Barrhill

Being in Covenanter country it witnessed evil acts of the notorious ‘Killing Times’ of religious turmoil. In 1665, by the side of Cross Water in Barrhill, John Murchie and Daniel Mieklewrick were found by soldiers to be in possession of bibles and assumed to be Covenanters and were summarily shot to death. They were buried on the spot, and a memorial was built, known as “The Martyrs’ Tomb”. A railway station, on the Glasgow South Western Line, is approximately half-a-mile south–west of the village. It featured in The Five Red Herrings, a 1931 ‘Lord Peter Wimsey’ detective novel by Dorothy L Sayers.