Building near to Ardrossan Castle

[Hughie]

My recollection of that building is from around 1948/49. I was six or seven and our common play area at lunch time from Winton School was the castle and Cannon Hill. I remember the building because we were playing inside it one day and someone picked up a piece of poo and hit me on the face with it. Dammed if I can recall which twin threw it. The walls of the building would have been 9 to 10 feet high at the most and it had no roof. There's no trace of it now.

In 2000 I wrote about it to our then mailing list. See in our archive this topic.

[Penny Tray]

Hughie,

It was 1952/53 before I was playing up there but I don't remember any such building. The only thing I remember in that locality was a wooden hut occupied by the putting green attendant. Mrs Nicol from Barrie Terrace was the said attendant.

[bobnetau]

Bobby doesn't remember it either. Didn't seem to be any trace of a building when we were there last year.

[meekan]

Could it have been the ruins of the old church, though as I remember when I was young the walls were about 3ft at their highest point

[Hughie]

Angus, I'm assuming you mean the original Ardrossan Parish Church which was blown down by a hurricane hundreds of years ago. Anyway, that's probably more than 500 yards from the Castle alongside Hill Place and next to Winton Park's lesser used entrance.

[frank brand]

How old is the photograph. I don`t ever recall a building that close to the castle.
There was a fairly substantial brick built shelter near the castle, which has now been pulled down. That`s the only building I can remember up the castle hill.
Frank Brand.

[Hughie]

Hi Frank, I remember the brick shelter you mention, but no, that wasn't the building I was referring to.

Today, Penny Tray has pointed me to this 1938 image from Britain from above. It appears to show the building in question. Thanks, Penny, it's in the right spot from what I can remember.

[Hughie]

Took this photo some years ago in Ardrossan Cemetery and I'm thinking the building in question could have been for Mr Johnstone's staff and park maintenance equipment back in those days - just a theory!

[Robert Cook]

GeorgeJohnstone's Daughter was my Grandmother Jessie Johnstone. He was therefore my Great grandfather.
One of George Johnstone's employees was Robert Cook (my other Great Grandfather) whose son George Cook married Jessie Johnsone.
Robert was the one who found the sarcophagus in the old church.
Sorry to get off topic a wee bit

[Hughie]

Not at all, Robert - it adds to the interest of the topic.

After receiving a few helpful suggestions I entering "Ardrossan castle dovecot" into Google and came up with the following.

Ardrossan castle dovecot-2.png (10.47 KiB) Viewed 3819 times

[hahaya2004]

Hughie, the possible dovecot was round. The building in the photo looks like it had straight walls.
You can see the position of the dovecot on the map on page 3 of the download here:
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/li ... pe=Journal

[John Donnelly]

As a non-Ardrossanite, I'm trying to place the footbridge in the photo.
To my limited geographical knowledge of the town, I place it somewhere near St. Peters church.
JD.