Barbara Gilmour - Barbara Gilmour

Barbara Gilmour

Barbara Gilmour was a woman whose wits had been sharpened by her exile as a presbyterian in Ireland around 1660, during Scotland's troubles between the Restoration of Charles II and the dirk & drublie dayis after the revolution. In Ireland she is thought to have learned the art of making whole milk cheese. She may have been in the Bantry Bay area, County Cork, where James Hamilton, 1st Viscount Claneboye was at one time based. Hamilton was a strong presbyterian adherent and son of Hans Hamilton the first Protestant minister of Dunlop Kirk. McMichael states that she was in County Down, Northern Ireland.

It is not known precisely where she came from, however 'Gilmore' or 'Gilmour' is a common local name, with for example a family of that name living in the 'Lands of Chapeltoun' at around the start of the 18th century.

Eventually, according to the Rev. Brisbane (1793), she returned to Dunlop, East Ayrshire, after the Revolution of 1688, bringing the recipe for the cheese with her; McMichael has it that she combined the best of Scottish and Irish cheese making methods to produce Dunlop cheese. Paterson records that she was the wife of John Dunlop, the farmer of Overhill Farm, now known as 'The Hill'. Introducing a new style of cheese was not straightforward and, "knowing" that cheese could not be made from whole milk, some of the locals came close to accusing her of witchcraft which could have resulted in her being burned to death at the Cross of Irvine.

Another source states that she was a pious young woman – a devout Covenanter – and, hearing of the martyrdom of Margaret Wilson (in 1684 or 1685) on Wigtown Sands, and being determined not to renounce the Covenant, she fled, like many others, from her home in Ayrshire to Ireland, and found employment in the county Down, where she acquired a knowledge of the Irish process of cheese making. The persecution of females having abated after the horrible event of Wigtown Sands, Miss Gilmour returned to her home in Dunlop, and became a farmer’s wife.

Some others accused her of copying their recipes and indeed a farmer, Mr W. Aiton of Strathaven, pointed out that practical cheese makers were already aware of the benefit of adding cream to cheese before Barbara's time, and in his opinion Dunlop cheese was so named from a trader who took these cheeses from the parish up to Glasgow; others have cast doubt on the Irish origin of the 'recipe' without disputing Barbara Gilmour's introduction of Dunlop cheese.