Bloak was a hamlet or
clachan A clachan ( ga, clochán or ; gd, clachan ; gv, claghan ) is a small settlement or hamlet on the island of Ireland, the Isle of Man and Scotland. Though many were originally kirktowns,MacBain, A. (1911) ''An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaeli ...
in
East Ayrshire
East Ayrshire ( sco, Aest Ayrshire; gd, Siorrachd Àir an Ear) is one of thirty-two council areas of Scotland. It shares borders with Dumfries and Galloway, East Renfrewshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire. The headquart ...
, Parish of
Stewarton
Stewarton ( sco, Stewartoun,
gd, Baile nan Stiùbhar ...
, Scotland. The habitation was situated between
Auchentiber
The hamlet of Auchentiber (Scottish Gaelic, ''Achadh an Tiobair'') is in North Ayrshire, Parish of Kilwinning, Scotland. Auchentiber is northeast of Kilwinning on the Lochlibo Road, from the hamlet of Burnhouse and from the village of Barrmil ...
and
Stewarton
Stewarton ( sco, Stewartoun,
gd, Baile nan Stiùbhar ...
on the B778. It was originally built as a row of housing for crofters and farm workers. The small school remained open for some years after the hamlet ceased to exist. Robinson
[Robinson, Mairi (2000). ''The Concise Scots Dictionary''. Aberdeen. ] gives the Scots word "blout" as meaning "an eruption of fluid", or a place that is soft or wet.
History
The 1779 estate map of the Lainshaw Estate shows the hamlet of Bloak with the fields of South Crofts and North Crofts lying below Bowhouse Farm. Eight buildings are shown on either side of the road and located as far as the junction of the road to Kennox.
[Crawford] Bloak was once part of the "Lands of Kirkwood" that formed a small estate in the Parish of
Stewarton
Stewarton ( sco, Stewartoun,
gd, Baile nan Stiùbhar ...
,
East Ayrshire
East Ayrshire ( sco, Aest Ayrshire; gd, Siorrachd Àir an Ear) is one of thirty-two council areas of Scotland. It shares borders with Dumfries and Galloway, East Renfrewshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire. The headquart ...
lying between Stewarton and
Dunlop, which in 1678 became part of the lands of Lainshaw, known as the Lainshaw, Kirkwood and Bridgehouse Estate. Kirkwood was anciently known as Bloak Cunninghame.
Bloak seems to have been a typical "Farm Town", the origins of which lie in the common medieval sub-division of land called a "ploughgate" (), this being the extent of land which one plough team of oxen could till in a year. This area was again subdivided into four plots known as 'husbandlands', each of . A husbandland could sustain and provide two oxen, and eight oxen were need for a plough-team. This arrangement led to small farm towns like Bloak being established with accommodation for at least four men and their families, living in six to eight houses. A similar hamlet or clachan still survives at
Hessilhead
Hessilhead is in Beith, North Ayrshire, Scotland. Hessilhead used to be called Hazlehead or Hasslehead. The lands were part of the Lordship of Giffen, and the Barony of Hessilhead, within the Baillerie of Cunninghame and the Parish of Beith. T ...
, which also had a small school until around 1900.
Bloak School
![Hessilhead Farm Town Old School](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Hessilhead_Farm_Town_Old_School.JPG)
The school had been built by the Cunninghams of Lainshaw and the schoolmaster's only salary was the fees paid by the parents. Recorded in 1894 as "the old and now deserted schoolhouse, for long the home of Jenny Gillies." Jenny lived there according to the 1851 census and was a mason's widow aged 74, dying in 1859 at the age of 81. By 1895 the only remaining building in the hamlet is that of the school. The other buildings are not recorded as ruins and appear to have been demolished by that time.
The school building is shown until 1958.
Bloak Castle
West Bloakhillhead was a dairy farm. Circa 1825 the ruins of Bloak Castle that stood to the south of the farm were completely removed by the farm's tenant, Mr. Nairn.
