A former collier village in South Ayrshire, Old Rome is situated on the left bank of the River Irvine, opposite Gatehead and 2½ miles (4 km) southwest of Kilmarnock. It may represent an old fording point on the river. Its population seems to have reached its peak of 261 by 1841 and the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1860 shows a substantial settlement with miners' rows and a school. Its decline was rapid, associated with exhaustion of the local coal pit and the closure of Old Rome Distillery, with only 31 inhabitants recorded in the census of 1881. Old Rome Bridge dates from 1870.
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