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Maybole Parish
MAYBOLE, a populous and important parish,
occupying the
north-west corner of the district of Carrick, Ayrshire. It is
bounded on the west and north-west by the frith of Clyde; on
the north-east by Ayr; on the east by Dalrymple and
Kirkmichael; and on the south and south-west by Kirkoswald.
Its greatest length, in a straight line, is 9 miles, but by
the nearest practicable road is 12; its greatest breadth, in
a straight line, is 5 miles, but by the nearest practicable
road is 7; and its area is 33¼ square miles. The eastern and
south-eastern districts are an undulating plain, very
diversified in surface, never subsiding long into a level,
nor ever rising into decided upland. The other districts are
a sea of heights, partly arable, and partly pastoral, so
pleasingly and rapidly diversified in superficial outline as
to want nothing but a free interspersion of wood to be
delightful rambling-ground to a lover of fine scenery. Along
the middle of the hill district, parallel with the frith, and
1½ mile distant from it, stretches a range of summits nearly
2 miles long, attaining an extreme altitude of 924 feet above
sea-level, and bearing the name of Brown Carrick hill. This
range, though heathy in itself, and rising like a screen to
intercept a view of the gorgeous frith and its frame-work
from the interior, commands one of the most gay, magnificent,
and extensive prospects in Scotland. On the south-east and
south stretches the rugged and surgy surface of Carrick,
expanding away in alternations of green height and brown bold
upland till it becomes lost among the blue and hazy peaks of
the southern Highlands of Scotland; on the south-west and
west are the broad and brilliant waters of the frith of
Clyde, with many a sail like a sea-bird skimming the surface,
and the rock of Ailsa riding like an ark on the wave, and
with the sublime frame-work of the bold and serrated
mountains of Arran veiled in misty exhalations, or festooned
and curtained with clouds ot every form and hue; on the
north, immediately under his eye, extends the huge sylvan
furrow of the Doon, with the monument of Burns glittering
like a gem on its edge; and away thence stretches the
luxuriant and vast plain of Kyle and Cunningham pressed
inward in a long sweeping segment by the frith, gaily spotted
and chequered with towns which look like cities in the
distance, with a profusion of mansions and demesnes, and with
all the adornings of a rich and well-cultivated country, and
gliding dimly away in the perspective into the gentle heights
of Renfrewshire, overlooked in the far horizon by the blue or
clouded summit of Benlomond. The
same prospect, in much of its extent and most of its
elements, is seen from a thousand vantage-grounds
of this arousing and inspiriting land of beauty; but
nowhere are its scope so unbroken, its groupings so
superb, and its effect upon the mind so exquisitely
thrilling. Should any one wonder that Burns grew
up on the threshhold of this home of romance, and for
many years might have daily gazed on its gorgeous
visions, and yet has not made an allusion to it in
his writings, he must remember that the bard, though
possessing a keen and delighted eye for the beauties of
nature, was the painter rather of manners than of landscape,
—the type in poetry not of Salvator Rosa, but
of Hogarth and the limners of Holland. The river
Doon, over 4½ miles in a straight line, but over 7 or
8 along its numerous graceful curvatures, forms the
boundary-line on the north-east. But over ¼ of a
mile above its embouchure it forsakes its ancient
bed, and places a small portion of the parish, a
piece of haugh-ground, on its left bank. Along
nearly all its connexion with Maybole, it has a
deeply-furrowed, dell-like path, profusely and beautifully
covered with copsewood and trees. Girvan-water forms the
boundary for a short distance on the
south-east; and is there a mirthful fine-clad stream.
