In 1800 General Robert Melville agreed to give a lease of land to Spence

Douglas, blacksmith, on condition that he ‘should build a good House thereon’.

Later, having built a house, probably in 1807, he was given a regular tack

(lease) for 299 years. The property extended from what is now 22 Church

Road to the point where Sunnyside and Church Road meet. All mineral rights

were retained by General Melville, which was a common stipulation, but in

Strathkinness the chance of finding useful minerals was not unlikely. There

isa letter in the Melville Papers in the Scottish Record Office dated 1762 which

says, ‘I have made enquiries anent Coal being in the lands of Strickiness and

Ballon and it is evident that Coal has been wrought in the Lands of Ballon,

tho’ not in the Memory of Man, and it is the Oppinion of a Coal Master, who

was consulted in this Matter, that there are Meikles (much) in the Lands of

Strickiness’.

Spence Douglas’s rent was 1 firlot (4 pecks) of wheat, I firlot of barley

and 1 firlot of oats yearly. He agreed to ‘keep the Houses built thereon or to

be built by him in a habitable and tenantable state...and to leave them at the

expiry. ...in the same condition’. Any houses to be built were to conform to

a ‘plan lately executed by John Bell’. (Many landowers at this time were

having their estates surveyed and maps drawn up to indicate feus or tacks;

unfortunately this plan does not seem to have survived.) Any houses to be

built had ‘to preserve the regularity in the appearance of the Village’ Further-

more, any ‘Subtenants, Cottars or Dependents’ were to remove from the

property at the expiry of the tack (in the year 2099) ‘without any previous

warning’.

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