Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for Lugar

Lugar, a village in Auchinleck parish, Kyle district, Ayrshire, on the right bank of Lugar Water, near the Muirkirk branch of the Glasgow and South-Western railway, 1½ mile ENE of Cumnock and 16½ miles SE of Kilmarnock. It was built chiefly for the accommodation of the workers in its iron-works, which date from about 1845, and which have 4 blast furnaces. At it are a. post office under Cumnock, with money order, savings' bank, and telegraph departments, a railway station, a chapel of ease, and a school. Pop. (1861) 753, (1871) 1374, (1881) 1353. Lugar Water, formed just above the town by the confluence of Gass and Glenmore Waters, winds 12 5/8 miles westward and north-westward, past Cumnock town, Dumfries House, Ochiltree village, and Auchinleck House, and traces the boundary between Auchinleck and Mauchline parishes on the right, and Old Cumnock, Ochiltree, and Stair parishes on the left, till it falls into the river Ayr at a point 1½ mile S by W of Mauchline town. It exhibits great diversity and force of picturesqueness on its banks-sometimes deep ravines, wooded to the top; sometimes high mural precipices of rock, or naked, overhanging, menacing crags; sometimes gentle slopes or undulating declivities, embellished with trees and culture; and sometimes a series of little green peninsulas. Between Lugar village and Cumnock town it washes an almost isleted round hillock, called the Moat. which commands an exquisite view of long reaches of its picturesque and romantic banks; and it is crossed, in the same vicinity, by a viaduct of the Glasgow and South-Western railway, 756 feet long and 150 high, with 9 arches of 50 and 5 of 30 feet in span. At its influx to the Ayr, in the eastern vicinity of the magnificent grounds of Barskimming, it seems to have a volume of water equal to that of the Ayr, so as to have been designated by the poet Burns ` the stately Lugar; ' and it once contained great abundance of yellow trout and salmon, but is now a very indifferent angling stream-Ord. Sur., sh. 14, 1863.


(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a village"   (ADL Feature Type: "populated places")
Administrative units: Auchinleck ScoP       Ayrshire ScoCnty
Place: Lugar

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