1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kilsyth
KILSYTH, a police burgh of Stirlingshire, Scotland, on the Kelvin, 13 m. N.N.E. of Glasgow by the North British railway, and close to the Forth and Clyde canal. Pop. (1901), 7292. The principal buildings are the town and public halls, and the academy. The chief industries are coal-mining and iron-works; there are also manufactures of paper and cotton, besides quarrying of whinstone and sandstone. There are considerable remains of the Wall of Antoninus south of the town, and to the north the ruins of the old castle. Kilsyth dates from the middle of the 17th century and became a burgh of barony in 1826. It was the scene of Montrose’s defeat of the Covenanters on the 15th of August 1645. The town was the centre of remarkable religious revivals in 1742–3 and 1839, the latter conducted by William Chalmers Burns (1815–1868), the missionary to China.