Kilconquhar Loch is a Scottish freshwater

loch ''Loch'' () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots language, Scots and Irish language, Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is Cognate, cognate with the Manx language, Manx lough, Cornish language, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh language, Welsh w ...

. This small shallow loch is a

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle of ...

(SSSI) and is located beside the village of the same name in the east of

Fife Fife (, ; gd, Fìobha, ; sco, Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross (i ...

, within a mile to the north of the coastal village of

Elie Elie and Earlsferry is a coastal town and former royal burgh in Fife, and parish, Scotland, situated within the East Neuk beside Chapel Ness on the north coast of the Firth of Forth, eight miles east of Leven. The burgh comprised the linked vi ...

. The loch appears to be a comparatively recent feature, the earliest reference being to "the gret loch callit of auld the Reidmyre" ( Scots: ''red'' or ''reed peat bog'') in 1599 and referred to as ''Keanwchar Loch'' by 1654 in Blaeu's

Atlas Novus An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic ...

. Samples of the loch bed support its origin as a bog and there is archaeological evidence and a local tradition that fuel was extracted. Westward outflow to the Cocklemill Burn is said to have been blocked by sand in 1624 or 1625 but it is drained to the south-east by the largely underground Loch Run into Elie harbour and eastwards to the Inverie Burn. It is an approximate rounded square in shape, and is unusual in that it has no visible inflow, yet is not stagnant. It is the subject of a study by St. Andrews University. It has been theorised that an underground

spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season), a season of the year * Spring (device), a mechanical device that stores energy * Spring (hydrology), a natural source of water * Spring (mathematics), a geometric surface in the shape of a ...

feeds into the loch, maintaining a degree of freshness sufficient to offset its stagnation. In former times it was reported to produce large

pike Pike, Pikes or The Pike may refer to: Fish * Blue pike or blue walleye, an extinct color morph of the yellow walleye ''Sander vitreus'' * Ctenoluciidae, the "pike characins", some species of which are commonly known as pikes * ''Esox'', genus of ...

and

eel Eels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 19 families, 111 genera, and about 800 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the early larval stage to the eventual adult stage ...

s, although this is now no longer verifiable as no fishing is allowed, due to its SSSI status. Large numbers of

overwinter Overwintering is the process by which some organisms pass through or wait out the winter season, or pass through that period of the year when "winter" conditions (cold or sub-zero temperatures, ice, snow, limited food supplies) make normal activi ...

ing

wildfowl The Anatidae are the biological family of water birds that includes ducks, geese, and swans. The family has a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring on all the world's continents except Antarctica. These birds are adapted for swimming, floating on ...

use Kilconquhar Loch as a

roost Roost may refer to: Animal resting * Roosting, resting behavior of birds * Communal roosting, a behavior of some birds and other animals * Monarch butterfly roosts, communal resting sites in monarch butterfly migration * Bat roost, a list of pla ...

. It was charted during the ''Bathymetrical Survey of the Fresh-Water Lochs of Scotland'', constructed under the direction of Sir John Murray and

Laurence Pullar Laurence Pullar FRSE FRGS FRSGS LLD (1838–1926) was a 19th-century Scottish businessman, geographer and philanthropist. A close friend of Sir John Murray he appears to have done much to fund and/or underwrite the cost of the Challenger Expedit ...

during the years 1897 to 1909.{{Cite web , url=http://www.nls.uk/maps/early/record.cfm?id=2213 , title=Maps of Scotland 1560-1928 - National Library of Scotland , access-date=2007-04-02 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927004440/http://www.nls.uk/maps/early/record.cfm?id=2213 , archive-date=2007-09-27 , url-status=dead

References

Lochs of Fife Freshwater lochs of Scotland Kilconquhar