page_title: Gateside, North Ayrshire
section_title: Limestone and marble
hierarchical_section_title: Gateside, North Ayrshire / Limestone and marble
caption_attribution_description: English: The site of Boghall Loch drained in the 17th century. Gateside, North Ayrshire, Scotland.
context_page_description: Gateside is a small village in North Ayrshire, Scotland about half a mile east of Beith on the B777.
context_section_description: The underlying geology of this part of Ayrshire is such that the presence of limestone quarries is to be expected. Lime kilns to produce quicklime for improving the soil, were a common feature of the countryside before the process became fully industrialised. Nettlehirst near Barrmill was one of the last large traditionally operated lime kilns to operate, surviving until the 1970s. However, Broadstone has the substantial remains of one of the largest of the early stone built kilns. This must have created considerable pollution in the area, offset only by the employment it created. It sits right next to the limestone quarry which supplied it. The road running past is still known as 'Reek Street'.
  The narrow gauge and single track 'Hillhead Railway', once ran from the Hillhead Limestone Quarries at Broadstone, down to the railway near Brackenhills railway station on the old line from Giffen to the Glengarnock Steel Works, later the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway branchline to Kilbirnie South. The branchline to Beith via Barrmill did not exist at the time of the lines construction, not opening until 1873. A railway bridge was built to carry the Hillhead Railway over the new line and it must therefore have been fully active at that time.
  The Hillhead Railway is shown on the Ordnance Survey (OS) map of 1856, but not on the 1897 edition. The railway ran for several miles across what is now DM Beith land and ended up at first at an unloading point on a siding, where the limestone was emptied directly into standard gauge freight waggons. The map marks a few wooden railway bridges over burns and given the gentle gradients, it may be that the line was at first worked by horses rather than steam locomotives. Later maps show significant changes and record a 'Barkip Junction' and show the line now curving to meet was by then the Kilbirnie branchline.
  Hillhead Quarry was part of the Broadstone Limestone Works and the original Broadstone Farm was entirely lost to the limestone workings. Hillhead Farm was renamed Broadstone; a farm that still exists. Little remains of the railway apart from a shallow cutting running down from near West Broadstone, the overbridge near the old South Windyhouse Farm on the Barrmill Road and the route running to the site of old Barkip Junction.
  The old Ordnance Survey maps show that a marble quarry was located nearby, being an especially hard form of limestone that could take a 'polish' and was used extensively for window and door surrounds.
caption: The drained Boghall Loch above Gateside, source of the Powgree Burn
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