Garnock, River

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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G

arnock, a small river of Cunninghame district, Ayrshire, rising among the Mistylaw Hills, at an altitude of 1600 feet above sea-level, close to the Renfrewshire border, and winding 21¹/₈ miles southward till it falls into the Irvine, ½ mile above that river's influx to the sea, and unites with it to form Irvine harbour. It traverses or bounds the parishes of Kilbirnie, Dalry, Kilwinning, Stevenston, and Irvine; makes, before reaching Kilbirnie village, a wild and lonely cataract, the Spout of Garnock; lower down proceeds slowly through a flat fertile country, over a gravelly bed, with a n average breadth of 60 feet; and receives on its right bank Rye and Caaf Waters, on its left bank Lugton and Dusk Waters. Always subject to freshets, it sometimes overflows its banks in its lower reaches with devastating effects; and, on an autumn day of 1790, it rose 4 feet higher than it had ever been known to do before, destroyed a great quantity of standing corn, and carried away many sheaves to the sea. The trout and salmon fishing is very fair, the waters being everywhere preserved. A viscountcy of Garnock was created in 1703 in favour of John Crawford of Kilbirnie, whose grandson, the fourth Viscount, succeeded in 1749 to the earldom of Crawford. It became dormant in 1808.—Ord. Sur., shs. 30, 22, 1866-65.

An accompanying 19th C. Ordnance Survey map is available.

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.