Dunrod, an ancient barony in Innerkip parish, Renfrewshire, taking name from a hill to the E of Kip Water, and traversed by a burn of its own name. The hill culminates 2 miles ENE of Innerkip village, and, rising to an altitude of 936 feet above sea-level, figures conspicuously in the gathering grounds of the Greenock water-works. The burn belongs naturally to the basin of the Kip, but flows eastward into one of the reservoirs of the Greenock water-works; and it is spanned, at a point 1¼ mile ENE of Innerkip village, by a curious and very ancient bridge, supposed to be Roman. The barony belonged to Sir John de Lindsay, Bruce's accomplice in the Red Comyn's murder (1306), and remained with his descendants till 1619, when it was sold to Archibald Stewart of Blackhall by Alexander Lindsay of Dunrod, who from the haughtiest baron in the West country sunk to a warlock beggar, selling fair winds to fishermen and sea-captains, and died at last in a barn. An old rhyme says of him-
' In Innerkip the witches ride thick,
And in Dunrod they dwell;
But the greatest loon among them a'
Is auld Dunrod himsel.'
See pp. 31-39 of Gardner's Wemyss Bay, Innerkip, etc. (Paisley, 1879).
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