First, the fermetoun of Letham on the Fife estate of Lord Melville had eight tenants in the 1670s and six in 1694 who shared the rental payments. But the overall population of the township was significantly greater than the families of the main husbandman as it was also much subdivided among cottars and their kinfolk. By 1740 four tenants remained and ten years later only two. By 1755 the old well-populated township had become a single farm with just one tenant and his family.
