87 Eglinton Street, Beith

No. 87 Eglinton Street is an earlier 19th-century cottage situated on a sloping site. It is a single storey with a rectangular plan and a piend roof. The front, facing Eglinton Street, has four bays with four three-centred arched windows, all set beneath square-headed lintels; the window on the left-hand side is divided into two parts. A small, boarded opening with ventilation holes is visible at basement level between two of the left-hand windows. The building is constructed from random sandstone rubble with raised ashlar margins.

The rear elevation features a door in the centre of the left-hand side, with a later timber boarded door dating from around 1920; a window is positioned on the outer left, and another is centrally located on the right.

The north-facing gable has a window on the outer left and a small boarded opening to the basement on the outer right. The south-facing gable has a central window.

The windows throughout are timber sash and case, with a good quality replacement window in the bipartite window on the front; the south end windows contain a mix of lying-pane and later four-pane plate glass sashes. The roof is covered with grey slates and distinctive fireclay ridge tiles, with overlapping skews. Corniced end stacks are topped with four hexagonal clay cans, one of which is smaller and may be a replacement.

A small, rectangular, single-storey outbuilding, likely a former washhouse, stands to the rear. It is constructed of harled brick with a slate pitched roof and fireclay ridge tiles, featuring a stone ledge doocot entrance above a timber boarded door. The roof has been altered to incorporate two sections of corrugated transparent material. Inside the outbuilding is a stone fireplace with an ashlar chimneystack and clay can.

Coped sandstone rubble boundary walls enclose the property, with gatepiers at the south gable. A similar wall runs along the rear boundary, adjoining Glebe.

The interior includes a narrow passage connecting the rooms, with a timber pilastered arch. The sitting room features a plain cornice and a recessed niche with a depressed arch designed to hold a sideboard. The interior also includes timber panelled doors and window embrasures, with some working shutters.

The cottage occupies a prominent site on Eglinton Street, approaching the town from the southwest. Its stylised Tudor-Gothic windows and lying-pane glazing make it distinctive. The building is largely unaltered, retaining original features such as the overlapping skews, original chimneystacks and cans. It was marked as Mainshill Cottages on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, and the outbuilding is noted on the second edition map of 1897.