page_title: Kilmaurs Place
section_title: Kilmaurs Place described
hierarchical_section_title: Kilmaurs Place / Chronology / Kilmaurs Place described
caption_attribution_description: The Monk's or Mack's Well in Kilmaurs, Ayrshire. It lies below Kilmaurs Place in the park. 2006.
context_page_description: Kilmaurs Place, The Place or Kilmaurs House, is an old mansion house and the ruins of Kilmaurs Tower grid reference NS41234112 are partly incorporated, Kilmaurs, East Ayrshire, Scotland. The house stands on a prominence above the Carmel Water and has a commanding view of the surrounding area. Once the seat of the Cunningham Earls of Glencairn it ceased to be the main residence after 1484 when Finlaystone became the family seat.
context_section_description: The word 'Place' in Scots refers to a landed proprietor's mansion house, however in academic and practical terms it is a larger building which surrounds a central courtyard. This suggests that Kilmaurs Place was to have been a larger structure with a central courtyard and may indeed have had one as suggested by surviving walls, architectural features and drought induced lawn discolourations. The term 'Palace' only acquired its present connotations at a later date.
  The structure consists of a main block lying roughly east–west, with a stair-wing projecting in the centre of the West wall with crow step gabling. It has two stories and an attic, with 'modern buildings' forming the former farm outbuildings although the west facing gable end may be older.
  In 1956 Kilmaurs Place is described as having been restored, and in use as a farmhouse.  Kilmaurs Place was listed on 14 April 1971 as a Category B historic building.
  Davis records that the house has a 'T' plan and is dated circa 1620. The 'ruins' appear to be the incomplete lower floor of a 16th-century range. The Place itself is not vaulted, although the 'ruins' have a slate roofed vaulted chamber still in use by the present occupants and known as the Chancellor's Study. This chamber was in use as a milk house in the early 19th century. A fine 16th-century fireplace and carved jambs are located in the Place itself.
  The original entrance was at the staircase projection, the door still being visible in the fabric of the building and an armorial panel above is still visible above. The windows have been much altered as have the floor levels within the building. Campbell comments on the possibility of Kilmaurs Place being built upon an older castle which is no longer evident. Tranter comments on the Garret in the steeply pitched roof and the chamfered surrounds on some of the windows. The house belongs to the very end of the defensive period. Close sees The Place as essentially being a new build on a new site and comments that the building has been much altered, most obviously by the 'slapping out' of additional windows. In the 1940s the house was described thus: 'The still remaining apartments are more like dungeons than living-rooms'. A watch room was located at the top of the staircase projection.
  In 1912 the remains of an avenue opening on the Townend and leading circuitously to the old frontage could still be discerned in the field adjoining the main road; Cuthbertson records a few of these beech trees being present in 1945. The entrance off the Mill Vennel by a bridge over the Carmel Water, is said to have been formed when the frontage was changed.
  The 1788–91 Eglinton estate plans of holdings in Kilmaurs show an entrance running straight up to The Place from near the bridge over the Carmel Water on the Kilmaurs Road; the formal pleasure gardens are illustrated as a square of three by three equal size squares with paths dividing them up. These gardens lay on the church side of the house, slightly offset towards Tour House. In 1945 the vaulted ruins were being used as stores for agricultural tools and such-like.
  The bridge over the Carmel at Fenwick Road was built to provide an access when the front entrance was moved to the north facing side.
caption: A view of the Monk's or Mack's Well below Kilmaurs Place.
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