AYRSHIRE SCOTLAND - Traced to 14th Century
M'Kerrell of Hillhouse
The M'Kerrells have flourished from
a remote period in the shire of Ayr. The name Kiriell appears
on the roll of Battle Abbey ; hence the family is presumed to
be of Norman descent. Kiriell, Kirel, Kirrel, or Kerrell, (as
at various times spelt), is a surname now very rarely to be met
with. It is said to exist in Sweden, another proof of Normanic
origin in Scotland, where the family of Hillhouse alone bears
it.
The first of the name, and the most remote now on Scottish record,
Sir John M'Kirel, distinguished himself at the celebrated Battle
of Otterburn, 19th August, 1388, by wounding and capturing
Rouel de Periné, who held the second command in the English
host, and whose brother, the renowned Hotspur, was made prisoner
by Sir John Montgomcrie, Í (from whom spring the Earls
of Eglinton), in the same sanguinary conflict. That this Sir
John M'Kirel was an ancestor of the Hillhouse family, the circumstance
of the latter bearing the arms§ which he acquired by his
prowess in the celebrated battle ... (click
to full story)
Ballad
of th Battle of Otterburn
The Hillhouse name was documented
in The Lordship & Barony
of Kilmarnock in 1547. Hillhouse's in Ayr can trace back
generations to Adam Hillhouse who leased 20 acres of land and
a house in the village of Failford beside the ruined Monastery
of Failford. In the 20th Century a headstone still marked his
grave in the Parish cemetery of nearby Tarbolton.
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A Hillhouse family was neighbors and close
friends of the poet Robert
Burns' father near Tarbolton. The Burns family lived at Lochlea
farm from 1777 to 1784, and it was here that Burns’ father
died. |
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In rural Ayrshire the name is pronounced
"Hillus".
Some family members were thought to
have left Scotland for Northern Ireland
sometime after 1638 during the disputes
of the Presbyterian Covenanters with Charles I and his pressure
of conformity.
James Hillhouse (1687-1740) of Ireland
returned to Scotland to study theology at the University of Glasgow
in the early 1700s and was ordained by the Presbytery of Londonderry,
Ireland before moving to America in 1719.
Hillhouse Farm & Cottages -Kilmarnock
The proprietor James Howie bred and made famous a breed of Ayrshire
cattle he named Hillhouse
Hillhouse Golf
Lodge - Troon