Bowhouse
Bowhouse CLS S NO269100 1 40m
Bowhouse 1509 RMS ii no. 3363 [Sandilands family]
(half of) Bowhous 1540 RMS iii no. 2114 [with the fishing and commonty there, barony of Leuchars-Ramsay; see LEU Intro., Lordship and Baronies]
(half of) Bowhous 1540 RMS iii no. 2168 [Sandilands]
Bowis c.1560 s Assumption, 33 [the *Millhill CLS, Shiells CLS and Bowhouse]
(half the lands of) Bouhous 1567 Retours (Fife) no. 63
the mosse called the Bowhouse mosse 1653 RMS x no. 183
Bowhowssie 1653 RMS x no. 183 [‘Bowhowssie and Sheillis, with the half of the moss called Lurgemyre, eilstand and fishing thereof’]
Bowes 1654 Blaeu (Pont) East Fife
Booths 1775 Ainslie/Fife
Bowhouse 1828 SGF
Sc bowhouse
‘Cattle farm, cattle station, vaccary’. The flat river-side land on which it stands was notoriously wet and unusable except in summer months, before the River Eden was straightened and the surrounding flood-plain drained. See Nochnary KTT (PNF 2) and Taylor 2006 for further discussion.
Three fields on the farm of Nochnary KTT, on the other side of the River Eden opposite Bowhouse, are named North, Mid and South Bowhouse. At one point a ford, or even a bridge, seems to have connected Bowhouse and Nochnary across the river, as indicated by the field-name Brig Park on the latter farm.
The Blaeu (Pont) and Ainslie/Fife spellings shows that it was pronounced as a monosyllable already in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
OS Pathf. shows this settlement as Bowhouse Farm.
/bu:z/[99]
This place-name appeared in printed volume 4