Topographical, statistical, and historical gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 2

142
KILWINNING.
century, the ruins wbich remained were repaired, at
very considerable expense, by the Earl of Eglinton
of the period ; and, from a drawing of them, made in
1789, they are exhibited in Grose's Antiquities.
Kilwinning, the capital of the cognominal parish,
and a populous manufacturing village, is pleasantly
situated on a gentle rising ground on the right bank
of the river Garnock; 2i miles from the nearest part
of the frith of Clyde ; 3i miles north-east of Salt-
coats ; 23 miles north-west of Irvine ; and 3| miles
south of Dairy. The town is ancient, and has a
dull, antiquated, dingy appearance ; yet borrows suf-
ficient splendour from the loveliness of its environs,
and from reminiscences of its historical importance,
and from the beautiful and partially Gothic form of
its parish-church, with an elegant modern spire sur-
mounting the tower of its ancient monastery, to be
an object of no little interest. It consists principally
of one street, winged by some lanes, and of some
rows of modern houses ; and stretches westward
from the river. The approaches to it are shaded
with trees, and flanked by beautiful fields. At its
east end is a height, called the Crosshill, on which
the monks anciently set up what they reckoned the
symbol of Christianity, to receive the initiatory
homage of the pilgrims who crowded to their
shrines. Part of the town is suburban, consisting
of an attached or adjacent village called Byres.
The ancient seat of monkish indolence and gilded
knavery is now the scene of manufacturing industry ;
and acquires from the humble toils of its busy in-
habitants, and especially from the moral enlighten-
ment of a portion of their number, unutterably higher
attractions than it ever possessed in the pompous
fooleries and rueful grandeur of the cowled frater-
nity who drew flocks of victims to their sumptu-
ous ecclesiastical palace. The rattle of the loom,
and the humble prattle of Christian intelligence, as
substitutes for the choral chauntings of the missal,
amply compensate by their intrinsic utility all that
they lose in poetical effect. In the various depart-
ments of silk, woollen, and cotton, the town had,
in 1828, 370 looms, and in 1838, 350. In the latter
year, 60 of the looms were harness, and 290 plain.
Near the end of last century, an extensive tannery,
and 3 small factories, 1 for carding cotton, and 2
for spinning it, were established. With the excep-
tion of a few families, the whole population, not
only of the town, but of the landward part of the
parish, are of the working-classes, principally hand-
loom weavers, shopkeepers, labourers, and colliers.
The town has a branch-office of the Commercial
Bank of Scotland ; and it has two arinual fairs.
Nor is the place deficient, proportionately to its
bulk, in charitable or friendly institutions.
A remarkable fact connected with the town — one
which occasions its name to figure prominently to the
present day in the proceedings of the gaudy and
flaunting associations, so extensively popular in our
country, who endeavour to make up by parade and
by boasted consciousness of importance, what they
want in usefulness and meaning — is, that it was the
cradle of free-masonry in Scotland, and, till not very
many years ago, was regarded with filial feelings, or
with those of nurslings, by all the lodges in the
kingdom. The community and conservation of a
real or supposed secret — especially considering how
unreserved and open benevolence, or true goodness,
is in its abstract nature — seems the most question-
able of all bonds of union, short of such as are posi-
tively criminal, for forming and maintaining volun-
tary associations ; yet it appears, with a numerous
proportion of men, to have in most ages possessed
peculiar attractions, and to have, in some instances,
been preferred to other bonds of union, at the risk
even of proscription and suffering. The Eleusinian
mysteries attained great respectability among the
ancient Greeks, and were protected by law. A class
of artificers, held together by the Dionysian myste-
ries, too, possessed at one time the exclusive privi-
lege of erecting temples and theatres, and were nu-
merous in Syria, Persia, and Western Hindostan.
These ancient associations, on account of their cere-
monies all having connexion with pagan superstitions,
were proscribed by the Christian Roman emperors;
yet they are believed to have been secretly continued,
under the pretence of ordinary assemblies for amuse-
ment, and with a diminished amplitude in the observ-
ance of pagan rites. Modern masonry — to the unini-
tiated, at least, and almost certainly to even the ini-
tiated — is so obscure in its early history and character,
that it neither, on the one hand, can it be distinctly
traced to either a connexion with these or other an-
cient fraternities, or to some comparatively modem
outburst of the common tendency of mankind to
associate themselves in clubs and select communi-
ties; nor, on the other hand, can it be pronounced to
have had for its original object what seems mainly to
be its modern one — a pompous and ceremonial species
of conviviality, or the maintenance of freer notions,
bona fide on the subject of architecture, than the
circumstances of an iron age permitted to be public.
All that can fully be affirmed is, that, about the time
of the crusades, associations of free-masons, whose
members had a formal initiation, and distinguished
one another by secret signs, appeared numerously in
Europe, and acted a conspicuous part, if not in the
introduction of the Saracenic, or, as it is usually
called, the Gothic architecture, at least in the super-
intendence of most of the magnificent erections in
which it was exemplified. Sir Christopher Wren,
as quoted by Grose — taking quite as high a flight in
positiveness of statement as could be at all safe. —
says, " The Holy war gave the Christians who had
been" in the east " an idea of the Saracen works,
which were afterwards by them imitated in the west;
and they refined upon it every day, as they proceeded
in building churches. The Italians (among which
were still some Greek refugees), and with them
French, Germans, and Flemings, joined into a fra-
ternity of architects ; procuring papal bulls for their
encouragement, and particular privileges. They
styled themselves free-masons, and ranged from one
nation to another, as they found churches to be built
(for very many in those ages were every where in
building through piety or emulation). Their gov-
ernment was regular ; and where they fixed near the
building in hand, they made a camp of huts. A sur-
veyor governed in chief; every tenth man was called
a warden, and overlooked each nine ; the gentlemen
in the neighbourhood, either out of charity or com-
mutation of penance, gave the materials and car-
riages." [Antiquities. Vol. i. Pref. Note in p. 114.]
One of these fraternities either voluntarily came, or
were invited over from the continent, to take part
in building the abbey of Kilwinning ; and when on
the spot, they seem to have communicated their se-
cret, whatever it was, to some of the more respect-
able natives who had no practical connexion with
the art of masonry, and thus to have formed the
earliest lodge of Scottish free-masons. But the fra-
ternities on the continent, by holding their meetings
with shut doors, by binding themselves under the
sanction of an oath to keep all the uninitiated, no
matter how princely or prelatical, unacquainted with
their mysteries, and especially by fraternizing with
the usurping and dangerous military order of Knights
Templars, speedily drew upon themselves such
jealousies, anathematizings, proscriptions, and perse-
cutions, as issued in their extinction. The parent