Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland

NEILSLAND HOUSE
The traveller at this day will stop and gaze
On wrongs which Nature scarcely seems to heed;
For shelter'd places, bosoms, nooks, and bays,
And the pure mountains, and the gentle Tweed,
And the green silent pastures yet remain. '
The seventh Earl of Wemyss replanted the demesne,
which now once more is beautifully wooded. The S or
older part of the castle has tumbled in huge masses to
the margin of the Tweed; the later, albeit ancient,
portion has recently been refaced, and thereby not im-
proved in aspect, as neither by a tall white chimney.
On the keystone of the courtyard archway is the crest
of the Hays of Yester, a goat's head over a coronet,
with a bunch of strawberries (French /raises) beneath,
symbolical of the name Fraser. Rooms on two floors
are tenanted still by the keeper; and the top, which
commands a magnificent prospect, is gained by a narrow
corkscrew staircase.
The castle was anciently the chief residence of the
powerful family of the Frasers — proprietors first of Oliver
Castle in Tweedsmuir, and afterwards of great part of
the lands from thence to Peebles, — sheriffs of the
county, and progenitors of the families of Lovat and
Saltoun. The last male of them in Tweeddale was the
valiant Sir Simon Fraser, who thrice in one day defeated
the English in the battle of Roslin Moor (1302), and by
the marriage of whose elder daughter Neidpath Castle
passed in 1312 to the Hays of Yester, ancestors of the
Earls and Marquises of Tweeddale. By one of them,
probably Sir William Hay, in the early part of the 15th
century, the newer portion was added. In 1587 James
VI. was at Neidpath, which in 1650 was garrisoned by
the young Lord Yester for the King's service, and held
out against Cromwell longer than any other place S of
the Forth, but, being battered by shot on its southern
or weakest side, was at last forced to surrender. In
1686 the Tweeddale estate was purchased by the first
Duke of Queensberry for £23,333, and by him was
settled on his second son, the Earl of March. During
the first half of the 18th century it was the summer
home of the Earls of March, the third of whom in 1778
became by inheritance fourth Duke of Queensberry. At
the latter's death without male issue in 1810, it was
transmitted to the Earl of Wemyss, the descendant of a
daughter of the Queensberry family. Towards the close
of the 18th century Neidpath was for some time occupied
by Prof. Adam Ferguson the historian, and Sir Walter
Scott speaks of cheerful days he spent then within its
walls. Of Ellen, Earl March's child, the 'Maid of
Neidpath,' history tells nought, but the world knows
her through the lyrics of Scott and Campbell. — Ord.
Sur., sh. 24, 1864.
Neilsland House, a mansion in Hamilton parish,
Lanarkshire, 3 miles SW of Hamilton town. The
estate, which belonged to a junior branch of the Hamil-
ton family from 1549 to 1723, was sold in 1871 for
£23,000.— Ord. Sur., sh. 23, 1865.
Neilston, a town and a parish in the Upper Ward of
Renfrewshire. The town lies 430 feet above sea-level,
on the rivulet Levern, 2 miles SW of Barrhead, 5£ S of
Paisley, and 10 SW of Glasgow. Occupying the brow
of a gentle eminence, amid a delightful landscape, it
presents an old-fashioned yet neat and compact appear-
ance, and has a post office under Glasgow, with money
order, savings bank, and telegraph departments, a
branch of the Clydesdale Bank, a gaswork, a station on
the Glasgow, Barrhead, and Kilmarnock Joint railway,
an agricultural society, a public library, a company of
»fle volunteers, etc. The parish church, dating from
about the middle of the 15th century, retains a beauti-
ful specimen of Gothic architecture in its N window,
and has a spire and a clock. In a vault beneath it are
buried William Mure, D.C.L. (1799-1860), Liberal-Con-
servative M.P. for Renfrewshire 1846-55, and author of
a Critical History of the Language and Literature of
Ancient Greece; his son, Lieut. -Col. William Mure
(1830-80), Liberal M.P. for Renfrewshire 1874-80; and
other members of the Caldwell family. A Free church
was built in 1873; and St Thomas Roman Catholic
NEILSTON
churoh, with 350 sittings, in 1861. Pop. (1836) 2506,
(1861) 2357, (1871) 2125, (1881) 2311, (1891) 2113.
