page_title: Barony of Bonshaw
section_title: Alexander Reid and the Hutt Knowe
hierarchical_section_title: Barony of Bonshaw / The History of Bonshaw / Alexander Reid and the Hutt Knowe
caption_attribution_description: English: A view of the possible Moot hill called Hutt Knowe at Bonshaw Farm near the Glazert Water, North Ayrshire, Scotland.
context_page_description: The Barony of Bonshaw, previously known as Bollingshaw, was in the old feudal Baillerie of Cunninghame, near Stewarton in what is now North Ayrshire, Scotland.
context_section_description: Near to the existing farm is the Hut Knoll or more commonly Hutt Knowe (Huit is a 'stack' and Knowe is a 'knol' or low hill), also known as Bonshaw or Bollingshaw Mound, 17 m in diameter and 2.7 m high, variously described as a mounded corn-kiln or lime kiln, but unlike any other known example in the region.
  Corn-drying kilns were often built into sloping ground or existing mounds.  It has large integral basal stones and was described in 1890 as having culverts or 'penns' in its sides, although these are not visible today. A dwelling by the name of 'Hutt' existed at this location in the 1740s.
  In 1828, Alexander Ferguson Reid inherited the estate, he was known as the "Ayrshire Genius" and was an inventor and collector of antiquities, as well as geological and natural history specimens. Reid dug into this Druidical Mound or Moot Hill several times and found nothing to help explain its age or purpose. Most maps do not show the ice house which lies to the east of the driveway and some confusion in the descriptions may have arisen from misidentification of the ice house, limekiln and the Hutt Knowe. In the grounds of the present farm are curved ditches which are shown to have held water, either as ornamental ponds or for some practical purpose now unknown. The site had an apple orchard within the last 50 years or so, for John Hastings remembers raiding it.
  Given that Bonshaw was the 'seat' of the Bollingshaw Barony it is likely that in addition to any other uses the two mounds of Hutt Knowe and Knockenlaw were respectively the Moot hill and justice or Gallows hill of the barony, where the laird would exercise his right of 'pit and gallows' until 1747 when the right was abolished as one of many measures linked to the 1745 Jacobite rising.
  Isabella Montgomerie of Dalmore House married Robert Reid of Bonshaw (b 1827, d 1887).
caption: Hutt Knowe
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