Monimail tower, Melville House, Newton of Collessie Pictish stone
Melville House
On Sunday 24th November 2019 several members of the group undertook a site visit to several features in the vicinity of Monimail tower, near Collessie in North Fife.
If visiting the standing stone one needs to contact the Halhill farmer, Willie Barr, to check the cattle situation a few days before you do the walk.
There is limited car parking at Monimail, contact the Monimal project ( www.monimail.org ) to check it is ok to park.
GETTING TO THE SITES.
Coming from Letham go past the church, c. 200 metres further on there is a house on the left with a drive to the left beyond the house, the drive is marked North Lodge and Melville House on the gateposts. Almost immediately on entering this drive turn right and you can park somewhere suitable in the Monimail Project’s grounds.
As the tower is in farmland (and if going on to the standing stone you would need to cross two fields) there will be mud.
There are two floors plus an accessible roof in Monimail Tower, these are accessed by a spiral staircase. There is a donation box on the entrance door to the tower.
DETAILS OF THE SITES
Details of the sites are on Canmore:
https://canmore.org.uk/site/30150/monimail-tower
https://canmore.org.uk/site/30153/melville-house
There are good photos of the standing stone complete figure on the canmore site (when we visited the legs, shield and spear could be made out but the head was obscured by lichen).
https://canmore.org.uk/site/30156/newton-of-collessie-standing-stone
Also present on the track leading to/from Melville Home farm are some World War 2 anti-tank 'pimples'. And in the field wall leading up to the standing stone there is a low horizontal slot in the field wall which is a WW2 firing position.
More info on the WW2 command line can be found via the link below. This includes details of the large block of tank traps to the north-west of Monimail which you can see traveling along the road from Collessie to Monimail, see photo on page 139 (the document page numbering starts at page 114).
And the low slot firing position we noticed in the field wall is similar to the one in the photograph on page 134.
http://www.tafac.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/The_Scottish_Command_Line_the_archaeolog.pdf
