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Sorn
SORN, a parish in the north-east of the
district of
Kyle, Ayrshire. It is nearly a square, 6½ miles deep;
and comprehends about 23,000 acres. It is bounded on
the north by Galston; on the east by Muirkirk; on the
south by Auchinleck; and on the west by Mauchline.
The surface, in a general view, is high in the east,
and declines toward tue west; but it is much
diversified by moorland, hill, rising ground, hollow,
and haugh. Blackside-end-hill, the highest ground,
and situated in the north-east, has an altitude of
1,540 feet above sea-level, and commands a gorgeous
view of Ayrshire and Strathelyde, and parts, it is
said, of fourteen other counties. The river Ayr,
running westward, drains the greater part of the
parish, and flows between steep, bold, copse-clad,
and picturesque banks. The Cessnock, a tributary of
the Irvine, has some of its headwaters in the
north-west. Cleugh-burn, which falls into the Ayr
amid the brilliant scenery around Sorn-castle,
traverses a deep and richly wooded glen, and has some
romantic and fascinating cascades. Calctuff occurs in
line specimens on the face of the precipices over
which this streamlet leaps. Carboniferous limestone
occurs in great plenty, and has been both long and
extensively worked. Coal occurs, though to what
extent is not known; and hitherto it has been little
mined. Ironstone is plentiful; and was, at one time,
exported hence to Muirkirk. Sandstone of very various
character and hardness is plentiful. The soil, in the
haughs, is a gravelly loam; and elsewhere is, for the
most part, a reddish clay. Upwards of a third of the
parochial area is cultivated pasture; upwards of
one-fourth is hill-pasture, moss, or wilderness;
somewhat less than one-sixth is re-claimable, but
uncultivated natural pasture; somewhat less than
one-sixth also is in tillage; and one acre in every
thirty-two is under wood. The village of Sorn stands
on the right bank of the Ayr, 4 miles east of
Mauchline. It has two annual fairs, the one on the
second Tuesday of March, old style, and the other on
the first Monday of November, new style. Population
of the village about 300. The neat and pleasant
little manufacturing town of Catrine stands 1¾ mile
to the west: see CATRINE. —Sorn-castle, immediately
west of the village of Sorn, is most delightfully
situated on a lofty and well-wooded rocky terrace
overlooking the Ayr. The building is of very high but
unknown antiquity. About the year 1400 it became,
along with the manor of Sorn and other lands in Kyle,
the property of Andrew Hamilton, 3d son of Sir David
Hamilton of Cadzow, ancestor of the Duke of Hamilton
; and, in subsequent times, it passed by marriage to
the Earls of Winton, and by purchase to the Earls ot
Loudoun and three other successive families of
proprietors. A Dowager-countess of houdoun lived in
it till withm a lew months of her hundredth year,
attended by servants who attained nearly as great a
longevity. Under the miserable persecutions of
Charles II. the castle was taken possession of as a
fortalice of the royal forces, and made the seat of a
garrison for overawing the Covenanters.(1) Dr.
Matthew Stewart, and his son, the celebrated Dugald
Stewart, were landowners in the parish and frequent
visiters. The house which they occupied still stands;
and near it, in a beautiful and airy situation, are a
new mansion and tasteful pleasure-grounds, the
property and seat of their descendant. The
illustrious
and devout but much misrepresented Scottish worthy,
Alexander Peden, was born and died in the parish.
Exhausted with his prolonged toils and sufferings in
traversing the kingdom as a proscribed minister, and
believing himself to be approaching his dissolution,
he returned to his brother's house in Sorn to die;
but he was there in the immediate vicinity of the
garrison posted in Sorn-castle, and lived chiefly in
an
artificial cave, —uniformly protected, as he had been
in an hundred places before, from the peering
searches
of the blood-thirsty soldiery. He was visited on his
death-bed by the celebrated James Renwick; and,
after he had been specially but vainly searched for
in
his brother's house, he died there at the age of 60,
in the year 1686. Some villanous but perfectly
harmless indignities were offered by the wretched
persecutors to his mortal remains: see CUMNOCK
(OLD). The parish is traversed eastward by the
road from Ayr to Muirkirk, and southward by that
from Galston to Auchinleck. Population, in 1801,
2,606; m 1831, 4,253. Houses 483. Assessed property,
in 1815, £7,783. —Sorn is in the presbytery
of Ayr, and synod of Glasgow and Ayr. Patron,
Somerville of Sorn. Stipend £195 11s.; glebe £15.
The parish-church, situated in the village of Sorn,
was built in 1658, and repaired and somewhat enlarged
in 1826. Sittings 611. Catrine —as noticed
in the article on that village —has a place of
worship
connected with the Establishment, and a United
Secession meeting-house ; and two or three years ago
it was erected into a quoad sacra parish. The
population of Sorn, quoad civilia, was exhibited by
an
ecclesiastical census of 1836, as then amounting to
4,053, and consisting of 3,287 churchmen, 729
dissenters, and 37 nondescripts The parish was, in
1692, disjoined by the teind-court from the
originally huge parish of MAUCHLINE: which see. Its
original name was Dalgain, the ground for the church,
manse, and glebe having been a gift from the
proprietor of Dalgain; but, owing to the vicinity of
the church to the ancient castle, the most commanding
artificial object in the district, it gradually
became changed to Sorn : see DALGAIN. In 1834 there
were thirteen private schools, six of which were
attended by 192 scholars; and one parochial school,
attended by 66. Parish schoolmaster's salary £34 4s.
4½d., with £13 fees, and £10 9s. other emoluments.
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{1 Sir William Hamilton, whose daughter and heiress
married George Lord Seaton, and carried the property
to the Earls of Winton, was one of the senators of
the college-of-justice, and lord-treasurer to James
V. On the eve of the daughter's marriage, the King
set out to honour the bridal with his presence; but
he had to traverse a long and dreary tract of moor,
moss, and miry clay, where there was neither road nor
bridge; and, when about half-way from Glasgow, he
rode his horse into a quagmire, and was with
difficulty extricated from his perilous seat on the
saddle, far from a house, exposed to the bleak wind
of a cold day, and environed on all sides by a
cheerless moor, he was compelled to take a cold
refreshment in no better a position than by the side
of a very prosaic well; and he at length declared,
with more wild pettishness thau wit, that "if he were
to play a trick on the devil, he would send him to a
bridal at Soru in the middle of winter." The well at
which he sat is still called the King's well; and the
quagmire into which his horse went is called the
King's stable. An inn in the vicinity is now the
principal stage between Glasgow aud Kilmarnock, and
daily offers to every wayfarer luxuries, oue-hundreth
part of which would once have been highly prized by a
King.}
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