Lainshaw Castle was a 15th century

castle A castle is a type of fortification, fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by Military order (monastic society), military orders. Scholars usually consider a ''castle'' to be the private ...

about south-west of

Stewarton Stewarton (,
) is a town in East Ayrshire, Scotland. ...

East Ayrshire East Ayrshire (; ) is one of 32 unitary council areas of Scotland. It shares borders with Dumfries and Galloway, East Renfrewshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire. The headquarters of the council are located on London Roa ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

, to the north of

Annick Water The Annick Water (previously also spelled as Annack, Annoch (1791) or Annock) is the largest tributary of the River Irvine. The river runs from Long Loch, just inside East Renfrewshire, in a generally south-western direction through North Ayrs ...

.Coventry, Martin (2001). ''The Castles of Scotland''. Musselburgh: Goblinshead. p. 2233 The castle was incorporated into Lainshaw House over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries.

History

The castle belonged to the

Stewarts Stewart's or Stewarts can refer to: *Stewart's Fountain Classics, brand of soft drink **Stewart's Restaurants, chain of restaurants where the soft drink was originally sold *Stewart's wilt, bacterial disease affecting maize *Stewart's (department s ...

and served as the baronial castle of Stewarton, but in 1570 it passed to the Montgomeries. William Cunninghame, one of the

tobacco lords The Tobacco Lords were a group of Scottish merchants active during the Georgian era who made substantial sums of money via their participation in the triangular trade, primarily through dealing in slave-produced tobacco that was grown in the T ...

, bought it in 1779 from Sir Walter Montgomerie-Cunninghame, 10th Laird of Lainshaw, who had been impoverished by the

American War of Independence The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which Am ...

. The rear three-

storey A storey (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) or story (American English), is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people (for living, work, storage, recreation, etc.). Plurals for the wor ...

wing may have been built by Cunninghame. Inheriting the estate upon his father's death in 1799, his third son,

William William is a masculine given name of Germanic languages, Germanic origin. It became popular in England after the Norman Conquest, Norman conquest in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle ...

, began an extensive program of modernising the structure in the

classical style Classical architecture typically refers to architecture consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or more specifically, from ''De architectura'' (c. 10 AD) by the Roman architect Vitruvius. Va ...

; in 1824 a Tudor-Gothic extension was added.

Structure

Lainshaw Castle was described by

Timothy Pont Reverend Timothy Pont () was a Scottish minister, cartographer and topographer. He was the first to produce a detailed map of Scotland. Pont's maps are among the earliest surviving to show a European country in minute detail, from an actual surve ...

in 1608 as 'a stronge old Dunijon'. In the present structure most of the ground-floor walls and the face of the south-east wall to a height of over belong to the original castle. Two small ground-floor windows and a larger third-floor window with roll moulding are prominent among features remaining. The surviving walls have been pierced by various doorway, providing access to later structural additions, with some subsequently being blocked. Three different rooflines are may be seen on the south eastern wall face. While there is little sound dating evidence for this structure, it is thought to date from between the late 15th century to the early 16th century.

References

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