The Lands and Estate of Abercorn
The Anglo-Norman knight, Sir William de Graham, ancestor of the Dukes of Montrose, received from David I. (1124-53) the lands of Abercorn, which came by marriage to Sir Reginald Mure, chamberlain of Scotland in 1329. In 1454 the Castle was taken by James II. from the ninth and last Earl of Donglas, and its only vestige is a low green mound, fronting the church and manse: whereas Midhope Tower, bearing a coronet and the initials J. Livingstone, stands almost perfect, ¾ mile SW. At present there are titularly connected with this parish Sir Bruce Maxwell Seton of Abercorn, eighth baronet since 1663, and the Duke of Abercorn, eldest surviving male heir of the Hamilton line, who takes from it his title of Baron (1603) and Earl (1606) in the peerage of Scotland, of Marques (1790) in that of Great Britain, and of Duke (1868) in that of Ireland.
Abercorn, a village and a coast parish of Linlithgowshire. Lying ¼ mile inland, near the confluence of the Cornie and Midhope Burns, the village,-a pretty little place, nestling among trees and gardens on the verge of a high bank,-is 3¾ miles W of its post-town South Queensferry, and 3 NNW of Winchburgh station. Here stood most probably the monastery of Aebbercurnig or Eoriercorn, founded about 675 under St Wilfrid as a central point for the administration of the northern part of his diocese, which included the province of the Picts, held in subjection by the Angles of Northumbria. Trumuini made this monastery the seat of his bishopric, the earliest in Scotland, from 681 to 685, when the Picts' victory at Dunnichen forced him to flee to Whitby (Skene, Celt. Scot., i. 262-268, and ii. 224). And here still stands the ancient parish church, refitted in 1579, and thoroughly repaired in 1838, with a Norman doorway turned into a window, a broken cross, and a stone coffin lid, but minus a carved pew-back that found its way to the Edinburgh Antiquarian Museum in 1876.
The parish contains also the hamlets of Philipston, 2½ miles SW of Abercorn village, and Society, on the coast, 1¼ mile E by N. It is bounded N for 3¾ miles by the Firth of Forth (here 2½ miles wide), E by Dalmeny, SE by Kirkliston, S by the Auldcathie portion of Dalmeny and by Ecclesmachan, SW by Linlithgow, and W by Carriden, from which it is parted by the Black Burn.