At Kingscross Point, at the opposite end of the village, there is a dun or fortified farmstead dating back almost two thousand years.

Within the mound they found a pile of articles which consisted of human bones which had been affected by heat, fragments of whalebone which were decorated with a design of concentric circles, charcoal, lumps of iron, among which were Viking boat rivets, bronze pieces, two pieces of vitrified stone and a bronze coin, identified as a styca of Wigmund, the Archbishop of York between 831 and 854 C.E.

[3] When a ferry was set up between the town of Saltcoats in Ayrshire and Arran in 1790 this led to the merging of the five settlements into the village of Whiting Bay.

A new pier was finished in 1901 and this enabled steamers to disembark passengers directly into Whiting Bay rather than ferrying them to shore in "flit boats", and this reinforced the village's increase in size.

Many of the grander villas have been converted into tourist amenities such as hotels, guesthouses and restaurants and the village has a large proportion of such accommodation on the island.