Rannoch-burn, running 2¾ miles westward along
an entwisting glen to the sea, traces part of the
southern boundary. The interior running waters,
owing to the configuration of the surface, are necessarily
mere rills: the largest gathers a considerable volume in five
or six sources on Brown Carrick
hill, and runs in an easterly course of 4 miles to the
Doon near Auchendrum. Of four or five tiny lochlets, all
lying in the south-east, the only noticeable
one is Heart-loch, whose outline is exactly designated by its
name, and whose appearance in a wooded hollow, with
vegetation coming freely up on the
outer surface of its waters, is softly beautiful. Perennial
springs of excellent water are numerous,
especially on the site and in the vicinity of the town;
and one of them, called the Well-trees' Spout,
emits a stream powerful enough to drive a mill
wheel, or between 160 and 170 imperial gallons per
minute. Of various mineral springs, formerly of
medicinal repute, but all now neglected, the most
remarkable is St. Helen's well, 2¼ miles north of
the town on the high road to Ayr, —anciently associated with
Popish superstition, and reputed to have
the power on Slay-day of healing or invigorating
sick or delicate infants. The geological structure of
the coast is interesting for its correspondence with the
strata of Arran. Nearly 1,000 acres in the parish are
planted, about 3,000 are moorland and hill and meadow
pasture, and between 10,000 and 17,000 are in
tillage. Considerable attention, though by no means
so much as in any Cunningham parish, is paid to the
dairy. Towers or castles, the ancient residences
of brawling feudal chiefs, were numerous, amounting in all to
at least 15. -Dunure castle is perched
on the brink of a projecting rock, 3 miles south-west of the
Heads of Ayr, rises high above the waves, bears evident marks
of high antiquity, was formerly surrounded by a ditch and a
wall, and presents to the mind a sort of rude and gloomy
grandeur Grenand, or Greenan castle, half-way
between the mouth of the Doon and the Heads of Ayr, is a
tall, gaunt, lanthorn-looking pile, rising nakedly upon the
margin of the sea, on a stripe1 of level beach, dunked by a
bold bank; and, as seen with the Clyde for its back-ground,
it has a haggard aspect, strikingly suggestive of the misery
of feudal
times. -The castles of Newark, Dunduff, and Kilkenzie, like
the two just named, are quite superannuated, yet not strictly
ruinous; but, all the others
—the castles of Auchendrane, Smithstown, Beoch,
Craigskean, Garryhorne, Doonside, Dalduff, Glenayas,
Sauchrie, and Brochlock, are much dilapidated, or have left
but a few vestiges. -Numerous
camps occur, so small and of such rude construction as
evidently to have been thrown up by small invading bodies of
those Irish who subdued the Romanized British tribes. Tumuli,
the burying-places of a field of carnage, are frequent. The
whole parish as we shall more fully see in our notice of the
town, was, in common with districts around it, fiercely
tyrannized over in ancient times by the Kennedies; and
exhibits not a few memorials of having been the constant
scene of murders, melees, feuds, and crimes of atrocity
perpetrated by these despots and their underlings. So vast
was the Kennedies' power, and so keen their feudal
partisanship, that an old ballad says :—
" 'Twixt Wigton and the town of Air.
And laigh doon, by the Cruves o' Cree
You shall not get a lodging there
Except ye court a Kennedy."
Culroy, a clean, rural, little village, stands 3½ miles north
of the town on the low road to Ayr. Dunure, the only other
village, is small and unprosperous; yet has the character of
a sea-port. Its harbour, immediately north of Dunure-castle,
is situated on the west side of a small bay, and on a
projecting point of land, 7 miles south of the town of Ayr.
Round the point of land, the water is from 4 to 20 fathoms
deep, with a level, clean, sandy bottom, and good anchorage.
From this deep water, a passage is cut 150 feet wide at
bottom, through the rock, to a square basin which comprehends
from 700 to 1,000 feet of quay. The whole of the basin is
completely sheltered by high ground, and screened by lines of
buildings forming a square. The access from the sea is easy
and safe in almost any wind; and the egress is so facile,
that a vessel, as soon as she gets out of the mouth of the
harbour, can at any time and at once work to sea. The depth
of water in the passage and the basin is 12 feet at ordinary
spring tides; but it is capable of being artificially
increased to nearly 30 feet. Yet good, and seemingly very
valuable as Dunure harbour is —especially on a coast so
inhospitable to shipping as that of Ayrshire —it has
hitherto, since its construction in 1811, been of small
practical use, and has even been allowed to crumble toward
ruin. An occasional sloop freighted with lime or bone-dust,
and a few fishing-boats, are the only craft which grace it
with their presence, or which the inhabitants of the
circumjacent country require for their Lilliputian commerce.
The parish, besides having some cross-roads, is traversed by
three leading lines of road diverging from the town and
converging at Ayr, —the coast road wending semicircularly
down Rancoch-glen, and along the coast —the high road leading nearly
in a straight line, but over very uneven ground, to Ayr, —and the low
road running eastward of the former, and used as the thoroughfare of
the Glasgow and Port-Patrick mail. Population, in 1801,3,162; in 1831,
6,287. Houses 798. Assessed property, in 1815, £19,716.