Houses (1891) inhabited 469, vacant 34.
The parish, containing also six-sevenths of Barrhead
town, is bounded N by Abbey-Paisley, SE by Mearns,
S by Stewarton, Dunlop, and Beith, and W by Loch-
winnoch and Abbey-Paisley. Its utmost length, from
NE to SW, is 6| miles; its breadth varies between 1|
and 4J miles; and its area is 20 square miles or 12,862
acres, of which 381 are water. On the Mearns boundary
are seven sheets of water— Long Loch, Harelaw Dam,
Walton Dam, Glanderston Dam, Balgray Reservoir,
Ryat Linn Reservoir, and Waulkmill Glen Reservoir;
two more lie on the northern and north-western border;
and in the interior are five — Commore Dam, Craighall
Dam, Snypes Dam, Kirkton Dam, and Loch Libo (3£ x 1
furl. ; 395 feet). This last, by the side of the railway,
2J miles SW of the town, by Dr Fleming was pro-
nounced superior, in picturesque scenery, to Rydal
Water in Cumberland. ' Loch Libo, ' he says, ' pre-
sents a scene of unparalleled beauty. Its lofty hills, on
both sides, are wooded with fine old trees to the water's
edge. Its oblong or oval figure pleases the eye; while its
smooth and glassy surface is disturbed only by the heron
and wild-duck, swimming and fishing upon it. Stand-
ing at the turn of the road, as you ascend northward,
and looking W when the sun, in a fine summer evening,
is pouring its rays upon it, the effect is enchanting.'
The artificial collections of water, in the form of reservoirs
or dams, for economical purposes, are all of great volume,
and springs of the purest water abound. One of them,
issuing from the solid rock, at a place called Aboon-the-
brae, is so copious as to discharge 42 imperial gallons
every minute. By Levern Water the drainage is
mainly carried north-north-eastward, by Ltjgton Water
partly south-south-westward. The surface is exceedingly
irregular and uneven. At the north-eastern border it
sinks to 120 feet above sea-level, thence rising to 725 feet
at the Fereneze Hills, 848 at Corkindale Law or Lochlibo-
side Hill, 854 at Neilston Pad, 734 at Howcraigs Hill,
and 863 near Long Loch. Of these Corkindale Law com-
mands one of the widest and most magnificent views in
Scotland. On one side are seen Dumbarton Castle, the
vale of the Leven, Loch Lomond, Ben Lomond, and a
vast sweep of the Grampians; on another the vale of the
Clyde from Bowling Bay to Hamilton, the Kilpatrick
and Campsie Hills, the city of Glasgow, a summit or two
of the Ochils, the Lomonds of Fife, the Bathgate Hills,
the Pentlands, Tinto, and the Lowthers; on another
the hills of Kyle, of upper Nithsdale, and of Kirkcud-
brightshire, and sometimes, in the far distance, the tops
of the Cumberland mountains ; and on another the great
plain of Ayrshire, Brown-Carrick Hill, the flanks of Loch
Ryan, the mountains of Mourne in Ireland, the whole
sweep of sea from Donaghadee to the Cumbraes, with
Ailsa Craig in the centre, and the lofty mountain masses
of Arran on the W side. The predominant rock is trap;
but both at the eastern and western extremities of the
parish, rocks of the coal formation, including limestone
and ironstone, abound. Rare or curious minerals are
sufficiently plentiful to draw the attention of mineralo-
gical collectors. The soil of the flat eastern district is
of a dry loamy nature, occasionally mixed with gravel,
and generally resting on clay or till; that of the middle
district is the dibris of trap rock, irretentive of water,
and well fitted for dairy pasture; whilst that of the
western district is largely moorish or mossy. Two-
thirds of the entire area are regularly or occasionally in
tillage; fully 500 acres are under wood; and the rest is
either pastoral or waste. The appliances of manufac-
ture, in the form of printfields, bleachfields, and cotton
spinning-mills, are great and many, serving, along with
the mansions, villas, towns, and villages, to give much
of the lower part of the parish a character intermediate
between the urban and the rural. The printing df
calicoes and the bleaching of cloth were commenced here
in 1773; the spinning of cotton was introduced in 1780;
and so rapid was the progress of these departments of
industry, as well as of others related to them, that Sir
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