Rhins of Galloway, The
(The Rhins; Rinns of Galloway)

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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R

hinns, the western one of the three districts of Wigtownshire. Known to the Romans as Chersonesus Novantum, it takes its present name, like the Rhinns of Islay, from the Celtic roinn, 'a point or promontory;' and it forms a double peninsula, washed on the W side by the Irish Channel, and on most of the E side by Loch Ryan and Luce Bay. With the rest of the county it is connected by an isthmus, 5⁷/₈ miles wide at the narrowest, between the head of Loch Ryan and the head of Luce Bay; and it measures 28¼ miles in length from N by W to S by E, 5½ miles in extreme breadth, and about 120 square miles in area. It begins on the B at Corsewall Point, and terminates at the S in the Mull of Galloway, each of them crowned by a lighthouse; it attains a maximum altitude of 593 feet in Cairnpat, and mostly consists of lowland, which, at a comparatively recent geological period, was clearly under marine water; and probably, after becoming dry, it was for some time an island or a series of islands. The parishes comprised within it are Kirkcolm, Leswalt, Portpatrick, and Kirkmaiden, most of Stoneykirk, and a small part of Inch.—Ord. Sur., shs. 7, 3, 1, 1856-63.

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.