Lochgoilhead and Kilmorich Summary

Lochgoilhead and Kilmorich

 

Principal Sources

 

RMS I (480) 1372-4

RMS II (346) 1442, (3075) 1506-7

RMS III (826) 1529, (2343) 1541

RMS IV (467) 1550

RMS V (2122) 1592

RMS VI (1218) 1601

RMS VII (1743) 1617

 

RSS I (2429) 1512

 

CSSR IV (791) 1441

 

AS I (25, 67) 1618), (84) 1619, (206) 1622, (281) 1645, (351) 1652, (369) 1658, (465) 1660

 

AS II (51) 1619, (210-211, 216) 1627, (267-8) 1629, (325) 1630, (417) 1632, (502) 1634, (586-7, 599) 1637, (597-8) 1636, (1085) 1663, (1142, 1144) 1664, (1202, 1213, 1217, 1230, 1240) 1665, (1264, 1274-5, 1284) 1666, (1440) 1668, (1455) 1669

 

Argyll Retours (75) 1663, (101) 1503

 

W Fraser, Cartulary of Colquhoun p 389 No 18, Edinburgh, 1873

Clan Campbell I p 152, 1716, p 135, 1714

Clan Campbell III p 37 1724, p 55 1736, p 75 1742, p 91 1732

Clan Campbell VI p 151 1612

Highland Papers IV pp 11-55

ILP (182) 1548, (196) 1554

NAS CS 46/1913/May No 6 pp 337-342, 1673

 

RHP 3304 Ardgartan Estate, 1885

Langlands map : Lochgoilhead & Kilmorich, 1795

 

J Smith gives 156m for Lochgoilhead and Kilmorich in his General View of the Agriculture of the County of Argyll, 1798. I find 159½m in the whole parish of which some 72½m were Kilmorich (excluding Glen Shira) while Lochgoilhead has 87m. Langlands shows the march between the two parishes running above Upper Glencroe. However there was also an important boundary between the Ardkinglas and Strachur estates where the Croe Water turns NE above Laigh Glencroe. Kilmorich had once included Glen Shira (40m) but this was detached in the seventeenth century to join Glenaray. I suspect that there was once also a separate parochial unit centred on Cairndow and including the core of the Ardkinglas estate which, by the second half of the seventeenth century, became absorbed by Kilmorich.

 

Kilmorich offers no very clear evidence of the pennyland to merkland conversion ratio but I suspect that here too it was 1d : 4 merks. It is likely to have been a 1 ounceland or 80 merk unit perhaps made up of two half-ounceland units each with its own parochial centre. (One for the NW side of Loch Fyne centred on Kilmorich, one for the Ardkinglas estate in the NE corner of Loch Fyne centred on Cairndow).

 

Lochgoilhead is more complicated. Highland Papers Vol IV gives us some early valuations for Loch Long in terms of fractions of a penny but it is difficult to work out a precise pennyland to merkland conversion rate from these alone. They are fourteenth-century and there is quite a hiatus before our first merkland valuations which are often at least 200 years later. However the parish contains no less than 13 x 3-merk units and 2 x 6-merk units (in turn each split into 3-merk units). Three-merk units do not occur so often in areas where the conversion rate was 1d : 4 merks and the pattern in Lochgoilhead is reminiscent of that found in Arran and Bute where the ratio is 1d : 6 merks. If this is so then Lochgoilhead was perhaps a 90 merk unit or ¾ of an ounceland.

 

Feorlinn represents part of the eastern border of the Norse system of land-assessment.

 

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