Description

J & J Armour of Irvine, dated 1907. Single-storey, asymmetrical, gabled and crowstepped Scots Baronial cemetery lodge and waiting room with distinctive stylised entrance porch rising above wallhead. Roughcast cement with smooth margins. Canted bay windows. Later flat-roofed extension to SW.

FURTHER DESCRIPTION: tall, corbelled parapet to canted entrance porch set in re-entrant angle to NE bearing carved shield with 1907 date above and round oculus window to left.

Single-storey gabled waiting room extension to SW with slatted timber bench around 2 walls. Flat, round-arched cast-iron drinking fountain fastened to SW exterior wall with semicircular basin and attached drinking vessel.

Predominantly replacement non-traditional windows and door. Grey slates, gablehead and ridge stacks. Beak skewputts

INTERIOR: seen, 2008. Original room plan largely extant. Some cornicing.

GATES AND GATEPIERS: to E of house. Imposing set of red-coloured sandstone ball-finialled square-plan carriage gatepiers with flanking pedestrian gatepiers and flanking convex quadrants with further gatepiers. Base courses, highly decorative capitals with shields. Decorative iron gates with curvilinear patterns; iron railings to low quadrant walls and tall boundary wall to street with red saddleback coping.

Statement of Interest

This compact and well-detailed stylised cemetery house sits on a prominent position on a main road out of Stewarton and provides an imposing entrance to the cemetery. The set of six gatepiers and associated decorative iron gates add to the imposing nature of the structure. Together, they form a significant addition to the streetscape of this part of the town. The house is tightly designed, with a wealth of detail including crow-stepped gables and a dominant entrance porch.

The iron drinking fountain with its attached drinking vessel is a rare example of its type and was made by Walter McFarlane and Co, Saracen Foundry and is in the 6th Edition of their catalogue as pattern no 15. The inscription to the arch is 'Keep the pavement dry'. Scotland had a thriving, productive ironfounding industry in the latter half of the 19th century and Walter McFarlane and Co, Glasgow was an architectural ironfoundery with an international reputation, whose designs found their way to countries across the globe.

The waiting room retains timber slatted bench.

The cemetery was opened in 1907 on the outskirts of the town to provide much needed burial space for the expanding town Stewarton. As the population grew, the previous burial site at St Columba's Churchyard proved to be inadequate. The cemetery is now encroached upon by modern housing.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q77781399

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

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  Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Department for Communities Listed Historic Buildings of Northern Ireland: Information Guide for the 2nd Survey of Historic Buildings
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  Hampshire: Winchester and the North (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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