Auchinleck

The village has been inhabited since at least 1504, with the arrival of the Boswell family when King James IV granted it as a barony to Thomas Boswell. The Boswells then helped develop the area into a thriving village when it had previously been barren moorland. A bigger growth to the area happened when mining and quarrying came to the region; by 1881 the parish population had blossomed and was 6,681.