Place:Great Cumbrae, Bute, Scotland

source: Family History Library Catalog

Great Cumbrae is the smallest of the three main islands that make up Bute. The island is also a parish. The civil registration district of Cumbrae comprises both Great Cumbrae and Little Cumbrae, although the latter was in the parish of Ardrossan.

Millport is a village which is the main place of habitation on Great Cumbrae. The island is connected to the mainland by a ferry service to Largs. The ferry does not berth at Millport, but at Cumbrae Slip, 4 miles north of the town. A bus is always on hand to transport visitors to the village.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Great Cumbrae.

Research Tips

• "Buteshire Resource and Information Links" on the Scotland GenWeb site has some very useful onward references.

• GENUKI's introduction to the County of Bute or Buteshire, and the annotated list of Bute's parishes are, for the most part, quotes from 19th century gazetteers, but nonetheless valuable for all that.

• Transcriptions of all the 19th century censuses are available on FreeCen.

• ScotlandsPeople holds indexes and images for all civil births, marriages and deaths, censuses 1841-1911, and for all Old Parish Registers throughout Scotland. It is a pay-per-view site. ScotlandsPeople also holds records of Wills and Testaments and Coats of Arms. Access to this latter part of their website is free.

• From the National Library of Scotland Website is John Arrowsmith's 1875 map of Scotland which can be digitally expanded to a very large scale. This brings up Arran and Bute and the surrounding mainland beautifully. This is one of a very large series of maps on this site which can keep a map-mad genealogist entertained for hours.

• Vision of Britain provides both the topographical Ordnance Survey of Scotland First Series (1856-1887) in black and white, and the Ordnance Survey of Scotland Popular Edition (1928-1945) in colour at a scale of 1:63360, as well as other series of maps covering the whole of the United Kingdom. These maps are wonderful for finding places that have diminished in size over the past 150 years.
• Google maps include Street View for Millport and the main roads of the Isle of Cumbrae.