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Kilwinning Parish
KILWINNING, a parish in the district of
Cunningham,
Ayrshire. It is bounded on the north by Dairy ; on
the east by Stewarton ; on the south by Irvine and
Stevenstone; and on the west by Ardrossan. Its
greatest length is about 7 miles; its greatest
breadth about 5 miles; and its superficial area 17½
square miles. Along the east and north-east, the
surface is hilly; and thence to the south,
south-west, and west, it slopes gently down in
knolly or waving curves. Many of its heights and
hillocks are crowned with plantation, and are
agreeable features in a lovely landscape. The
southern extremity is beautified by the mansion and
part of the pleasure-grounds of ECLIVTON-CASTLE :
see that article. Three mosses, the largest
upwards of 200 acres in extent, and from 12 to 16
feet in depth, occupy separate localities, and
furnish supplies of excellent peats. Almost all the
rest of the parish is fully enclosed, richly
cultivated, and sedulously devoted either to the
plough, or more specially to the dairy. The soil,
over nearly one-half of the whole surface, is a
stiff clay; and over the other half it is a light
sandy loam. The climate is exceedingly moist, rains
being both frequent and severe, yet it seems not
unhealthy, —several persons having lived
considerably beyond the age of 80, and one to that
of 104, during 40 years preceding the date of the
Old Statistical Account. Coal abounds, and is mined
in several pits, and exported. Limestone, prime in
quality, and plentiful in quantity, occurs in almost
every district. Freestone is wrought in several
quarries, and is in request beyond local limits as a
building material. A chalybeate spring wells up in
the vicinity of the town, and has been thought an
antidote to nervous complaints. A small lake, called
Ash-en-yard or Ashgrove-loch, situated at the
south-western extremity, abounds in excellent pikes
and perches. Garnock and Lug-ton-waters intersect
the parish, the former south-eastward, and the
latter south-westward, making a confluence about a
mile below Eglinton-castle; and are well-stored with
different sorts of very tine trouts, and with
salmon. But the GARNOCK [which see] often does
damage by its inundations. Dusk water, which also
traverses the parish, issues from a lochlet in the
extreme north corner of the parish of Beith, flows ¾
of a mile eastward, and l¼ mile southward, and then,
over a remaining course of 7¼ miles, runs
south-westward to the Garnock, 1¾ above the town of
Kilwinning. All the streams furnish an opulent
amount of water-power for driving machinery; and
they have aggregately on their banks a considerable
number of small mills. The parish is cut from north
to south by the Glasgow and Ayr railway, and by two
turnpikes, and from north-east to south-west by the
turnpike from Glasgow to Saltcoats. Population, in
1801, 2,700; in 1831, 3,772. Houses 541. Assessed
property, in 1815, £13,786. —Kilwinning is in the
presbytery of Irvine, and synod of Glasgow and Ayr.
Patron, the Earl of Eglinton. Stipend £266 12s. ;
glebe £14 10s. Unappropriated teinds £781 17s. 10d.
The parish-church was built in 1771. Sittings 1.030.
A parochial missionary, a licentiate of the
Establishment, assists in pastoral superintendence,
and in preaching, and receives upwards of £40
salary, from the Earl of Eglinton, the minister, and
evening collections. In the town are two dissenting
places of worship. The United Secession congregation
was established in 1825. Their meeting-house is a
plain oblong building, occupied for worship only in
the upper part; let in the lower flat as a
dwelling-house; and built in 1824 at a cost of
nearly £300. Sittings 250. Stipend not less than
£80. The Original Seceder congregation was
established in 1758. Their present chapel was built
in 1825, at a cost of more than £600. Sittings
between 500 and 600. Stipend £128, with a house and
garden. According to a survey made by the
parish-minister in 183o, the population then was
4,111; of whom 2,561 were churchmen, 708 were
dissenters, and 842 were persons unconnected with
any religious body, —the last class including all
persons who were not communicants in some church,
except the members of families whose heads were
communicants.' There are 7 schools, conducted by 7
teachers, and attended by a maximum of 390 scholars
—Six of the schools are non-parochial; and 2
of that number afford tuition in the classics.
Parochial schoolmaster's salary £37, with fees, and
£20
other emoluments. -The parish was anciently a
vicarage of the monastery of the town, and derived
its name from St. Winning, a Scottish saint of the
8th century. Near the manse is a fountain still
called Winning's well; and on the 1st of February is
hold a fair, called Winning's-day fair. Soon after
the erection of the abbey, Kilwinning was known, in
all the circumjacent country, under the name of
Saig-town, thought by some to be a corruption of
Saints'-town; and by this name it still is, or very
recently was, well known to the inhabitants. Before
the Reformation the church of the abbey served as
the parish-church ; and even when the abbey itself
was demolished, the church was allowed to stand, and
continued to be used till the erection of the
present edifice.
The abbey of Kilwinning was founded in 1140, for a
colony of Tyronensian monks from Kelso, by Hugh de
Morville, lord of Cunningham, and Lord High
Constable of Scotland, and dedicated, like a church
which preceded it, to St. Winning. Robert I., Hugh
de Morville, John de Meneleth, the lord of Arran,
Sir AVilliam Cunningham of Kilmaurs, Sir John
Maxwell of Maxwell, and other opulent and powerful
personages, endowed it with very extensive
possessions. Besides granges and other property, the
abbey claimed the proprietorship of the tithes and
pertinents of 20 parish-churches, —13 of them in
Cunningham, 2 in Arran, 2 in Argyleshire, and 2 in
Dumbartonshire. "According to the traditionary
account of the entire revenue of the monastery,"
says the statist in the Old Account, "it is asserted
that its present annual amount would be at least
£20,000 sterling." From Robert II. the monks
obtained a charter, erecting all the lands of the
barony of Kilwinning into a free regality, with
ample jurisdiction; and they received ratifications
of this charter from Robert III. and James IV. The
monks appear to have been unusually expert in the
chicanery of priestcraft, and to have enthralled the
judgments and superstitious feelings of men in the
dark ages of their influence, fully more than most
of their contemporaries. They made so juggling a use
of some pretended relics as, on the credulous faith
of their virtues, to draw many offerings; and they,
at the same time, made such an exhibition to the
public eye of shallow austerities, as to win for
themselves the credit of being superhuman in
character. James IV., when passing their place in
1.307, made an offering of 14 shillings to their
relics. Hoveden, thoroughly gulled with their base
legends, gravely relates, that a fountain in the
vicinity of their monastery ran blood for eight days
and nights, in the year 1184. The last abbot was
Gavin Hamilton, of the family of Rosslock, a hot
opponent of John Knox, and a zealous partizan of
Queen Mary. In 1538, he succeeded James Bethune,
archbishop of Glasgow, as abbot; and in 1571, was
killed in a skirmish in the Canongate of Edinburgh.
According to tradition, the buildings of the abbey,
when entire, covered several acres, and were stately
and magnificent. In 1560, Alexander, Earl of
Glencairn, one of the most active and distinguished
promoters of the Reformation, acting by order of the
States-general of Scotland, almost destroyed them,
leaving only the church and a steeple, and so
totally demolished what was strictly monastic, that
all traces of even the foundations of the walls have
long ago utterly disappeared. In 1603— after the
abbey had been under the commendatorship, first of
the family of Glencairn, and nextofthe family of
Raith—its lands and titles, and various pertinents,
were erected into a temporal lordship in favour of
Hugh, Earl of Eglinton. Towards the close of lust
century, the ruins which remained were repaired, at
very considerable expense, by the Earl of Eglinton
of the period ; and, from a drawing of them, made in
1789, they are exhibited in Grose's Antiquities.
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