Soon, the fame of Dunlop cheese spread throughout the county and the process was adopted widely.

Coat with beaten egg and then roll in grated Dunlop cheese.

Cheese made by her method became known as "Dunlop cheese".

Barbara Gilmour, famous for introducing the production of Dunlop cheese, is buried in the churchyard.

A page on Dunlop Cheese.

Paterson records in 1866 that Dunlop cheese has to some extent been superseded by the Cheddar system of cheese-making.

She says: "The Ayrshire cow was first bred in this area and the Dunlop cheese originated on a farm just a mile up the road.

This demand stimulated merchants to visit Cunninghame, buy Dunlop cheese and sell it throughout the central lowlands of Scotland.

By 1837 some fourteen cadgers made a living in Dunlop Parish through buying and selling Dunlop cheese.

Dunlop cheese was made in Stewarton as well as many other Ayrshire localities, such as Beith.

The Dunlop cheese was first produced in this area in the late 17th century but in the years since, it has become widespread and the name is now generic.

Dunlop cheese, a sweet milk cheese, was first made by Barbara Gilmour who went to Ireland to escape the covenanting prosecutions.

Production of Dunlop cheese has now been commercialised in creameries and is confined almost exclusively to the islands of Arran and Islay.

One place that Dunlop cheese is made today (2008) is at West Clerkland Farm, a short distance from Barbara Gilmour's old home.

This commemorates the marriage of John Dunlop and Barbara Gilmour of Dunlop cheese fame.

Dunlop cheese was produced on most Ayrshire farms right into the 20th century but began to decline after the Scottish Milk Marketing Board was set up in 1933.

The characteristics of Dunlop cheese are that it is a mild, sweet, buttery-tasting cheese with a semi-soft texture when young but maturing to a fudgey or hard texture after a few months.

While Giles Coren cheerfully tries his hand at deer stalking and salmon farming, the rest of the team traces the evolution of Scottish foodstuffs, including Dunlop cheese and wild mushrooms.

By the mid-seventeenth century the rather humid Cunningham region of northern Ayrshire in southwest Scotland was already noted for its Dunlop breed of dairy cattle (and their Dunlop cheese).

The salt was relatively expensive, but was in demand during the Napoleonic Wars when imports were being prevented and were used in the manufacture of Dunlop cheese, butter and salted bacon.

The name of the inflow and outflow burn indicates, as stated, a ford on this old road once used by cadgers or carriers on horseback of goods, including items such as Dunlop cheeses.

Her process was copied by her neighbours and 'Dunlop cheese' came into such demand, that whether made by Barbara, her neighbours, or by the housewives of adjoining parishes, it found a ready market.

There is your Gloucester cheese called the Double Gloucester, and I have read in a book of Dunlop cheese, which is made in Ayrshire: they could tell you more about it in Kilmarnock.

In the long maturing stage Dunlop cheese loses very considerably in weight, which made dealers impatient to get it off their hands; and it was usually therefore retailed before it was ripe, and at an inferior price.

Almost every dairy farm in Ayrshire produced Dunlop cheese and it became a thriving small industry which was an important source of income for the county's farmers throughout the many difficult times for agriculture in the late 18th and 19th centuries.