The Village of Skelmorlie   

 

Skelmorlie, the most northerly village in North Ayrshire, is situated on the Firth of Clyde, and is separated from the adjoining Renfrewshire village of Wemyss Bay by the Kelly Burn. Despite being based in Ayrshire, it has from 1860 existed as a quoad sacra parish under the Renfrewshire based presbytery of Greenock, though before this was part of the parish of Largs.

 

Prior to the 15th Century, Skelmorlie was held initially by the ‘ancient Foresters of Skelmorley’, and then by the Cunninghame family, with a Cunninghame of Kilmaurs noted as the owner in 1340. From the 15th century, however, the area’s history became dominated by the Norman descended Montgomerie family. A charter of 24th March 1453 records how Alexander Montgomerie of Ardrossan, the first Lord Montgomerie, acquired the northern area of Skelmorlie from the Cunninghams of Kilmaurs. Three years earlier, the area had been partitioned between the two families, with the northern half becoming Skelmorlie-Montgomerie, and the southern half becoming Skelmorlie-Cunninghame. At this point both families had entered a blood feud, the cause being the granting of the Baillieship of Cunninghame to the Montgomeries by James II in 1448, and as a consequence of the feud Alexander would lose his life in 1507.

 

George Montgomerie, Alexander’s second son, initially took possession of the area under a charter dated June 6th 1461. A defensive tower house was constructed in 1502 on the site of the family’s previous home, which became Skelmorlie Castle. George was succeeded by his eldest son John, his grandson Cuthbert (slain at Flodden in 1513) and then great grandson George, who was to marry Catherine Montgomerie, the youngest daughter of Hugh, the first Earl of Eglinton. The land was then passed to George’s second son Robert, who became so heavily involved in the Cunningham feud that both he and his eldest son William were slain by their rival’s allies, the Maxwells, in 1584.

 

Under the sixth laird of Skelmorlie, William’s brother Robert, reconciliation was found between the Cunningham and Montgomerie families. During this period the great map maker Pont visited Largs and noted that Skelmorlie Castle was ‘a fair veill built housse, and pleasantly seatted, decorred with orchards and woodes’. He also made an early reference to Skelmorlie as ‘Achin-Darroch Over and Nether which are parts of the ten pound land of old extent of North Skelmorlie or Skelmorlie Montgomerie in the Parish of Largs’, a description which covers the present village area.

 

Robert was subsequently knighted by James VI and became a baronet under Charles I on January 1st 1628. As laird, he endowed the church at Largs with the Skelmorlie Aisle, built as a memorial to his wife Margaret who had died in a horse riding accident in 1624 whilst travelling from Largs back to Skelmorlie, and carried out a major extension of Skelmorlie Castle in 1636.

 

In 1647, the parish of Largs was badly hit by the plague, and a meeting of the presbytery of Irvine on 29th September recorded “the lamentable and calamitous condition of the paroch of Largs”, which resulted in aid being supplied from neighbouring parishes. This natural disaster heralded a great depression in the parish which continued until the early 18th century.

 

Sir Robert was succeeded in 1651 as laird by his grandson, also Robert, who became involved with the Covenanters, for which cause his father-in-law, the Earl of Argyll, was eventually executed, Until his own death in 1685, Robert was constantly penalised on account of his wife’s regular attendance at conventicles. He was succeeded by Sir James Montgomerie in 1685, and then in 1694 by his grandson, Sir Robert Montgomerie, who became governor of an Irish garrison. Prior to his death in 1731, this Sir Robert disposed of Skelmorlie by granting it to his great uncle, Hugh Montgomerie, a Glasgow merchant and provost.

 

On August 27th 1728 Hugh Montgomerie entailed the vicarage teinds and ten pound lands of Skelmorlie, along with additional lands in Renfrewshire at Lochliboside, Hartfield and Ormsheugh. The tailzie decreed the land should go back to his nephew, Sir Robert, Baronet, and then on to his eldest male heir; but if the male lines failed, to continue to the first female line and then to her first male heir, etc. The heirs-entailed were to adopt the name of ‘Montgomerie of Skelmorlie’ and to use the family arms. When Sir Robert predeceased his uncle in 1731, the land soon found its way to his eldest daughter, Lilias Montgomerie.

 

Lilias was subsequently able to dispose of Lochliboside and Hartfield through an Act of Parliament granted in 1757. As they were entailed, a condition of the sale was that any money raised would have to be used to purchase lands contiguous to Skelmorlie, to then be entailed in place of the original land. To satisfy this condition, she purchased the lands of Coilsfield from her husband, Alexander Montgomerie, and in November 1757 a new deed was drawn up by the couple entailing these lands together.

