of the mill of) Bello-mylne 1565 RMS iv no. 1608
    Ballomylne 1580 Midl. Chrs. no. 109 (p.142) [James Turpie ‘in Ballomill’]
    the lands of Ballo 1653 RMS x no. 183 [Sibbald of Rankeilour and Turpie]
    Ballomill 1722 Geog. Coll. i, 297
    Bala Mill 1775 Ainslie/Fife
    Ballomill 1856 OS 6 inch 1st edn

en *Ballo + Sc miln

The name suggests, particularly in the 1528 entry above, that there was a place called *Ballo (here Bello) after which Ballomill was named.

    In 1542 the lands of Drumtennant CLS, Merston # CLS and Easter Fernie MML were thirled to Ballomill (RMS iii nos. 2762–7). These six charters, in three of which it is called Bello-miln, in three Ballo-miln, record the ownership of the mill divided between six individuals, four of them members of the Turpie family, with each holding either eighth or quarter parts. There is a Ballo in FAL (q.v. PNF 2), whose name contains G bealach ‘pass (through hills)’, referring to the route through the Lomonds via Glen Vale in the west, past Ballo and beyond. There is also a Ballo in ANY, which gives rise to Ballo Burn (OS 6 inch 1866) and Ballo Mill on the same map, both of them in the pass now called Abernethy Glen, running south from Abernethy through the Ochil Hills to Pitlour SLO. I can find no connection, however, between either of these places called Ballo on the one hand and Ballomill CLS on the other. If Ballomill CLS is named after an existing place called *Ballo, it ought to be somewhere nearby, but there is in the flat surrounding landscape nothing that might qualify as a bealach or ‘pass’ in the usual sense. But G bealach (OG belach) can simply mean ‘road, path, way’[98] or even ‘detour’, and in this case might refer to some path across the surrounding flat and once very boggy ground around the River Eden.

This place-name appeared in printed volume 4