Drummore
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Drummore is a village a few miles north of The Mull of Galloway at the southern end of the Rhins of Galloway in Scotland. It is one of the most southerly villages in Scotland (although this dubious honour goes to Cairngaan which lies a few miles further south on the peninsula), and (unexpectedly) further south than the English cities of Durham and Carlisle. It is in the Dumfries and Galloway Council area and the parish and community of Kirkmaiden and is about 16 miles from the nearest major town, the ferry port of Stranraer, to which it is linked by good bus services. A railway was proposed in 1877, but was opposed by the feudal landowner, the Earl of Stair, and finally abandoned after the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank in 1882; aspects of the village's street layout still reflect plans for the railway.
Drummore lies where the Kildonan Burn runs out to the sea, and shares its name with High Drummore a mile up Glen Lee, and also with Drummore Glen half a mile to the east. The underlying name is clearly the Gaelic "druim mor" or "big ridge", and it has been suggested that this reflected the motte associated with the castle of the Adairs of Kinhilt, whose lands were granted in 1602 by King James VI. The rather scattered incidence of related names, however, probably makes it more likely that the hill-ridge itself is in question, for all that at 200 rising to 300 feet it is not all that prominent compared to the 450-foot Muntloch Fell and Inshanks Fell a mile or two to the west, or even the 250-foot Mull of Galloway itself three miles to the south.
The southern Rhins was clearly an area of early Christian activity following the missionary work of Ninian across Luce Bay in the Machars, since a number of local place-names evince the presence of Irish saints. Shortly before 1860, at Low Curghie less than a mile up the coast north of Drummore, and not far from an extant standing stone, a gravestone was discovered which appeared to date to the 5th or 6th century, with a weathered Latin inscription in which the name “Ventidius” was legible along with another word which translated as “sub-deacon”. Many place-names testify to Norse influence in the southern Rhins, as in many of the west-coast islands and peninsulas, but Drummore's Gaelic name is in tune with the general use of Gaelic in Galloway after the Dark Ages until it was supplanted by English under Presbyterian influence in the 17th century.
Drummore is the largest settlement in the parish of Kirkmaiden, named after St Maiden or Medan. The parish church was originally some five miles south of the village, at a site on the Kirkburn, not far from the Mull of Galloway. In the 17th century the parishioners, citing the inconvenience of the journey to church, secured the building of a new church on Core Hill, about a mile west of Drummore. Following the Disruption in the 19th century, a new church was again built, for worshippers in the Free Church of Scotland, and this time in the village itself, in the street now known as Stair Street. Early in the 20th century the two congregations were reunited. Now worship is habitually at the church within Drummore, with one service each month in the summer being held at the older church in the hamlet of Kirkmaiden on Core Hill. The Kirkmaiden Community Council meets monthly in Drummore.
The harbour, facing east and hence shielded by the Rhins from the prevailing south-westerly wind, was developed with a jetty in the early 19th century to serve a lime manufacturing industry. For many years in the hands of the UK's Ministry of Defence as part of the management of their bombing range and weapon development area offshore in Luce Bay, it was taken over in 2004 by a private firm, the Drummore Harbour Trust Ltd, with the aim of developing its use for pleasure boats.
The village’s facilities include the Queen's Hotel, a post office, a tourist office, a garage and a general shop on the main street leading westward from the harbour; a primary school; a doctor's clinic; the Ship Inn on the shore; a bowling club and children’s play park; a number of holiday cottages; and two caravan sites near sandy beaches (one of them associated with another pub).
