A village in the Kinross part of Perth and Kinross, situated at the foot of the Ochil Hills a mile (1.5 km) north of Kinross. Formerly a market town associated with nearby Burleigh Castle, stronghold of the Balfours of Burleigh, its meal mill was driven by water from the Fochy Burn.
Nineteenth Century woollen and spinning mills were established to the south of the village centre on the North Queich, a development that resulted in the settlement extending southwards. Situated at a crossroads, the form of the settlement is closely linked to the development of turnpike roads in the early 19th century.
The churchyard of the Parish Church of Orwell, which was moved from its original site near Loch Leven in 1729, is the burial place of the Secession Minister the Rev. Thomas Mair whose epitaph is in the form of an acrostic. The poet Walter Chalmers Smith was Free Church minister from 1853 to 1858 and another poet James Logie Robertson (Hugh Haliburton) was born here in 1846. Now largely a residential commuting settlement, Milnathort has a golf course, together with computer, craft, trailer manufacture and agricultural service trades.
