Innermessan, a farm in Inch parish, Wigtownshire, on the E shore of Loch Ryan, 2½ miles NE of Stranraer. It contains the site of a mediæval town and an extant ancient moat. An ancient town is supposed to have preceded the mediæval one, and now is commonly identified with Rerigonium, a seat of the Caledonian tribe Novantæ, mentioned by Ptolemy in the 2d century A.D.(See Beregonium.) The mediæval town is said by Symson (1684) to have been ` of old the most considerable place in the Rhinns of Galloway, and the greatest town thereabout, till Stranraer was built;' but now it is represented by only a tiny hamlet. Innermessan Castle, whose site is occupied by the neat farmhouse, was built by the first Sheriff Agnew of Lochnaw on grounds granted to him by royal charter of 1429, and continued to be inhabited till towards the close of the 17th century. Innermessan Moat, a circular, artificial mound, once surrounded by a fosse, measures 336 feet in circumference round the base, 78 in sloping ascent, and 60 in vertical elevation. Its flat summit, which commands a fine view, was bored in 1834, and then was found to contain a stratum of ashes, charred wood, and fragments of bone.—Ord. Sur., sh. 3, 1856.
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