Montfode Burn Bridge, Eglinton Road 2                                                                                                      5 August 2013

As part of North Ayrshire Council's Heritage Trails, a Blue Plaque to Mungo Campbell was installed in late July 2013.

On Tuesday 24 October 1769, the tenth Earl of Eglinton, Alexander Montgomerie, was travelling in his carriage to Fairlie with four servants following him on horseback. The Earl of Eglinton owned most of the land in and around Ardrossan. As he was near Montfode Burn where it enters the sea on the North Shore - and where the plaque is - the Earl was annoyed when told that two men, one with a gun, had been seen on his land. He ordered his carriage to stop. The man with the gun was Mungo Campbell, a son of the Provost of Ayr, who worked as an excise officer in Saltcoats. Campbell had permission to shoot on the nearby Montfode Estate and prosecute poachers but not on the adjacent Earl of Eglinton’s land. The Earl confronted Campbell and told him to hand over his gun. Campbell refused. The Earl tried to grab the gun which went off, mortally wounding him. The Earl was taken to his home at Eglinton Castle in Kilwinning where the best medical attention could not save him and he died early the next morning. Mungo Campbell was charged with murder but despite claiming that the gun was fired unintentionally, he was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. Mungo’s mother was so distraught over the death of her son that she hanged herself near a well in Ayr.