Kirkcolm

Kirkcolm is a village and civil parish on the northern tip of the Rhinns of Galloway peninsula, south-west Scotland. It is in Dumfries and Galloway, and is part of the former county of Wigtownshire. The parish is bounded on the north and west by the sea, on the east by the bay of Loch Ryan and on the south by Leswalt parish.

==History== The name Kirkcolm is often said – even by local people – to mean the Church of St. Columba. However, the early spellings of the name as Kyrcum (1276), Kirkcum (1397) and Kirkcum (1525) cast doubt on that interpretation, as does the modern local pronunciation which is not Colm with a long 'o', but Cum with a short 'u'. The saint who is actually referred to by the name is mentioned by a papal letter of 1397 as 'St Cummin'. This is the name of more than one Gaelic saint of the early Middle Ages, but the most likely to be commemorated here is Cumméne Find, the seventh abbot of Iona who died in AD 669. The parish has a spring known as the Crosswell, or St. Columba's Well, but this designation first appears after the misunderstanding of the name Kilcolm, so is quite likely to be itself a mistake.