WHITHORN  , a royal

burgh of Wigtownshire, Scotland . Pop . (1901) 1118 . It is situated near the southern extremity of the peninsula of Machers, 121 in . S. of Wigtown by railway . The town consists of one long street running north and south, in which the town-hall is situated . It is famous for its associations with St Ninian or Ringan, the first Christian missionary to Scotland . He landed at the Isle of Whithorn, a small promontory about 31 M. to the S.E. where he built (397) a church of stone and lime, which, out of contrast with the dark mud and wattle huts of the natives, was called Candida Casa, the White House (Anglo-Saxon, Hwit tern, Whitherne or Whithorn) . This he dedicated to his master St Martin of Tours . Ninian died probably in 432 and was buried in the church . A hundred years later the Magnum Monasterium, or monastery cf Rosnat, was founded at Whithorn, and became a noted home of learning and, in the 8th century, the seat of the bishopric of Galloway . It was succeeded in the 12th century by St Ninian's Priory, built for Premonstratensian monks by Fergus " King " of Galloway, of which only the chancel (used as the parish church till 1822) with a richly decorated late Norman doorway, and fragments of the lady chapel, vaults, cellars, buttresses and tombs remain .

The priory church was the

cathedral church of the see till the Reformation, when it fell into gradual decay . In Roman times Whithorn belonged to the Novantae, and William Camden, the antiquary, identified it with the Leukopibia of Ptolemy . It was made a royal burgh by Robert Bruce .