page_title: Blacksyke Tower
section_title: Blacksyke and the miners Rows
hierarchical_section_title: Blacksyke Tower / Blacksyke and the miners Rows
caption_attribution_description: English: Blacksyke Lime Kilns, Caprington, East Ayrshire - end walling - view from the north-east. Out of use before 1895.
context_page_description: The Blacksyke Tower, Blacksyke Engine House, Caprington Colliery Engine House or even Lusk's Folly is a Scheduled Monument associated with a double lime kiln complex in the Parish of Riccarton and is a building of national importance. The Blacksyke site is a significant survival of early coal and lime industries. The engine house's mock Gothic tower house style is very unusual and a rare survival of its type. This late 18th century engine house would be one of the oldest surviving examples of its kind in the United Kingdom. The track bed of the wagonway and several sidings that linked the complex with the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway can still be clearly made out.
context_section_description: The ruins of a fairly substantial and basically 'U' shaped building, probably once a farm, survives at Blacksyke, located close by and slightly to the south-east of the tower and once connected by a lane to the nearby Ayr Road. An attached building is recorded on the 1896 OS maps as a school for the children of the colliers, estate workers, etc. and in 1908 it shown as a Sunday School as by this time the local pits had closed. The OS Name Book of 1855-57 records that the old farm was occupied by labourers employed by the then proprietor Thomas Smith Cunningham Esq. of Caprington Castle.
  The Burnbank miners or colliers row known as the 'Peace and Plenty' stood on the Ayr Road opposite Loreny. Blacksyke is shown on the 1832 map by Thomson. The small miners row at Laputa once lay further down on the west side of the road to Ayr. This unusual name may relate to the flying island of Laputa in the 1726 book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
caption: The north-western end wall of the lime kilns
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