Place:Kingarth, Bute, Scotland

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

Kingarth occupies approximately the southern third of the Island of Bute. Its principal village is Kilchatten Bay. Further villages are Ascog, Kerrycroy and Piperhall.

Mount Stuart House, the seat of the Stuarts of Bute, is located in the parish. The current country house in neo-gothic style with a great deal of stone carving replaced an earlier one which burnt down in 1877. As a result, the 1881 census for the parish was expanded by a long list of the workers employed in the construction, many of whom brought their wives and families and lived in "huts" erected temporarily in the grounds. Many of these temporary inhabitants came from Ireland.

The old parish registers (OPRs) for Kingarth parish cover

Births or Baptisms ~ 1727 - 1854

Marriages or Banns ~ 1837 - 1854

Deaths or Burials ~ 1768 - 1786

Further History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Kingarth is a historic village and parish on the Isle of Bute, off the coast of south-western Scotland. The village is within the parish of its own name, and is situated at the junction of the A844 and B881. In the Early Middle Ages it was the site of a monastery and bishopric and the cult centre of Saints Cathan and Bláán (Anglicized: Blane).

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.