page_title: Girgenti House
section_title: Girgenti House
hierarchical_section_title: Girgenti House / History / Girgenti House
caption_attribution_description: English: Girgenti farm, tower and the lodges from Torranyard. East Ayrshire. Scotland.
context_page_description: Girgenti House was a small, rather eccentric mansion built on part of the old Barony of Bonshaw in the parish of Stewarton, East Ayrshire, Scotland.
context_section_description: Captain John Cheape, the builder of Girgenti House, belonged to the Fife family represented by George C. Cheape, Esq., of Strathtyrum, and was the seventh son of James Cheape, Esq., of Sauchie, in Clackmannanshire. He was in the Scots Fusilier Guards and had served in the Napoleonic Wars. 
  Bonnyton (not Muirhead as sometimes stated) was renamed Girgenti by the well-travelled Captain Cheape, perhaps in honour of a visit to the ancient Greek ruins of Agrigentum (the name of the town has become Girgenti in modern Sicilian). In 1827 he paid Thomas Reid £1350 for the property, totalling 50 Scotch acres, and at a cost of £6000 he demolished the old Bonnyton farm steading and built a rather eccentric mansion house and offices and planted extensive plantations and shrubberies on what had been a wild moss-land. It is not known what brought him to the area or why he chose such a comparatively desolate site. Moorhead is the original name given in the Lainshaw Register of Sasines for Girgenti. A clue to his acquisition of these moss lands lies in the fact that The Royal Horticultural and Agricultural Society of Scotland awarded Cheape with an Honorary Silver Medal in 1833 for his publication entitled "Cultivation of Land by Manual Labour."
  Cheape had been an ensign in the 44th Regiment of Foot, then joined the 98th Regiment and next moving as a captain to the Royal Glasgow Regiment of Foot, 1800 saw him in the 3rd Regiment of Foot Guards and in 1803 he retired.
  Cheape lived at Girgenti for the last twenty years of his life (1829–1850) after leaving the army. The house had a pillared portico and was basically single-storeyed in appearance, with bays, a capped tower and dormer windows on two different levels; it had a large summer house. A conservatory was present and a sunken eight roomed storey for servants.
  The OS maps show associated buildings—presumably the mains or home farm and a coach house, stables, and so forth. The National Archives of Scotland hold a map of the estate made in 1845, surveyed by John Fairlie.
  Cheape died unmarried at Girgenti on 10 February 1850, aged 76, leaving James McAlister of Kennox to administer the lands of Girgenti. The estate was sold to benefit a number of infirmaries across Scotland (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Inverness and Dundee). He was buried in the Laigh Kirk, Stewarton. Cheape's only sister, Marianne, who was first married to Sir Alexander Campbell of Ardkinglass in 1792, became the third wife of Thomas, 11th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne in 1817; their residence was Glamis Castle (where the Queen Mother would spend a great deal of her childhood and where Princess Margaret was born). She was to have inherited Girgenti; however, she predeceased her brother.
caption: View of the farm, tower and lodges from near Torranyard
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