page_title: Kenmure Castle
section_title: Visitors
hierarchical_section_title: Kenmure Castle / Visitors
context_page_description: Kenmure Castle is a fortified house or castle in The Glenkens, 1 mile south of the town of New Galloway in Kirkcudbrightshire, Galloway, south-west Scotland. The site was occupied from the Middle Ages, and the house incorporates part of a 17th-century castle. This was remodelled in the 19th century, but the house has been derelict since the mid-20th century. It was the seat of the Gordon family of Lochinvar, later raised to the peerage as Viscounts of Kenmure. The ruin is a scheduled monument.
context_section_description: George Gillespie (1613 –1648) was a Scottish theologian and domestic chaplain to John Gordon Ist Viscount Kenmure.  
  Rev Prof Samuel Rutherford (c. 1600 – 1661) Scottish Presbyterian pastor, theologian and author, attended John Gordon 1st Viscount Kenmure on his deathbed and later wrote a tract entitled "The last and heavenly Speeches and glorious Departure of John, Viscount Kenmure", printed in Edinburgh in 1649, by Evan Tyler, His Majesty's Printer. It was reprinted in 1827. 
  Robert Burns stayed here for three days in July 1793 as guest of the then laird John Gordon (at the time de jure 10th Viscount Kenmure) ,1750-1840).  
  Rev Robert Nixon (1759–1837),  was a Church of England priest and artist. For the last ten years of his life he served as domestic chaplain to Viscount Kenmure at Kenmure Castle where he died on 5 Nov. 1837, aged 78. By his wife Ann Russell he was father of the Rev. Francis Russell Nixon, first Bishop of Tasmania. It was in Nixon's parsonage at Foots Cray in 1798  that J M W Turner painted his first painting in oils.
  John Ruskin (1819-1900), art critic and author, stayed with his cousin Joan Agnew and her husband the artist Arthur Severn  (1842-1931) at Kenmure in 1876. 
  Cowan Dobson ARBB, RBA (1894-1980) Scottish portrait painter is said to have rented the castle in the 1930s and 1940s to entertain and paint his fashionable portraits and paintings.
  Charles Tate Regan.  John Murray was gamekeeper to Lord Kenmure and is remembered for having caught, in 1774 in Loch Ken below the castle, the largest pike on record, the head of which rested on his shoulder, with the tail trailing on the ground. Its weight was seventy-two pounds, and it measured about seven feet in length. The skeleton of the head was for many years preserved on display in the Billiard Room at Kenmure Castle where it was studied and measured by Charles Tate Regan, ichthyologist, of the Natural History Museum. Murray died in 1777 and is buried at Kells Churchyard; on his tombstone are carved in relief a gun, fishing-rod, dog and partridge.  Regan, C. Tate (Charles Tate), 1878-. The Freshwater Fishes of the British Isles. London: Methuen, 1911.
caption: Alexander Nasmyth - Robert Burns
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