Castle Kennedy

A historical perspective, drawn from the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, edited by Francis H. Groome and originally published in parts by Thomas C. Jack, Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh between 1882 and 1885.

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Castle-Kennedy, a hamlet, a lake, and a ruined ivy-mantled mansion in Inch parish, Wigtownshire. The hamlet lies adjacent to the Dumfries and Portpatrick railway, and to the southern extremity of the lake, 3 miles E by S of Stranraer, and has a station on the railway, a post office, and a public school. The lake is cut so deeply by a peninsula, as sometimes to be reckoned rather two lakes than one, called Black and White Lochs, which extend parallel to each other, from NNW to SSE, Black Loch having an utmost length and breadth of 13/8 mile and 2¾ furlongs, White Loch of 7½ and 31/3 furlongs. Each contains an islet; and on the south-south-eastward peninsula between the two stands the ruined mansion, included now in the beautiful policies of Lochinch, a seat of the Earl of Stair. Built by John, fifth Earl of Cassillis in 1607, it passed about 1677, with the surrounding property, to Sir John Dalrymple, afterwards Viscount Stair. It was a stately square edifice, but, being accidentally destroyed by fire in 1716, it was never restored. The ' dressed grounds ' were laid out by Field-Marshal Stair in the Dutch style of landscape gardening, and, after some forty years of neglect, have more than recovered their former beauty since 1841. See pp. 99-103 of Wm. M'Ilwraith's Wigtownshire (2d ed. 1875).

An accompanying 19th C. Ordnance Survey map is available, or use the map tab to the right of this page.

Note: This text has been made available using a process of scanning and optical character recognition. Despite manual checking, some typographical errors may remain. Please remember this description dates from the 1880s; names may have changed, administrative divisions will certainly be different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original text, which we have not corrected because we wish to maintain its integrity. This information is provided subject to our standard disclaimer

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