The Country Houses, Castles and Mansions of North Ayrshire, by author Alex F. Young gives a fascinating glimpse into the history of some of the most prominent properties in the area, some of them now long lost.
And this week, we’re going to take a peek inside three of those properties – Ardeer House, Bourtreehill House and Hunterston House, with the kind permission of the author.
Ardeer House
Ardeer House (Image: Alex F Young)
This Thomas Annan photograph of the west-facing front of Ardeer House, was commissioned by T H Millar for his 1885 book The Castles and Mansions of Ayrshire.
The early history of the estate is uncertain but, with Dowcotehall, may have been bought from Robert Cunninghame of Auchenharvie in 1708 by the Rev. Patrick Warner (1640-1724), whose descendants built this house around 1800.
When Patrick Warner, fifth in succession to the estate, died in September 1824, the house was advertised to let.
The notice in the Caledonian Mercury in November 1824 reveals: “The House (from which there is a road through Ardeer lands to the sea) consists of dining room, drawing room, parlour, with servants’ hall and kitchen on the ground floor; six bed-rooms and some dressing closets on the second floor; servants’ bedrooms etc in the attic floor.
“The offices consist of coach-house, stables, laundry etc.”
The last of the Warner family to own the estate was Patrick, who died in Torquay in March 1915. The little time he spent on the estate did not include Friday, April 8, 1910, when the water to the fountain on Fullarton Place, Stevenston, which he gifted to the town, was turned on.
In 1873 the Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), founded the British Dynamite Company with a factory adjacent to the beach at Ardeer. The house served as the factory’s recreation club from the 1920s until its demolition in August 1966.
Hunterston House
(Image: Alex F Young)
When 85 year old Robert Hunter of Hunterston Castle died in March 1796, his daughter Eleanora (1764-1851) became the 24th Laird of Hunterston. Three months later she married a cousin, Robert Caldwell, who changed his name to Robert Hunter in 1810.
Financed by his earlier American trading, the couple improved the estate’s grounds and in 1799 started the building of the 72 room Hunterston House.
In 1913-1914 and again in 1926, General Sir Aylmer Gould Hunter-Weston commissioned the Edinburgh architect Sir Robert Lorimer to restore and make extensive additions to the house, including a squash racquets court, stables and electric lighting.
This photograph dates from 1932. On 18th March 1940, 76 year old Sir Aylmer fell to his death from the top of the 50 feet high turret (the structure to the left of the house). It was thought that, having suffered an attack of dizziness, he leant on the railing and toppled over.
Bourtreehill House
Bourtreehill House (Image: Alex F Young)
The photograph shows the house in the summer of 1912. It is said to have been built in 1682 for Sir Robert Montgomerie of Skelmorlie (d.1685) and sold to the Glasgow merchant Peter Montgomery in 1740. Advertisements in the Caledonian Mercury describe it as a large mansion consisting of 16 rooms, with stables, barns, office-houses, dovecotes and gardens, consisting of three acres of ground.
In 1748, Montgomery sold it to Robert Hamilton (1698-1773) of Rozelle, Ayr whose family held it until 1847, when it was sold to Alexander Guthrie of The Mount, Kilmarnock. On Guthrie’s death in January 1852, Bourtreehill, passed to his daughter Christina (d 1887), and her husband Geoffrey Dominick Augustus Frederick Browne, later 2nd Baron Oranmore and Browne (1819-1900).
They rented the house, which in the early hours of Tuesday, February 18, 1879, when occupied by the 36-year-old iron founder Charles Henry Alston, was destroyed by a major fire.
The following year, the house was rebuilt and the Alston family returned. From 1916 it was owned by the coalmaster Robert Kenneth and his family until its demolition in February 1967. Today, its site is an area of grass, enclosed by mature trees
The Country Houses, Castles and Mansions of North Ayrshire is available now for £11.95 from East Ayrshire firm Stenlake Publishing Ltd is is available in many local stores, newsagents and bookshops
To find out more visit www.stenlake.co.uk.
