Willowyard

Willowyard is a former farmhouse dated 1727, with the date carved on the skewputt of the building. It is a substantial 3-bay, 2-storey structure with an attic storey, distinguished by steep crowstepped gables typical of early 18th-century Scottish vernacular architecture. The building is constructed of random yellow sandstone rubble with raised window margins and raised angle margins topped with corniced caps. A moulded eaves course runs beneath the roofline. The roof is covered with grey slates laid in diminishing courses, and the end stacks are of coped ashlar.

The principal (western) elevation features three bays with a later 20th-century piend-roofed porch to the centre right, flanked by single windows on the ground floor and three windows on the first floor. The eastern (rear) elevation also has three bays and includes a later window surround at ground floor level, where a door was subsequently converted to a window on the right side. The north gable contains a blocked opening at ground floor right, with a first-floor window above and a small blocked attic window.

The building originally had timber sash and case windows, now replaced with UPVC. The interior contains no surviving original features.

A large extension to the south and a porch to the west were added at a later date and are architecturally out-of-keeping with the original building. The rubble walls would originally have been harled, with the window and angle margins left exposed as dressed stone. The roof is likely to have been thatched originally.

William Simson is recorded as the owner around the mid-18th century. By the late 18th century, Willowyard was a thriving farmstead. An advertisement in the Edinburgh Advertiser of January 1786 described the property as consisting of approximately 175 English acres of arable land, subdivided into fifteen fields and let to three substantial tenants for £130 per annum. The estate included a good house with garden stocked with fruit trees, a malt mill, and newly erected farm offices. A valuable flag and stone quarry had been opened on the grounds, with believed deposits of coal and limestone. The property encompassed about ten acres of wood with thriving belts of planting surrounding most of the farm, and was offered for sale at £3000.

In the Heritors' Records of 1820–22, Robert Steele is recorded as the owner, with the lands assessed as the 14th most valuable in the parish. By 1839, according to the Statistical Account, Alexander Shedden was the proprietor. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1856 shows the house with adjacent U-plan outbuildings and a circular horse-engine house. These structures and the layout of gardens and woods remained visible on early 20th-century maps but no longer survive. Late 20th-century industrial development has encroached significantly, and Willowyard now forms part of Willowyard Industrial Estate.

Despite the loss of interior features and its surrounding context, the building remains an important reminder of a once prosperous estate and is one of Beith's few surviving fine early vernacular buildings of the 18th century.