John Whyte Melville continued to extend his land holdings and when he

died in 1813, four years after Robert Melville, more property in Strathkinness,

as well as Strathkinness Farm, Rummond Farm, Tongues of Clatto and

Bishopton had been added to the property held by the Melvilles.

His son Robert was only eighteen years old when he inherited the estates

and he died not long after coming of age. His brother, also John Whyte

Melville, was also a minor when he inherited the estates from his brother in

1818.

It was this John Whyte Melville who became closely identified with the

affairs of the village, and who gave the land for the Parish Church and the

manse in Strathkinness, although he himself was an Episcopalian, and was

instrumental in the building of the Episcopal Church on Queens Terrace in

St. Andrews in 1869. in this church there are two very fine stained glass

windows commemorating his wife and himself.

Before the Disruption in 1843 he and his wife, Lady Catherine, who was

a daughter of the Duke of Newcastle, had been in the habit of attending the

Episcopal Church in St. Andrews (in North Street until 1869) in the forenoon

and the Parish Church in Strathkinness in the afternoon. (This would have

been in the building used jointly by the church and the school as the Parish

Church was not built until 1864.) It was said of Mr. Whyte Melville, ‘while

a conscientious Episcopalian he had no prejudices....it would not have occurred

to him that he could not worship as well in one place as in the other. But he

preferred his own church’.

Mr. Melville was reported to have been ‘in some respects the most public

man in Fife’; he was Convener of the County, a member of the first School

Board for the Landward District, the first chairman of the Parochial Board

in St. Andrews, the Right Worshipful Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland,

twenty years an active member of the Court of the University of St. Andrews,

an original Trustee of the Parish Church in Strathkinness, a member of the

Fife Hunt and Captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club.

Mr. Melville had two daughters who predeceased him, and his only son,

George Whyte Melville, a Victorian novelist and noted horseman, was killed in

a riding accident in 1878. Shortly before her death Lady Catherine Melville

erected the fountain monument on Market Street in St. Andrews to her son’s

memory.

When John Whyte Melville died in 1883 at the age of eighty-six his pro-

perty in Strathkinness went to his cousin James Mackintosh Balfour who also

added Melville to his name. The Balfour Melvilles owned most of the property

in Strathkinness until 1900 when it was sold to Mr. James Younger of Alloa.

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