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Mauchline Parish
MAUCHLINE,(1)
a parish nearly in the centre of the district of Kyle, Ayrshire. It
measures about 7½ miles in length from north to south, from 2 to 4
miles in breadth, and about 24 square miles in area; and is bounded on
the north by Craigie and Galston; on the east by Sorn; on the south by
Auchinleck and Ochiltree; and on the west by Stair and Tarbolton.
Mauchline-hill, forming part of what is culled 'the Long-ridge of
Kyle,' and attaining a considerable altitude, rises a little
north-eastward of the town, runs in a ridge westward about a mile in
the parish, and terminates at Schioch hill in Tarbolton. The ridge
commands a magnificent view of nearly all Ayrshire and the frith of
Clyde, foiled on the south by Cairnsmuir and other alpine summits of
Galloway; on the west by the Paps of Jura towering up behind the bold
mountains of Arran; and on the north by Benlomond and adjacent
sky-scaling heights looking over the undulating hills of Renfrewshire.
Excepting in Mauchline-hill the surface of the parish is, in general,
flat, with a gentle prevailing declination to the south. About 340
acres of marshy ground and declivities are covered with wood; a patch
of the medium size of a field is moss; and all the rest of the area is
arable, fully enclosed, excellently cultivated, and cheerful in
aspect. A large tract of land, formerly called Mauchline-moor,
exhibits no traces of its ancient condition, and vies with many a
naturally favoured spot in its culture, its enclosures, and its belts
of wood. The soil, in the vicinity of the town, is light and sandy; in
a few localities, is a rich loam; and, over the greater part of the
parish, is of a clayey nature. Coal, limestone, and ironstone abound,
but are so thin in the strata that they have ceased to be worked.
White sandstone, much esteemed for its colour, for the fineness of its
grain, and for its durability, is quarried at Deaconbank; and
excellent red sandstone, from strata of great thickness, is worked in
the vicinity of the town. The river Ayr runs across the south end of
the parish, between steep red sandstone rocks 40 or 50 feet high,
overhung by wood, and both beautiful and romantic. Of several caves
cut out of the rocks, resembling those at Auchinleck, noticed by Dr.
Johnson, one bears the name of Peden's cave, and is said to have been
a frequent hiding-place of the celebrated Alexander Peden during the
period of the persecution. Lugar-water joins tbe Ayr, on its left
bank, a little above Barskimming. Cessnock-water runs north-westward
through the northern part of the parish. Lochbroom, 2¼ miles
north-west of the town, is a lake of 60 acres in area, resorted to by
wild geese, and wild ducks, and occasionally by swans, and emitting a
streamlet which drives two corn-mills and falls into the Cessnock.
Respectively 2 miles north-east of the town and 1¼ mile south of it,
stand the villages of Auchmillan and Haugh, —the former with about 40,
and the latter with nearly 100 inhabitants. At Haugh is a
woollen-factory, employing between thirty and forty persons, and
engaged chiefly in spinning yarn for the carpet manufacturers of
Kilmarnock. On Mauchline-moor, in
1047, a party of the King's troops were defeated by a party of
Covenanters; and their military chest, it is said, was found, many
years afterwards, hid on the scene of action. Five Covenanters were
martyred in the parish under the reign of James VII., and were
commemorated by a tombstone now substituted by
a recently erected monument —at Mauchline town-head, both bearing the
inscription:
"Bloody Dumbarton, Douglas, and Dundee,
Moved by the Devil and the Laird of Lee,
Dragged these five men to death with gun and sword,
Not suffering them to pray nor read God's word:
Owning the word of God was all their crime,
The eighty-five was a saint-killing time."
The celebrated reformer and martyr, George
Wishart, was invited, in 1544, to preach in the church of Mauchline;
and, on his arrival, he found the place guarded by a party of
soldiers, posted there to resist him by the sheriff of Ayr, a heated
opponent of the Reformation. Some of the country-people proposing to
force an entrance, he dissuaded them, saying: "It is the word of peace
I preach unto you; the blood of no man shall be shed for it this day.
Christ is as mighty in the fields as in the church; and He himself,
when he lived in the flesh, preached oftener in the desert and by the
sea-side, than in the temple of Jerusalem;" and he then moved away to
Mauchline-moor, followed by a multitudinous assembly, and there
preached to them upwards of three hours. —The parish is traversed by
the post road between Glasgow and Dumfries, by three other turnpikes,
and by several subordinate roads; and enjoys means of easy intercourse
with every part of the circumjacent country. Of several useful bridges
over the Ayr, one at Barskimming, built by the late Sir Thomas
Stiller, and consisting of a single span, 100 feet wide and 90 high,
is the most elegant erection of its class, and, at the same time, one
of the greatest curiosities in the parish. Population, in 1801, 1,746;
in 1831, 2,232. Houses 329. Assessed property, in 1815, £8,216. —
Mauchline is in the presbytery of Ayr, and synod of Glasgow and Ayr.
