An attractive hamlet in a parish of the same name in Perth and Kinross, Cleish lies 2 miles (3 km) west of the M90 Motorway and 3 miles (5 km) southwest of Kinross. Its fuller name, the Kirkton of Cleish, describes its location adjacent to the parish church which stands on raised ground. Granted by the Earl of Fife to the Church of the Holy Trinity of Dunfermline in the early 13th Century, Cleish Kirk was redesigned in 1775 by the architect John Adam of nearby Blairadam. After a fire in 1832 it was totally rebuilt and in 1897 a tower was added to celebrate the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria. There are memorials to the Adams of Blairadam, a fragment of a 9th century cross slab, an almshouse, sanctuary crosses and the graves of Ebenezer Michie (d.1813), a friend of the poet Robert Burns, and the parish minister the Rev W. Wallace Duncan whose wife Mary Lundie Duncan penned the 'Cleish Hymn' - Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me. Visited by Sir Walter Scott and other members of the Blairadam Club, the church is the 'Kirk of Cleish Bothan' featured in the introduction to Scott's novel The Abbott. Other buildings of interest in and around the settlement, which is a designated Conservation Area, include 16th century Cleish Castle, 18th century Cleish House and Cleish Public School (1835).
