I have found a reference to a "Col. Balfour" who apparently had a factor named William Spence representing him "at Cliffdale" in the mid 1790s. Can anyone identify either the place, Cliffdale, or who may have been the "Col. Balfour"? I wonder whether it may have been Thomas Balfour of Elwick, who apparently was a doctor and raised a unit of Fencibles, thereby having the title of Colonel. But I know of no connection he had to any place named Cliffdale. Any advice or suggestions welcomed ... Ken Harrison North Vancouver, Canada Unless specifically stated otherwise in this message, there is no intentional attachment on this e-mail transmission.

Ken, You may be interested in a Wikipedia article on "Balfour, Orkney". (Yes, I know it's Wikipedia and perhaps the article needs to be treated with some caution.) Part of the article says: "Originally known as Shoreside, Balfour was built by in the 1780s by Thomas Balfour, a former tenant farmer who acquired a private income by marrying the sister of an Earl. With his new-found wealth, Balfour purchased the estate of Sound, whose estate house had been burned down in revenge for the then owner's support of the 1745 Jacobite Rising. In 1782, to make way for a new residence, Balfour cleared cottars from the south-west of the island, and appropriated part of the common, building the village of Shoreside to house those evicted. To help finance his building work, Thomas Balfour borrowed money from his brother John, who made his fortune serving with the British East India Company. "In 1846 his grandson, David Balfour, inherited the estate, which now encompassed the whole of the island. The following year, he recruited an Edinburgh architect, David Bryce, to transform Cliffdale House into the Scottish Baronial Balfour Castle." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour,_Orkney Charles Tait's Orkney Guide Book has the following: "The Balfours were Jacobites, and suffered financially as a result, but Thomas Balfour married Frances Liginier in 1775, whose money allowed them to buy the Sound Estate in 1784. They built a new house, Cliffdale, and established the village, then called Shoreside, to house cottars cleared from Sound." There's quite a lot about the Balfours and Cliffdale on a Historic Scotland page here: http://tinyurl.com/5stm8x I'm still not clear about which Colonel Balfour was around in the 1790s, but a search for "Cliffdale Orkney" produces a number of hits and I haven't worked my way through them all. However, here's a paragraph from another Wikipedia article on the almost entirely forgotten novelist Mary Brunton: "Mary was the daughter Colonel Thomas Balfour of Elwick, a British Army officer and Frances Ligonier, sister of the second earl of Ligonier. She was born on 1 November 1778 in the Orkney Islands. Mary's early education was limited, though her mother did teach her music, Italian, and French." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Brunton I see that her mother's name is given as Ligonier rather than Liginier (the spelling given by Charles Tait). Norman Tulloch

Dear Ken I think you must mean Thomas Balfour of Elwick. He did own a house called Cliffdale the source is the Web site Undiscovered Scotland Heres the clue A village called Shoreside was built on Elwick Bay by Thomas Balfour in the 1780s. He had purchased the estate covering much of the south west of Shapinsay, and the village was intended to rehouse people he wanted to clear from the area to make room for Cliffdale House, which he built there in 1782. The House of Sound was burnt by Hanoverian troops in 1746 but was replaced. Laings of Papdale acquired the estate in 1770 and then in 1782 it was sold to Major Thomas Balfour. Balfour began a series of agricultural improvements on Shapinsay and c 1785 founded Balfour village which was settled with 'joiners, carpenters, weavers, tailors'' (Sinclair, 1795-8). His considerable improvements involved 'an extensive garden laid out; the lands are substantially inclosed and judiciously cultivated with the English plough; many barren fields are, by cultivation, made fertile'. In short Cliffdale, which is the name of this gentleman's seat, taken in conjunction with its appendages, exhibits to the eyes of a stranger coming from the sea, or from Kirkwall, rather the appearance of a neat little villa in the vicinity of some opulent city, than of a gentleman's house recently raised in a remote sequestered part of the kingdom.' Built by Balfour, Cliffdale was an L-shaped house, the focus of a designed landscape (Matheson, 1819). In 1846 the estate passed to his grandson, David Balfour. The following year David Balfour engaged the Edinburgh architect David Bryce, and the building of Balfour Castle began. It was finished in 1848 Hope this helps Elsie ----- Original Message ----- From: KenHarrison11@cs.com To: ORKNEY-L@rootsweb.com ; elsier@bigpond.net.au ; traill@xtra.co.nz Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 4:01 PM Subject: Col Balfour of Cliffdale, circa 1795 I have found a reference to a "Col. Balfour" who apparently had a factor named William Spence representing him "at Cliffdale" in the mid 1790s. Can anyone identify either the place, Cliffdale, or who may have been the "Col. Balfour"? I wonder whether it may have been Thomas Balfour of Elwick, who apparently was a doctor and raised a unit of Fencibles, thereby having the title of Colonel. But I know of no connection he had to any place named Cliffdale. Any advice or suggestions welcomed ... Ken Harrison North Vancouver, Canada Unless specifically stated otherwise in this message, there is no intentional attachment on this e-mail transmission.