Duncow is a small settlement in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

Kirkmahoe Kirkmahoe is a civil parish in Dumfries and Galloway. The parish contains the settlements Kirkton, where the parish church is located, Dalswinton and Duncow. It is bounded by the parishes of Dumfries to the south, Holywood and Dunscore to th ...

Dumfries and Galloway Dumfries and Galloway (; ) is one of the 32 unitary council areas of Scotland, located in the western part of the Southern Uplands. It is bordered by East Ayrshire, South Ayrshire, and South Lanarkshire to the north; Scottish Borders to the no ...

, Scotland. Located in the geographical centre of the parish, Duncow was a village in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and was formerly its most populous settlement. At the time the

First Statistical Account of Scotland The ''Statistical Accounts of Scotland'' are a series of documentary publications, related in subject matter though published at different times, covering life in Scotland in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The ''Old (or First) Statistica ...

was written the village had between 150 and 200 residents. By the time of the Third Statistical Account there were only five houses in the village. It has had a school since at least the time of the New Statistical Account. The current school was opened in 1878 and has a roll of 24. The village post office closed in 1952. The name Duncow, recorded as ''Duncol'' in 1250, is of

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foot ...

origin, representing either

Cumbric Cumbric is an extinct Celtic language of the Brittonic subgroup spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North", in Northern England and the southern Scottish Lowlands. It was closely related to Old Welsh and the ot ...

''dīn + coll'' or

Gaelic Gaelic (pronounced for Irish Gaelic and for Scots Gaelic) is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". It may refer to: Languages * Gaelic languages or Goidelic languages, a linguistic group that is one of the two branches of the Insul ...

''dùn-choll'', both meaning 'fort of hazels'. *

References

{{authority control Villages in Dumfries and Galloway