Lugar, Lugar Parish Church

Lugar Parish Church and Kirklee Cottage, Craigston Square, Lugar

Lugar Parish Church is a six-bay, rectangular-plan, gabled church converted in 1867 from an 1840s ironworks engine house. Adjoining it to the southeast is Kirklee Cottage, the former manse, a lower, single-storey, five-bay building dating from around 1867. Together the two buildings form the northwest corner of an L-plan run of adjoining single-storey cottages. Both are built of stugged, coursed rubble with smooth margins, raised cills and overhanging eaves, and both are roofed in purple slates. The cottage has a ridge chimney stack.

The church has a lower porch to the northwest with a bellcote on the gable above. The porch's east elevation has a two-leaf timber entrance door set within a corniced door surround. The windows are mostly fixed, large, multi-pane timber windows, each with two horizontal panels of plate glass above six panes below.

Kirklee Cottage has a central timber entrance door with a fanlight above on the west elevation. The west elevation also has four-over-six-pane timber lying-pane sash and case windows. The east elevation has replacement windows, and there is a later flat-roofed extension to the east.

The interiors were inspected in 2016. Inside the church, there is a central row of pews with two side aisles. The roof is a wide, kingpost timber structure, and a timber-boarded gallery to the north is supported on iron columns. The east wall has a round arch that has been infilled; this was originally an opening to allow engines to enter the building and remains a visible reminder of its industrial past. The internal doors are panelled timber, some with decorative metal grilles above. A curved staircase with metal barley-sugar-twist balusters leads up to the gallery.

Kirklee Cottage retains simple plaster cornicing and decorative ceiling roses in the main public rooms. The room at the north end of the cottage is currently used by the church as a vestry.

In the cottage garden there is a square-plan brick outhouse with a slated, piended (hipped) roof, thought to have been a former laundry, as indicated by the 2nd Edition Ordnance Survey map. As a building of some status, the manse would have had its own laundry.

The church is an unusual and historically significant survival. It was converted from an engine repair shed that had formed part of the first ironworks to be established in Lugar, making it one of the only remaining structures in the area associated with that original 1840s operation. The Lugar ironworks was founded to exploit locally discovered blackband ironstone, drawing on the strategic expansion of the Dundyvan Ironworks of Coatbridge. In 1856 the works were sold to William Baird and Company, one of the major ironworking firms of the era. Iron production halted briefly between 1857 and 1864, then resumed in response to growing demand. By that time the company had relocated the works up the hill to the north of Lugar village and began trading as the Eglinton Iron Company, continuing until 1928. The majority of the ironworks buildings, including the workers' housing, have since been demolished.

The 1st Edition Ordnance Survey map, surveyed in 1857, shows a rectangular building on the church site, at that point separate from buildings to the south. By the 2nd Edition, surveyed in 1895, a defined L-plan of houses is shown with the church identified at the northern end, corresponding to the current footprint.

The church opened in 1867 initially as a chapel-of-ease within the Church of Scotland. The 1840s engine shed provided a suitable footprint and shell for conversion, and appears to have retained its original plan form, elevations and roof, with the addition of the bellcote, the insertion of large windows and a new interior arranged for Presbyterian worship. The church and manse were gifted to the Church of Scotland in the early 1900s. In 1961 the church was joined with St Ninian's, Netherthird, Cumnock, after which the manse became a private house. The adjoining cottages to the south and east, which are listed separately at category B, date from 1867 to around the late 19th century.

The gabled, rectangular form of the church suits both a small industrial building and a small village church. The position of the former manse immediately adjoining to the south, itself becoming the end of a row of single-storey cottages extending further south, is more unusual. The long, low, continuous roofline of Kirklee Cottage and its lying-pane glazing pattern on the west elevation are features that add to the interest of the property. The buildings are prominently located in the village and, together with the associated row of cottages, contribute to a historically interesting group that reflects Lugar's industrial past.

The listing statutory address, category, and record were revised in 2016. The property was previously listed under the name Kirkton Cottage, and the category was changed from B to C in 2016.