Lugar, East Ayrshire
Encyclopedia
East Ayrshire
East Ayrshire is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders on to North Ayrshire, East Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire, South Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway...
, southwest Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. Lugar is in Auchinleck
Auchinleck
Auchinleck ; is a village five miles south-east of Mauchline, and a couple of miles north-west of Cumnock in East Ayrshire, Scotland.Near the village is Auchinleck House, past home of the lawyer, diarist and biographer James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck.Auchinleck has much been associated...
Parish, Kyle
Kyle, Ayrshire
Kyle is a former comital district of Scotland which stretched across parts of modern day East Ayrshire and South Ayrshire...
District, Ayrshire
Ayrshire
Ayrshire is a registration county, and former administrative county in south-west Scotland, United Kingdom, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Its principal towns include Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine. The town of Troon on the coast has hosted the British Open Golf Championship twice in the...
. It is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) ENE of Cumnock
Cumnock
Cumnock is a town in East Ayrshire, Scotland. The town sits at the confluence of the Glaisnock Water and the Lugar Water...
, and about 1 miles (1.6 km) from Cronberry
Cronberry
Cronberry is a small hamlet situated north-east of Cumnock and one mile north-east of Lugar, in East Ayrshire, Scotland.-History:Cronberry has a Women's Rural Institute which meets in the old school....
and 2 miles (3.2 km) from Gasswater. Lugar is a station on the Mauchline
Mauchline
Mauchline is a town in East Ayrshire, Scotland. In the 2001 census it had a recorded population of 4105. It lies by the Glasgow and South Western Railway line, 8 miles east-southeast of Kilmarnock and 11 miles northeast of Ayr. It is situated on a gentle slope about 1 mile from the River Ayr,...
and Muirkirk
Muirkirk
Muirkirk is a small village in East Ayrshire, southwest Scotland. It is located on the north bank of the River Ayr, between Cumnock and Glenbuck on the A70...
branch of the Glasgow and South Western Railway
Glasgow and South Western Railway
The Glasgow and South Western Railway , one of the pre-grouping railway companies, served a triangular area of south-west Scotland, between Glasgow, Stranraer and Carlisle...
. Lugar is about 16.5 miles (26.6 km) SE of Kilmarnock
Kilmarnock
Kilmarnock is a large burgh in East Ayrshire, Scotland, with a population of 44,734. It is the second largest town in Ayrshire. The River Irvine runs through its eastern section, and the Kilmarnock Water passes through it, giving rise to the name 'Bank Street'...
.
Lugar was once
dominated by a large ironworks
Ironworks
An ironworks or iron works is a building or site where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and/or steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e...
with several blast furnaces. Like the mining
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
industry in nearby areas, though, the iron industry has been decimated by economic decline. The Lugar ironworks closed long ago.
Lugar was built to accommodate the workers at the ironworks around 1845. They were houses in "miners raws" (sic). On the 1860 Ordnance Survey Map
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
the rows included Peesweip Row, Craigstonholm Row, Store Row, Back Row and Hollowholm Row.(This map also shows a Curling Pond
Curling
Curling is a sport in which players slide stones across a sheet of ice towards a target area. It is related to bowls, boule and shuffleboard. Two teams, each of four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called "rocks", across the ice curling sheet towards the house, a...
). Other maps included Laigh Row, Double Row and High Row. The population grew to 753 in 1861, and 1374 in 1871. By 1881 it had 1353 people and 1891 people, according to the Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
.
The Lugar Institute was created in 1892 by a Mr. Weir of Kildonan
Kildonan
Kildonan may refer to:*Kildonan, Skye, a crofting township on the island of Skye*Kildonan, Sutherland, a parish containing the village of Helmsdale.*Kildonan, Arran, a village on the Isle of Arran, Scotland...
. The Institute consisted of a lecture hall with a capacity of 400, a reading room, recreation room (for chess etc.), billiard room and bowling alley. It was partially demolished, and some of the remaining parts have been recently restored.
A local church, established in 1867, is another prominent feature of Lugar.
The Lugar Boswell Thistle Football Club
Lugar Boswell Thistle F.C.
Lugar Boswell Thistle Football Club are a Scottish football club, based in the village of Lugar, near Cumnock, Ayrshire. Members of the Scottish Junior Football Association, they currently play in the Ayrshire District League...
is a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
football (soccer)
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
club based there. The club is nicknamed The Jaggy Bunnets. They were formed in 1878 as a senior team, turning to the juniors after a short spell.
The 65th Ayrshire scout
The Scout Association
The Scout Association is the World Organization of the Scout Movement recognised Scouting association in the United Kingdom. Scouting began in 1907 through the efforts of Robert Baden-Powell. The Scout Association was formed under its previous name, The Boy Scout Association, in 1910 by the grant...
troop in the Kylesmuir District is based in Lugar.
Near Lugar, at Bello Mill
Bello Mill
Bello Mill was a mill dating from the 18th century on the river called the Lugar Water, on the estate of James Boswell in Ayrshire, in Scotland. Before being rebuilt in the 1940s, it had three different sets of mill stones...
Cottage on the estate of James Boswell
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....
in Auchinleck, William Murdoch
William Murdoch
William Murdoch was a Scottish engineer and long-term inventor.Murdoch was employed by the firm of Boulton and Watt and worked for them in Cornwall, as a steam engine erector for ten years, spending most of the rest of his life in Birmingham, England.He was the inventor of the oscillating steam...
was born in 1784. Murdoch did some important experiments on steam engines and was the inventor of gas lighting
Gas lighting
Gas lighting is production of artificial light from combustion of a gaseous fuel, including hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, propane, butane, acetylene, ethylene, or natural gas. Before electricity became sufficiently widespread and economical to allow for general public use, gas was the most...
. A cave where he carried out a lot of his experiments on coal gas
Coal gas
Coal gas is a flammable gaseous fuel made by the destructive distillation of coal containing a variety of calorific gases including hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane and volatile hydrocarbons together with small quantities of non-calorific gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen...
can still be seen on the riverbank of the Lugar Water.
Ironworks
- 1845 - Lugar Ironworks opened
- 1848 - Muirkirk Branch of the Glasgow and South Western RailwayGlasgow and South Western RailwayThe Glasgow and South Western Railway , one of the pre-grouping railway companies, served a triangular area of south-west Scotland, between Glasgow, Stranraer and Carlisle...
, AuchinleckAuchinleckAuchinleck ; is a village five miles south-east of Mauchline, and a couple of miles north-west of Cumnock in East Ayrshire, Scotland.Near the village is Auchinleck House, past home of the lawyer, diarist and biographer James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck.Auchinleck has much been associated...
to MuirkirkMuirkirkMuirkirk is a small village in East Ayrshire, southwest Scotland. It is located on the north bank of the River Ayr, between Cumnock and Glenbuck on the A70...
opened. The line served the Lugar Ironworks, the Muirkirk Ironworks and various coalmines - 1856 - Lugar Ironworks bought by the Eglinton Ironworks Ltd
- 1928 - Lugar Ironworks closed. Site later used by the National Coal BoardNational Coal BoardThe National Coal Board was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the mines on "vesting day", 1 January 1947...
as regional headquarters and workshops.