A brief history of Muirkirk

The Parish of Muirkirk is about eight miles long and seven broad and lies 720 feet above sea level.

When the “Kirk of the Muir” was built in 1631 it is recorded that there was not a single house in the vicinity and the Kirk was described as "a puir wee kirk, theeked wi' heather".

A few houses were built beside the church - at Kirk Green - but the population remained tiny for more than the next hundred years. Life was harsh and those living there were only scraping a living - a hundred years later, during the 1740s, the population of Muirkirk was reduced by one third over a single winter due to the cold weather.

A vivid description of what it was like to live in Muirkirk contained in an extract from The Edinburgh Magazine (1761)

In the middle of the 18th Century the then Lord Dundonald started to collect coal tar in the surrounding area which was used to protect wooden ships from attack by worm. However, the adoption of copper for sheathing the vessels of the navy brought the business to an early end.

In the second half of the 18th Century Muirkirk underwent radical change as the Parish thrived and expanded with the start of the Industrial Revolution.

In 1787 the Muirkirk Iron company was formed and this, along with coal mining nearby - a coal mine begun in 1799 (which subsequently became known as the Kames Colliery) - provided a further boost to the economy.

Muirkirk was described as having "... environs bleaker perhaps that those of any other town in Scotland, Leadhills and Wanlockhead alone excepted, it is the seat of an extensive iron manufacture and was brought into existence through the discovery and smelting of iron ore." (see the full Muirkirk entry in the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland 1885).

The Gazetteer makes reference to the Old Statistical Account which describes the transformation:

"The only village, or rather clachan, as they are commonly called, that deserves the name, lies at a small distance from the church, by the side of the high road, on a rising ground called Garanhill, which therefore gives name to the range of houses that occupy it. They have increased greatly in number since the commencement of the works; and new houses have risen around them. Many houses besides, some of them of a very neat structure, have been built at the works themselves, and others are daily appearing that will, in a short time, greatly exceed in number and elegance those of the old village, formerly, indeed, the only one that the parish could boast"

A measure of the change brought about by the Industrial Revolution can be judged from the increase in the population - from 745 people in 1755 to 3,423 in 1851.

A short book about Muirkirk, its surroundings and history was published by the Rev. Peter Mearns in 1883 entitled "Muirkirk and its Neighbourhood - Notes of a Visit and Recollections of former times". It contains the author's reminiscences of Muirkirk in the first half of the 19th Century and material from that book will be added to this site in the coming months.

Image produced from the www.old-maps.co.uk service with permission of Landmark Information Group Ltd. and Ordnance Survey