 

In June 1774, Lilias executed a further deed in favour of her eldest son Hugh Montgomerie, Esq, Captain in the 1st Regiment of Foot, granting him and his heirs the lands of “the vicarage teinds of Skelmorlie and Montgomerie, the ten pound land of old extent of Skelmorlie, the lands of Ormandsheugh” and the “lands and estate of Coilfield”. This deed was never entered into the Register of Tailzies, but Hugh Montgomerie (later to inherit the Earldom of Eglinton in 1796 from a third cousin), became infeft under it in June 1774, as confirmed in a sasine in August later that year. Hugh further obtained a charter in 1784, confirming the deed of 1757 regarding the purchase of Coilfield and the disposal of Lochliboside and Hartfield, which also reconfirmed the deed of 1774. He continued to live within Skelmorlie until his death in December 1819.

 

Life in the parish at this point saw most of the inhabitants tied to agricultural estate work, but there were some progressive developments made during Hugh’s tenure. In the first Statistical Account, there is a description of a small school being in existence in Skelmorlie in 1790, and a note is made of the new road that had been constructed along the shore between Largs and Skelmorlie, where previously a road had gone up Station Hill and past the castle itself.

 

Hugh Montgomerie was succeeded as Earl of Eglinton by his grandson, Archibald, who inherited both the village and the main Skelmorlie estate. Upon considering the legality of his grandfather’s deed of 1774, which he deemed to be the creation of a new title separate to that described in the previous tailzie set down by Lilias Montgomerie, he felt bold enough to be able to sell not just the land of Coilfield, in 1838, but also his lands in Skelmorlie in the following year. His actions were challenged but were upheld by the Court of Appeal in 1843. Skelmorlie Castle was however retained as the family seat.

 

Life in early 19th century Skelmorlie was recorded in 1895 by the Reverend John Lamond, and it is clear from his work that this was the period when the development of the modern village of Skelmorlie really began. Previously there had been a few houses on the main road, mainly housing a few labourers and the toll keeper. Smuggling, one of the biggest concerns within the parish, was being replaced with quarries, weaving and tourism, and by the middle of the century a sudden shift was occurring with residents moving from the hill to the main road, so much so that a parish church was established in 1856, acting as a chapel of ease for neighbouring Largs and Inverkip (with only the second ever organ installed in a Scottish kirk), followed in 1874 by a United Presbyterian Church..

 

The Earls of Eglinton continued to develop the village’s infrastructure, though by 1852 had passed on the castle to a wealthy Glasgow merchant, John Graham. A hydropathic establishment was erected in the village in 1868, based on the cliff above the shore, and accessed by a lift whose shaft was hewn out of the rock face. This was joined by new Turkish, salt-water, and other baths in 1875. The population of the village rose from 404 in 1871 to 757 just ten years later, of whom 238 were now based on the shore road area of Lower Skelmorlie. Tourism of the western coast had by now become popular, with the advent of the railway to nearby Largs and Wemyss Bay, but whilst water was to become a major tourist industry in the village, water would in fact turn out to become the source of one of the village’s biggest disasters. On Saturday 18th April 1925, a married woman and four children drowned after the collapse of a reservoir embankment on the Earl of Eglinton’s estate, releasing millions of gallons of water onto the village below, devastating much of the village within just ten minutes.  

 

Skelmorlie is today a quiet village with some 1880 inhabitants. The tourists are largely gone, though the hunt for the mysterious ‘Skelmorlie Panther’, witnessed by many locals and said to be ‘larger than a cat and smaller than a bear’, now pops up occasionally to keep the village in the local headlines!

 

 

Recommended reading:

 

ANON. (1791-99) The Parish of Largs, By a Friend to Statistical Enquiries, Sinclair, Sir John.

 

BELL, S. S. (1843) Cases Decided in the House of Lords on Appeal from the Courts of Scotland, Session of Parliament 1843, Vol. 2, The House of Lords.

 

DOW, R. J. (1842) The Parish of Largs, Presbytery of Greenock, Synod of Glasgow and Ayr, William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London.

 

GROOME, F. H. (1882-84) Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland. Edinburgh, T. C. Jack.

 

PATERSON, J. (1852) History of the County of Ayr with a Genealogical Account of the families of Ayrshire.

 

SCOTSMAN (1925) Skelmorlie Reservoir Bursts Five Lives Lost. The Scotsman, Monday 20 APR 1925, p.7.

 

SMART, W. (1968a) Skelmorlie: The Story of the Parish Consisting of Skelmorlie and Wemyss Bay. The Skelmorlie and Wemyss Bay Community Centre.