Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 4

INVERGOWEIE
beautiful plantations ; its owner, Robert Bruce JEneas
Macleod, Esq. of Cadboll (b. 1818 ; sue. 1853), holds
11,830 acres in the shire, valued at £11,021 per annum.
Having adopted the General Police and Improvement
Act (Scotland) in 1364, the town is governed by nine
police commissioners; and sheriff small debt courts sit
at it in January, April, July, and October. Pop. (1841)
998, (1861) 1122, (1871) 1157, (1881) 1119, of whom
1092 were in the police burgh. Houses (1881) 207
inhabited, 10 vacant, 6 building. — Ord. Siir., sh. 94,
1878.
Invergowrie, a village at the mutual border of Long-
forgan parish, Perthshire, and Liff and Benvie parish,
Forfarshire, on the Firth of Tay, with a station upon
the Dundee and Perth section of the Caledonian, 3J
miles W of Dundee. Figuring in ancient record as a
place of royal embarkation, and surrounded by Crown
lands, which Alexander I. designed to be graced with a
royal palace, but which he found occasion to convey to
the monks of Scone, it has a ruined, ivy-clad church,
said to have succeeded a church of the beginning of the
8th century, founded by St Bonifacius, and the earliest
N of the Tay. (See Forteose.) It adjoins the exten-
sive paper-works of Bullionfield and the village of Mylne-
field Feus, which in 1881 contained 348 inhabitants.
The ancient churchyard crowns an eminence, a mound
of singular shape, washed on one side by the Tay ; and
on the shore, near the ruined church, are two large
blocks of stone, the ' Yowes or Ewes of Gowrie,' of
which Thomas the Rhymer predicted that —
1 When the Yowes o' Gowrie come to land,
The day o' judgement's near at hand.'
A huge boulder, fabled to have been flung from the Fife
coast by the Devil with the intention to destroy the
church, lies a little way N of the village ; and a Cale-
donian stone circle, comprising nine large stones and
four smaller ones, stands a short distance N of the
boulder. Invergowrie House, in Liff and Benvie parish,
2J miles W by N of Dundee and If ENE of Invergowrie
station, is situated on a bank sloping down to the
Firth ; was greatly enlarged about 1836 after designs
by W. Burn ; and commands a beautiful view of a long
reach of the Firth and the Carse of Gowrie. Its owner,
George David Clayhills-Henderson, Esq. (b. 1832), holds
2138 acres in Forfar and Perth shires, valued at £4027
per annum. The ancient parish of Invergowrie was of
small extent, and since the middle of the 17th century
or earlier has been incorporated with Liff and Benvie. —
Ord. Sur., sh. 48, 1868.
Inverie, an estate, with a mansion and a hamlet, in
Knoydart district, Glenelg parish, W Inverness-shire.
The mansion, on the northern shore of Loch Nevis, 10
miles SSE of Isle Oronsay, and 54 WSW of Fort
Augustus, was built and inhabited by the late Colonel
Macdonell of Glengarry, the last of the Highland
chiefs, and within and without is a curious structure, in
the oid Celtic style. It is now the property of John
Baird, Esq. of Knoydart. The hamlet, near the man-
sion, has a post office under Broadford, an inn, and a
public school.
Inverinate, a hamlet, with a public school, in Kintail
parish, Ross-shire, on the NE shore of Loch Duich,
1 mile WNW of Kintail church. Inverinate House,
standing finely embosomed in woods at the base of
Sgurr an Airgid (2757 feet), had been greatly enlarged
in the Italian style, when it was burned to the ground
in 1864.— Ord Sur., sh. 72, 1880.
Inverkeilor, a village and a coast parish of Forfar-
shire. The village stands near the right bank of Lunan
Water, 6 miles N by E of Arbroath station.
The parish, containing also Leysmill village and
Chance Inn, with a post and telegraph office, is
bounded N by Kinnell and Lunan, E by the German
Ocean, S by St Yigeans, and W by Carmyllie and
Kirkden. Its utmost length, from E by N to W by S,
is 11 miles ; its breadth, from N to S, varies between
9J furlongs and 4J miles ; and its area is 10,516| acres,
of which 240 are foreshore and 36 water. Keilor Burn,
298
INVERKEITHING
which gives the parish its name, rises on the S border, and
runs 3 miles east-north-eastward to Lunan Bay. Lunan
Water, coming in from Kinnell, winds 3| miles through
the interior, then 2gmiles along the boundary with Lunan
to the sea ; and two head-streams of Brothock Water
rise and run in the SW. The coast, 5J miles long,
over the northern half is indented by Lunan Bay, and
here is low, flat, and sandy, overgrown with bent ; to
the S it is high and rocky, and at Redhead, the pro-
montorial termination of the Sidlaw spurs, attains a
height of 267 feet in picturesque porphyritic cliffs.
