Kirkintilloch
KIRKINTILLOCH, a municipal and police burgh of Dumbartonshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901), 10,680. It is situated 8 m.N.E. of Glasgow, by the North British railway, a portion of the parish extending into Lanarkshire. It lies on the Forth & Clyde canal, and the Kelvin from which Lord Kelvin, the distinguished scientist, took the title of his barony flows past the town, xv. 27 where it receives from the north the Glazert and from the south the Luggie, commemorated by David Gray. The Wall of Antoninus ran through the site of the town, the Gaelic name of which (Caer, a fort, not Kirk, a church) means " the fort at the end of the ridge." The town became a burgh of barony under the Comyns in 1170. The cruciform parish church with crowstepped gables dates from 1644. The public buildings include the town-hall, with a clock tower, the temperance hall, a convalescent home, the Broomhill home for incurables (largely due to Miss Beatrice Clugston, to whom a memorial was erected in 1891), and the Westermains asylum. In 1 898 the burgh acquired as a private park the Peel, containing traces of the Roman Wall, a fort, and the foundation of Comyn's Castle. The leading industries are chemical manufactures, iron-founding, muslinweaving, coal mining and timber sawing. LENZIE, a suburb, a mile to the south of the old town, contains the imposing towered edifice in the Elizabethan style which houses the Barony asylum. David Gray, the poet, was born at Merkland, near by, and is buried in Kirkintilloch churchyard, where a monument was erected to his memory in 1865.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