Cartographic evidence
Blaeu's edition of
Timothy Pont
Rev Timothy Pont (c. 1560–c.1627) was a Scottish minister, cartographer and topographer. He was the first to produce a detailed map of Scotland. Pont's maps are among the earliest surviving to show a European country in minute detail, from an a ...
's map of circa 1604 shows a Blook and Blook Mill. In 1747 the settlement of Blook is indicated on Roy's map. On Armstrong's map of 1775 shows a Bloate near
Kirkwood. Johnson's map of 1828 marks Bloak as a group of four buildings at Bowhouse Farm road end. Thomson's map of 1832 shows Bloak. A hamlet of around eight dwellings and a school are shown in 1858 with further dwellings at Bloakholmes. A path is shown running from the hamlet, shown as Bloak and Bloakcrofts, to the Linn Spout and Kirkwood Farm. By 1895 the only remaining building is that of the school. Oddly the other buildings are not recorded as ruins and appear to have been demolished.
[1895 OS Map](_blank)
/ref> The school building is shown until 1958, but no longer marked as such, by which time a building had been constructed at the Bowhouse road end, surviving to this day (2012).
Views at Bloak
File:Bloak - old hedge and trees.JPG, Section of old hedge boundary.
File:Bloak - site of school.JPG, Site of the old school.
File:Bloak limekiln and the B778.JPG, Site of an old lime kiln.
File:Lugton Water at Bloak Bridge.JPG, The Lugton Water at Bloak Bridge.
Bloak Well
Paterson[Paterson.] (1866) states that there is a mineral spring near Stewarton, called the ''Bloak Well''. gives the Scot's word 'blout' as meaning the 'eruption of fluid' or a place that is soft or wet. Both meanings would fit in this context. Blout and Bloak are very similar words, with Bloak Moss close by as well as the South and East Bloakhillhead farms.
A well recorded as Bloak Well was first discovered in 1800,[Smith] around 1826 (Paterson 1866) or 1810 or 1800, by the fact that pigeons from Lainshaw House and the neighbouring parishes were found to flock here to drink. Mr. Cunningham of Lainshaw built a handsome house over the well in 1833 and appointed a keeper to take care of it as the mineral water was of some value owing to healing properties attributed to it. The well was located in the middle of the kitchen.[Houston, Page 112.] In 1846 the hamlet of Bloak is recorded as having a mineral well. The cottage, along with Lugton Farm and the associated land was purchased, from the Lainshaw Estate, and added to Wardlaw Farm around 1920 by John Miller who farmed Wardlaw at the time. He refurbished and extended in the cottage in the 1930s as a retirement home but failed to persuade his wife to move there. The cottage was let rent free for a number of years as John hoped, in vain, that it would eventually become the retirement home. Saltwells as it was then known returned to family use in 1947 when John's newly married youngest son and his wife moved in. Over the next 40 years the name of the cottage, changed to Saltwell then back to Saltwells following conflicting advice from researchers of local history.
The Bloak Mills
Based on Timothy Pont
Rev Timothy Pont (c. 1560–c.1627) was a Scottish minister, cartographer and topographer. He was the first to produce a detailed map of Scotland. Pont's maps are among the earliest surviving to show a European country in minute detail, from an a ...
's earlier map the 1654 Blaeu map shows a Mill of Bloak on the Lugton Water
The Lugton Water, the largest tributary of the River Garnock, runs from Loch Libo (395 feet above sea-level) in Uplawmoor, through Lugton and the parishes of Neilston, Beith, Dunlop, Stewarton and Kilwinning. The Lugton joins the Garnock belo ...