The section N of Lunan Water rises in a beautiful,
gently ascending bank of arable land to 325 feet
at Hilton and 290 at Compass Hill ; whilst the
southern section is mostly a level expanse of fertile
ground, attaining 262 feet near Boghead, 265 near
Kinblethmont, and 312 in the extreme W. The rocks
are Devonian, with intermingling of traps and por-
phyries. Pavement flag, of the kind popularly called
Arbroath stone, is quarried and dressed at Leysmill ;
sandstone of suitable quality for masonry is quarried
between Lunan Water and Keilor Burn ; and a hard
bluish trap, well suited for road metal, is quarried on
the N side of Lunan Water. Agates and other pebbles,
some of them of fine colour and high density, are found
in the trap rocks. The soils are various, but generally
dry and fertile. About 250 acres are under plantation ;
126 are almost or altogether unfit for cultivation ; and
all the rest of the land is regularly or occasionally in
tillage. Antiquities are vestiges of Danish camps, the
remains of St Murdoch's and Quytefield chapels, and
Redcastle, which last is separately noticed, as also are
the mansions of Ethie, Kinblethmont, and Lawton. A
fourth, Anniston, standing f mile SE of the village, is the
seat of Lieut. -Col. Arthur John Rait, C. B. (b. 1839 ; sue.
1877), who owns 978 acres in the shire, valued at £2744
per annum. In all, 4 proprietors hold each an annual
value of £500 and upwards, 5 of between £100 and £500,
1 of from £50 to £100, and 4 of from £20 to £50.
Giving off a portion to the quoad sacra parish of
Friockkeim, Inverkeilor is in the presbytery of Ar-
broath and synod of Angus and Mearns ; the living is
worth £321. The parish church was built in 1735, and,
as enlarged about 1830, contains 703 sittings. There is
also a Free church ; and two public schools, Chapelton
and Inverkeilor, with respective accommodation for 119
and 232 children, had (1881) an average attendance of
79 and 143, and grants of £72, Is. 6d. and £125, 18s. 6d,
Valuation (1857) £13,594, (1SS3) £17,227, 2s. 5d., 2jIus
£2277 for railway. Pop. of civil parish (1801) 1704,
(1831) 1655, (1S41) 1S79, (1S61) 1792, (1871) 1521,
(1881) 1671 ; of ecclesiastical parish (1871) 1189, (1881)
1311.— Ord. Sur., sh. 57, 1868.
Inverkeithing, a coast town and parish of SW Fife.
A royal, parliamentary, and police burgh, and a sea-
port, the town, standing at thehead of Inverkeithing Bay,
has a station on a branch line of the North British, 3f
milesSE of Dunfermline, ljrnileNof North Queensferry,
and 16 miles WNW of Edinburgh, from which by road it
is only 13 miles. It occupies a pleasant south-eastward
slope, which commands a delightful view ; and consists
of a longish main street, with divergent wynds and
some shoreward outskirts. Though it has mostly been
either built or rebuilt in the course of the present cen-
tury, the ' Inns ' or old palace is still pointed out as
the residence of Annabella Drummond (1340-1403),
Robert III.'s widowed queen, who certainly died at
Inverkeithing. Near it vestiges have been discovered
of a supposed Franciscan or Dominican monastery.
The town has a post office, with money order, sav-
ings' bank, and telegraph departments, a branch of
the Clydesdale Bank, 7 insurance agencies, 2 hotels,
a good town-hall, a neat corn market, a curious old
pillar cross, a subscription library, a masonic lodge, a
music hall, a curling club, a cemetery, a gas company,
a mutual marine insurance company, a tolerable har-
bour, a shipbuilding yard, tan-works, rope-works, fire-
clay works, and a fair on the first Friday of August, the
survivor of five, which itself has been growing smaller and