Broomlands is district of

Irvine Irvine may refer to: Places On Earth Antarctica *Irvine Glacier *Mount Irvine (Antarctica) Australia *Irvine Island *Mount Irvine, New South Wales Canada *Irvine, Alberta * Irvine Inlet, Nunavut United Kingdom *Irvine, North Ayrshire, Scotla ...

North Ayrshire North Ayrshire ( gd, Siorrachd Àir a Tuath, ) is one of 32 council areas in Scotland. The council area borders Inverclyde to the north, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire to the northeast, and East Ayrshire and South Ayrshire to the east and so ...

, Scotland. Situated on a series of bends in the River Annick, Broomlands and its original features are now almost lost within the south-

Bourtreehill Bourtreehill is a large housing estate built by the Irvine Development Corporation (IDC) in the late 1970s which forms part of the Irvine New Town in North Ayrshire, Scotland. The estate has two main parts, known as Bourtreehill North and Bour ...

and Broomlands housing scheme.

History

The remaining features take the form of road and path networks which are still in use after several hundred years. More recent networks and routes were created in the 17th and 18th century when the railways first arrived in Broomlands. Long before the age of steam, people were not unused to seeing railway networks carrying minerals and wood and being pushed by strong but buckled men. In Broomlands, the remains of a late 17th-century railway path can still be discerned. The prehistoric history of Broomlands is more plentiful. At the end of the last ice-age, Broomlands was on the coast. When the sea receded from the area, it left behind a huge coal field which would be exploited by the people of Broomlands and

almost ten thousand years later. Those later exploiters opened various coal-pits, open-cast mines and collieries in the district. Railways were networked to carry the coal away from the fields. A standard gauge railway ran through Broomlands until the late 1960s, originally built by the Glasgow and South Western Railway Company, linking the towns of Irvine and

Kilmarnock Kilmarnock (, sco, Kilmaurnock; gd, Cill Mheàrnaig (IPA: ʰʲɪʎˈveaːɾnəkʲ, "Marnock's church") is a large town and former burgh in East Ayrshire, Scotland and is the administrative centre of East Ayrshire, East Ayrshire Council. ...

. Although the nearby station was titled as Dreghorn station, it was closer to Broomlands. The track bed has been paved over and now is in use as a footpath. Mineral railways from various local coal mines branched on to this line. Broomlands was eventually sold to the owner of

Bourtreehill house Bourtreehill House (now destroyed) and the enclosed land on which it was built form the original estate of Bourtreehill. The wooded hill-top, a distinctive feature of the estate, is now a landmark that sits at the centre of modern North Bourtreehi ...

. From August 2014 residents of Broomlands and Bourtreehill will be educated in the newly built Elderbank Primary School.

References

Villages in North Ayrshire Irvine, North Ayrshire {{NorthAyrshire-geo-stub