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Lying north-east of Kilmarnock on the Glasgow-Galston Road is the small
hamlet of Moscow which has a population of 118. The origins of Moscow's
name and the nearby Volga Burn have been lost in the mists of time.
Despite attempts to find a connection between this hamlet and either Peter
the Great or the Crimean War, it appears that the name is a corruption
of the Anglo-Norman Moss-hall or Moss-haw.
The deliberate change, in fact, dates from 1812 and Napoleon’s retreat
from the Russian capital. With a fine disregard for Russian geography,
the inhabitants named the stream passing through the village after the
Volga. The hamlet never had a post office to give it an official identity
in postmark form, but it had a telephone exchange and before the advent
of all-number dialling it was possible to make a call to ‘Moscow’ from
Kilmarnock for two pence.
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