Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Band D council tax is £1,686. 16,224 residents make their home in this town in North Ayrshire, Scotland.
Kilwinning’s strongest subject is cost of living — a typical home costs £132,900 and rent runs £656 a month. It is easy to get around without a car (A−): 19% of commuters walk, cycle or take public transport. Health outcomes fall short of most towns: life expectancy is 74.7 for men and 81 for women. Schools are weaker too: school leavers’ results beat 13% of Scottish towns.
Figures: prices, HM Land Registry, the last three years · commuting, Census 2022 · life expectancy, ONS. Without street-level crime figures from Police Scotland, Kilwinning has no Safety Grade, and so no overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below.
Each subject compared with the 2,160 UK towns with an overall grade (schools within Scotland), ordered by how far Kilwinning is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Without street-level crime figures from Police Scotland, Kilwinning has no Safety Grade, and so no overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below.
How TownRatings grades towns →
The 3 things Kilwinning does most differently from other towns.
Historic Environment Scotland lists 7 buildings inside Kilwinning’s locality, 1 of them in the top category, and 1 scheduled monument.
Explore the history →7 listed buildings in Kilwinning, 1 of them in the top category.
Kilwinning Abbey: Photo: Bubobubo2 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Nethermains Community Centre (Former Eglinton Ironworks Institute) excluding railings, Nethermains Road, Kilwinning: Photo: Leslie Barrie · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Geograph · Detached Church Tower: Photo: Colin Park · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Geograph · Erskine Church: Photo: Ian Rainey · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Geograph
Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Kilwinning.
Social housing holds 30% of households, near North Ayrshire’s towns (28%) and higher than Scotland’s towns (24%). The median, £132,900, rests on 701 sales in Kilwinning’s data zones from 2023 to 2025. It is the 3rd most expensive of 11 towns of 2,500+ in North Ayrshire.
Registers of Scotland data-zone sale prices · Scottish Government council tax · Scotland’s Census 2022 tenure · OGL · The Scottish median is our estimate from data-zone sales, brought to early-2025 prices.
Of its 8 schools, two are shown below, each with the reason. Some 2,065 pupils attend Kilwinning’s seven primaries and one secondary.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whitehirst Park PrimaryLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 257 | – |
| Kilwinning AcademyLargest secondary schoolSecondary | Secondary | 828 | D |
28% of residents have a disability, near North Ayrshire’s towns (29%) and higher than Scotland’s towns (24%). Self-reported good health: nearly three quarters of Kilwinning’s residents. At the census, 9% of people here described their health as bad or very bad.
| Census 2022 | Kilwinning | North Ayrshire | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 74% | 74% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 9% | 9.3% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 28% | 29% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL · No age adjustment applies to these census answers, which flatter younger towns; the Health Grade’s measures, life expectancy and early deaths among them, do allow for age.
Scotland’s Census was taken on 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census; 27% of workers were mainly at home, and shares here are of those who travelled.
The car carried nearly four in five commuters at the census. 4.3% of 16 to 64s claimed unemployment benefits in 2026, near North Ayrshire’s towns (4.3%) and higher than Scotland’s towns (2.8%). Work in town: 10% of resident commuters. Kilwinning counts 0.3 jobs per working resident.
Scotland’s Census 2022 (NRS), method of travel and distance to work · DWP claimant count · OGL
The heritage lists give each building’s grade but not its age, so we don’t say which is oldest.
Relative to its size, Kilwinning keeps 4 listed buildings per 10,000 residents. Its listed buildings include Mercat Cross, Category A. One scheduled monument lies in the town.
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
Ages in Kilwinning split evenly at 44.3: half are older, half younger. 20% of residents are 65 or over.
52% women, 48% men
About 91 men for every 100 women. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women.
| Kilwinning | North Ayrshire | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 16% | 15% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 12% | 11% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 23% | 22% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 29% | 29% | 27% |
| 65+ | 20% | 23% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 21% | 21% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 9.1% | 8.9% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 10% | 10% | 11% |
| Degree level | 22% | 23% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · North Ayrshire and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
Museums, castles, gardens and days out in and near Kilwinning. Best known first.
Abbey or prioryKilwinning Abbeyin town
CastleEglinton Castle700 m outside town, to the southeast
CastleKerelaw Castle1 km outside town, to the west
CastleArdrossan Castle4.7 km outside town, to the west
MuseumDalgarven Mill Museum of Country Life and Costume1 km outside town, to the north
MuseumScottish Maritime Museum3.5 km outside town, to the southPhotos: each place’s Wikidata image, from Wikimedia Commons under the licence below (our copy, resized).
48 notable people were born in Kilwinning.
James MacMillan: CTV Santa Cruz County, CC BY 3.0 · Colin Friels: Titan View Pty Ltd, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Colin Hay: Derek Russell, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Jim Galloway: Atael Weissman, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Katy Clark: Graham Clark at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Henry Eckford: Attributed to Naval Historical Center, Public domain
Town in North Ayrshire, Scotland
Kilwinning is a locality of 16,224 people, in the North Ayrshire council area. TownRatings uses National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities as Scotland’s towns: the physical town, as people mean the word, rather than a council area, so its figures cover the town itself. Localities split the big settlements into their towns, as ONS’s 2022 boundaries split conurbations in England and Wales.
Built from NRS geography and Census 2022
The nearest towns and villages, from National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities. See them on the map →
| Town | People | Miles | Overall | Cost | Safety | Health |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kilwinning | 16,224 | — | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Stevenston | 8,658 | 2.1 | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Saltcoats | 12,171 | 3.2 | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Irvine | 34,005 | 3.2 | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Dalry | 5,274 | 3.6 | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Ardrossan | 10,338 | 4 | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Dreghorn | 3,362 | 4.7 | — | A+ | — | D |
| West Kilbride | 4,876 | 6.4 | — | A− | — | C |
No Scottish town has a Safety Grade or an overall grade yet: Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime. People: Census 2022. Miles: centre to centre.
Homes cost less than in most UK towns: the median sale over three years was £132,900, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 101st most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
Band D council tax in Kilwinning is £1,686 for 2026–27, less than in 91% of UK towns (council, county, police and fire). Your own bill depends on your home’s band; check it on GOV.UK.
Sources: Scotland’s Census 2022 (National Records of Scotland), output areas summed to the NRS 2022 locality · Registers of Scotland house price statistics, medians and quartiles of residential sales by 2022 data zone, 2004 to 2025 (the 2023 to 2025 headline brought to early-2025 prices with each council’s medians) · Scottish Government, Council Tax by band 2026-27; Scottish Water charges 2026-27 · Scottish Government, Recorded Crime in Scotland (crimes, offences and clear-up rates by council area, 2016-17 to 2025-26); Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020v2 crime domain and SIMD crime indicators (2014/15, 2017/18), 2011 data zones with Census 2022 residents · ONS gross disposable household income by council (2022), scaled to household income on England and Wales’s councils, with Scotland’s Census 2022 households · DWP / ONS Claimant Count via Nomis (2022 data zones, January to August 2026), over residents aged 16 to 64 at Scotland’s Census 2022; council series since 2015 · Scottish Government school contact list (31 July 2026) and school summary statistics (pupil census, September 2025); School Information Dashboard leavers’ attainment by school, 2022-23 to 2024-25 (data.gov.scot) · TownRatings grades: our own summary of the data, ranked against UK towns only. All under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (ONS boundaries). Northern Ireland: Source: NISRA; contains Land & Property Services data and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland information, © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scotland: contains National Records of Scotland data, Registers of Scotland data and SEPA data, © Crown copyright / © SEPA 2025, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.