There is evidence that Dunlop Parish was the home of a Celtic tribe with a local place of Druid worship this was centred around Dunlop Hill. On the eastern slopes of Brandleside, there is a huge monolith called Ogirtstane composed of blue augitic porphyrites. It was deposited there in the Ice Age. It is roughly twelve feet by eight feet.it weighs approx. 25tons 8cwts.It may have been a Druid altar. Or a place where the Druids made sacrifices to their gods.There have been many discoveries made by archaeologists to confirm the theories that many Druid communities existed all around Dunlop.

Obelisk for Robert Burness

There is a well-known story regarding the paternal uncle of Robert Burns,Scotland’s National Bard.  He left the family farm of Clochanhill in Kincardineshire with his brother William and worked in Lochridge or Lochrig lime stone quarries near Byrehill farm Stewarton. He was a teacher and gardner in his later life and was also a Land Steward on the nearby Robertland Estate. He died on the 3rd January 1789 and is buried in an unknown grave in the Laigh Kirk of Stewarton. Some 121 years later in 1910 an Obelisk was erected by the Literary Society of Stewarton which bears the names of Robert and John Burness.