Maybole is in the presbytery of Ayr, and synod of Glasgow and
Ayr. Patron, the Crown. Stipend £314 6s. 7d.; glebe £30.
Unappropriated teinds £70 7s. 2d. The parish-chinch was built
in 1808, and altered and improved in 1830. Sittings 1,192. A
preaching-station in connexion with the Establishment, and
accommodated generally in a barn and occasionally in a
school-house, was in 1836, commenced in the district beyond
lirown Carrick hill, by the parish schoolmaster, a licentiate
of the Established church. Another preaching-station was
occasionally maintained by the parish-minister in the village
of Culroy. An United Secession congregation was established
in the town in 1707; and, in the same year, built a place of
worship at the cost of £400. Sittings 555. Stipend £100. A
Methodist chapel in the town was, in 1836, occupied once a
month as an outpost of the Episcopalian minister of Ayr, but
has since been unused by any congregation. Sittings from 150
to 200. The population, according to a survey by the
parish-minister and his elders in 1835, consisted then of
5,033 churchmen and 1,329 dissenters, —in all, 6,362 persons.
The parish-school, conducted by a master and an assistant,
was attended, in 1834, by 156 scholars; and 12 other schools,
conducted by 13 teachers, were attended by 605. Parish
schoolmaster's salary £34, with from £90 to
£100 fees. The present parish comprehends the
ancient parishes of Maybole on the south, and Kirkbride on
the north. The church of Maybole, anciently dedicated to St.
Cuthbert, was given, in the reign of Alexander II. by Duncan
of Carrick. son of Gilbert of Galloway, to the Cistertian
nuns of North Berwick, whose convent was founded soon after
1216; and continued to belong to them, and to figure ns a
vicarage established by the bishop of Glasgow till the
Reformation. The entire revenues of the vicarage were
estimated in the reign of James V. at only £53 6s. 8d. ; and
half of even these was annexed, for some time before the
Reformation, to the prebend called Sacrista Major in the
collegiate church of Glasgow. At the Restoration, the
revenues of the parsonage, the glebe excepted, were held on
lease by Thomas Kennedy of Bargany, for the yearly payment of
£22, twenty oxen, and twelve cows. In 1451 , a chaplainry was
founded in the church by Sir Gilbert Kennedy of Dunure,
dedicated to St. Ninian, and endowed with the lands of
Lar-genlen and Brochlock. A chapel, subordinate to the
parish-church, anciently stood on the lands of Auchendrane:
and other chapels, according to a manuscript account of
Carrick, by Mr. Abercromby, minister of Maybole at the
period, were traceable at the
end of the 17th century The church of Kirkbride
was given to the same parties as the church of Maybole, and
by the same donor, and continued in their possession till the
Reformation. The annexation of its parish to Maybole occurred
probably in the days of Popery, and certainly before 1597. In
that year, the church of Maybole figures as the place of
worship for both parishes, and, by an act of parliament, was
formally separated from the convent of North Berwick, and
established as a rectory. The ruins of the church of
Kirkbride, on the shore about half-a-mile north of Dunure
castle, are still distinctly observable, surrounded by a
burying-ground which continues to be used, and in the
vicinity of a field which bears the name of the priest's land
or glebe. —In 1371, Sir John Kennedy of Dunure founded, near
the parish cemetery of Maybole, a chapel for one clerk and
three chaplains; dedicated it to the Virgin Mary, and endowed
it with the five mark lands of Barrycloych and Barrelach; the
six mark lands of Treuchan, and various other sources of
revenue. This collegiate chapel seems to have been the
earliest establishment of its class in Scotland ; and
afterwards, when similar ones arose, it was called a
collegiate church, and its officiates were styled provost and
prebendaries. During part of the reigns of James III. and
James IV., Sir David Robertson was provost; and, in 1525, Mr.
Walter Kennedy, rector of Douglas, canon of Glasgow, and
rector of the university of Glasgow, was appointed to the
office. The ground on which the town stands, belonged to the
collegiate church. Two houses, which were the domiciles of
two of its priests, and orchards which belonged to the
domiciles of the others, still exist. The church
itself is now the burying-place of the Marquis of Ailsa and
other parts, whose ancestors arrested the progress of the
pile toward ruin; and is surrounded by a planted and neat
patch of ground enclosed within a wall.
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