Darvel

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.

This edition is copyright © The Editors of the Gazetteer for Scotland, 2002-2011.

It has taken much time and money to make the six-volumes of Groome's text freely accessible. Please help us continue and develop by making a donation. If only one out of every ten people who view this page gave £5 or $10, the project would be self-sustaining. Sadly less than one in thirty-thousand contribute, so please give what you can.

Use the tabs on the right of this page to see other parts of this entry

D

arvel or Derval, a village chiefly in Loudon parish, and partly in Galston parish, Ayrshire, on the river Irvine, 1¾ mile E of Newmilns station, this being 7½ miles E by S of Kilmarnock. Regularly built and fairly prosperous, it mainly depends on handloom weaving and the manufacture of muslins; and has a post office under Kilmarnock, a branch of the Union Bank, gas-works, a Free church, a public school, a working men's institute, and a subscription library. The working men's institute was erected in 1872 at the instance of Miss Brown of Lanfine, and contains an amusement room, a reading-room, and a committee room, capable of transmutation into a hall accommodating 500 persons. The lands of Darvel belonged anciently to the Knights Templars, and were independent of tenure, not even holding of the Crown. Pop. (1841) 1362, (1861) 1544, (1871) 1729, (1881) 1718. -)rd. Sur., sh. 22,1865.

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.