at the location of the later Waulkmill.[Ayrshire, Sheet XII, Surveyed: 1856, Published:1858](_blank)
/ref>
The 1856 OS map shows Bloak Mill (NS378473) as a small corn mill powered by a long lade running down from a dam on the Glazert Water and by this date the building between the mill building and the miller's cottage is no longer shown, a probable garden area being indicated. South Brae cottages lie opposite on the north-west side of the Glazert and the mill was approached via the Bloak Mill Ford and footbridge with a slightly raised causeway running up to the mill. A spill way close to a sluice was used to divert water away from the waterwheel when necessary.[Stewarton parish, Ayrshire (1950s)](_blank)
/ref> The old cart shed at the miller's house had lost its roof circa 1905. Originally part of the Kirkwood Estate Bloak Mill later became part of the Lainshaw Estate.[Plan of the Lainshaw Estate]
The Kilmarnock Standard reported a fatal accident at Bloak mill in January 1860 when "''Mr Robert Steel, corn miller, lost his life. It seems that deceased had been oiling the machinery of the mill, and had got caught by some portion of it; the pressure of his body, however, caused the machinery to go out of gearing, by which he was enabled to extricate himself, after which he succeeded in reaching the mill door, where his cries soon attracted the inmates of the house; but when they reached him, he was only able to say ‘I’m gone,’ and in a few minutes thereafter he expired.''"
By 1925 the mill is recorded as 'disused' on the OS map and although originally a corn mill, it is reported in 1874 that the Stewarton Manure Company works at Bloak Mill were for sale and the mill appears to have been milling bones for use as fertilizer.
The ruins have been robbed of stone over the years however substantial remains of the cart shed, miller's cottage and the mill building remain. The spill way can still be seen and the lade followed down from the site of the dam on the Glazert Water. The access hole for the axle of the waterwheel and the waterwheel pit can be identified (Datum 2021).
Micro-history
A small elongated field known as Baiken Butts is shown at Bowhouse Farm,[ suggesting a connection with archery as butts refers to ground used for practising archery. The name of the farm may also be related to this. A field going by the curious name of 'Kilwinning Butts' was located on the road leading to Dunlop Church in the 19th century.
John Gillies Shields was born 12 November 1834 in Bloak, Stewarton, Ayrshire, and died 22 September 1908 in the nearby Galloway Ford farm. In 1845 he married Jane Guthrie, the daughter of Charles Guthrie. He married Elizabeth Howie in 1888.
Margaret Young was the wife of John Gavan, a farmer who lived at Bloak. She died and was buried at Stewarton on 15 September 1827.
William Nairn was the son of Robert Nairn and Agnes Millar. William was born 1785 in Bloak and married Janet Kerr on 8 November 1811 and secondly Elizabeth Jamieson.
Knitted bonnets were made at Bloak.Bainhouse]
Retrieved : 20 July 2012
See also
* Kirkwood Estate, East Ayrshire
The Lands of Kirkwood (NS3947) formed a small estate in the Parish of Stewarton, East Ayrshire lying between Stewarton and Dunlop, which in 1678 became part of the lands of Lainshaw, known as the Lainshaw, Kirkwood and Bridgehouse Estate. Kirkwo ...
* Chapeltoun
Chapeltoun is an estate on the banks of the Annick Water in East Ayrshire, a rural area of Scotland famous for its milk and cheese production and the Ayrshire or Dunlop breed of cattle.
Templeton and the Knights Templar
The feudal allocatio ...
References
;Notes
;Sources
# Crawford, William (1779). ''Plan of the Estate of Lainshaw and Kirkwood.''
# Dickinson, William Croft, Donaldson, G., and Milne, I. (1958). ''A Source Book of Scottish History''. V.1. London : T. Nelson & Sons.
# Houston, John (1915). ''Auchentiber Moss'', 14 August 1915. Annals of the Kilmarnock Glenfield Ramblers Society. 1913 - 1919.
# Johnson, William (1828). Map of Ayrshire from Estate Plans.
# Lainshaw, Register of Sasines.
# Paterson, James (1863–66). ''History of the Counties of Ayr and Wigton''. V. - III - Cunninghame. J. Stillie. Edinburgh.
# Robinson, Mairi (2000). ''The Concise Scots Dictionary''. Aberdeen. .
# Smith, John (1895). ''Prehistoric Man in Ayrshire''. Pub. Elliot Stock.
# Topographical Dictionary of Scotland (1846).
External links
A video of the old Bloak Corn Mill
A possible Moot Hill near Bloak, the Mound Wood.
The Bloak Mineral Well.
{{authority control
Buildings and structures in North Ayrshire
History of East Ayrshire
Demolished buildings and structures in Scotland
Villages in East Ayrshire