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 Eglintons
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. Mungos
mother was so distraught over the death of her son that she hanged herself near
a well in Ayr.