Patron, the Marquis of Hastings. Stipend £230 19s. 11d.; glebe £20.
Unappropriated teinds £33 3s. 5d. The parish-church, situated in the
town, was built in 1829. Sittings about 1,100. There is in the town a
place of worship belonging to the United Secession. The parish-school
was attended, in 1834, by 182 scholars; and four private schools by
134. Parish schoolmaster's salary £34 4s. 4½d., with £40 fees, and £10
other emoluments. This parish was anciently of great extent,
comprehending, besides its present area, the far-spreading territory
which now constitutes Sorn and Muirkirk; and, in all its expanse, it
belonged to the Stewarts, and formed part of their princely domain of
Kyle-Stewart. George Chalmers —whose minute and dry but learned and
accurate researches have furnished us with antiquarian notices of many
a parish —speaks in so interesting a manner respecting ancient
Mauchline, that he must be quoted in full detail. "At the commencement
of the reign of William, in 1165," says he, "Walter, the son of Alan,
granted to the monks of Melrose the lands of Mauchline, with the right
of pasturage, in his wide-spreading forest on the upper branches of
the Ayr river; extending to the boundaries of Clydesdale: and the
Stewart, also, gave the same monks a carrucate of land, to improve, in
the places most convenient; all which was confirmed to them by King
William, at the request of the donor. The monks of Melrose planted, at
Mauchline, a colony of their own order; and this establishment
continued a cell of the monastery of Melrose till the Reformation. In
the before-mentioned giant of the lands of Mauchline, or in the
confirmations thereof, there is no mention of the church of Mauchline.
It is, therefore, more than probable that the parish-church of
Mauchline was established by the monks of Melrose, after they had
become owners of the territory: and it is quite certain that the
church belonged to them. It is apparent that the country which formed
the extensive parish of Mauchline, was but very little settled when
the monks obtained the grant from the first Walter. This fact shows,
that during the reign of David I., and even during the reigns of his
grandsons and successors, Malcolm IV. and William, Renfrew and Ayr
were inhabited chiefly by Scoto-Irish, who did not supply a full
population to the country. The monks afterwards acquired great
additional property in the district, and contributed greatly to the
settlement and cultivation of it. They obtained ample jurisdictions
over their extensive estates of Mauchline, Kylesmure, and Barmure,
which were formed into a regality, the courts whereof were held at
Mauchline. This village was afterwards created a free burgh-of-barony,
by the charter of James IV in October, 1510. Before the Reformation
there were in this parish two chapels; the one on Greenock-water, in
the district which now forms the parish of Muirkirk, and the other on
the river Ayr, on the lands that now form the parish of Sorn. This
last was dedicated to St. Cuthbert, and stood a little to the eastward
of the present village of Catrine, on a field which is still called
St. Cuthbertsholm. The church of Mauchline, with its tithes and
pertinents continued, at the Reformation, to belong to the monks of
Melrose, who also held the extensive barony of Kylesmure and Barmure,
in that parish; and the whole was granted, in 1606, to Hugh, Lord
Loudoun. An act of parliament was then passed, dissolving from the
abbey of Melrose the lands and barony before-mentioned, and the
parish-kirk of Mauchline, with its tithes and other property; and
erecting the whole into a temporal lordship to Hugh, Lord Loudoun; and
creating the town of Mauchline into a free burgh-of-barony, with a
weekly-market and two fairs yearly. The great effect of such grants
was only to make one ungrateful, and a dozen discontented. The monks
had done fifty times more good to the country than the Loudouns ever
essayed. In 1631 the large district which forms the parish of Muirkirk
was detached from Mauchline, and formed into a separate parish. In
1636 it was settled that the district which is now included in the
parish of Sorn should be detached from Mauchline, and formed into a
separate parish; and a church was built at Dalgain in that year; but,
from the distractions that followed, the establishment of this new
parish was not fully completed till 1602. The parish of Mauchline was
thus reduced to less than a fifth of its former magnitude."
{1 The name in the Gaelic, Magh-linne, 'the plain
with the pool;' and alludes to the site of the town on a plain
traversed by a streamlet, in which are three cascades or linns falling
into little pools.}
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