page_title: Chapeltoun
section_title: The Monks' well
hierarchical_section_title: Chapeltoun / Gardens and landscape / The Monks' well
caption_attribution_description: English: A finial from the old Chapelton House, Stewarton, Ayrshire.
context_page_description: Chapeltoun is an estate on the banks of the Annick Water in East Ayrshire, Scotland. This is a rural area famous for its milk and cheese production and the Ayrshire or Dunlop breed of cattle.
context_section_description: In the woodland policies of Chapeltoun House is the Monks' Well (OS 1974), fountain or spring as indicated on the OS maps going back as far as 1858. Its present appearance is probably as a Victorian or Edwardian 'whimsy' or 'folly' with a large, thick sandstone 'tombstone appearance' with a slightly damaged cross carved in relief upon it and a spout through which the spring water once passed into a cast iron 'bowl'. The Kilmarnock Glenfield Rambler's visited Chapeltoun in 1939 and recorded that a gargoyle had once been present as a spout and that the 'cross' was actually a 'wheat sheaf' that had stood on top of the stone.
  It seems unlikely from the workmanship that the well's stone and 'cross' have anything to do with the old chapel, but one possibility is that it came from over the entrance door to Laigh Chapelton as the custom was for a Templar property to have the 'cross' symbol of the order displayed in such a fashion. On the other hand it could have been made for the Chapelton (old) House to associate the building with the Christian history of the site. The stone is unusually thick and has been clearly reworked to pass a spout through it.
  The OS record that in the 1970s a Mr. H.Gollan of Chapeltown stated that the 'Monk's Well', was believed to have been associated with the chapel. In July 1956 the OS state that the 'Monk's Well' is a spring emerging through a stone pipe, situated in a stone-faced cutting in the hill slope. Above the spring is a stone slab with a cross in relief.
caption: A possible finial from the entrance porch at old Chapelton House or a 'wheat sheaf' from the Monks' Well.[35]
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