Kilmacolm
Kilmacolm is a town as well as civil parish in the Inverclyde council area, and the historic region of Renfrewshire in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. It lies on the northern slope of the Gryffe Valley, 7 1/2 miles (12.1 km) south-east of Greenock and also around 15 miles (24 km) west of the city of Glasgow. The town has a population of around 4,000 and becomes part of a wider civil parish which covers a large rural hinterland of 15,000 hectares (150 km2; 58 sq mi) having within it the smaller settlement of Quarrier's Village, initially established as a 19th-century residential orphans' home. The area bordering the village was settled in ancient times and also emerged as part of a feudal culture with the parish split in between separate estates for much of its history. The village itself continued to be little, offering solutions to close-by ranch communities as well as functioning as a spiritual hub for the parish. The name of the village stems from the Scottish Gaelic Cill MoCholuim, showing the dedication of its church to St Columba. The parish church was mentioned in a papal bull of 1225 revealing its subservience to Paisley Abbey, as well as it rests on the website of an ancient religious community dating to the 5th or 6th centuries. Again in the 13th century, Duchal Castle was constructed in the parish and also is significant for being besieged by King James IV of Scotland in 1489, following the resident Lyle family members's assistance of an insurrection versus him. Feuding between the worthy households of Kilmacolm was widespread in the Middle Ages, as well as in the 16th and also 17th centuries, the church again involved the interest of the Crown for providing assistance to banned spiritual Covenanters. The character of the village altered substantially in the Victorian era, with the arrival of the railway in Kilmacolm in 1869. Many of Kilmacolm's modern structures were constructed in between this day and the break out of World war. The emergence of such transport links enabled the village to expand as an upscale dorm room village serving the close-by metropolitan centres of Glasgow, Paisley and Greenock. The economy of the town reflected this population modification, moving far from its conventional reliance on agriculture to giving tertiary industry services to citizens as well as site visitors.
