Brown's Institute, 72 Main Street, Newmilns, Irvine Valley, East Ayrshire

Entry Name: Brown's Institute, 72 Main Street, Newmilns

Listing Name: Newmilns, 72 Main Street, Brown's Institute with Courtyard Wall and Gatepiers

Listing Date: 30 October 1997

Category: C

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 391360

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB44725

Building Class: Cultural

ID on this website: 200391360

Location: Newmilns and Greenholm

County: East Ayrshire

Town: Newmilns And Greenholm

Electoral Ward: Irvine Valley

Traditional County: Ayrshire

Tagged with: Hall

Description

Dated 1869. 2-storey, 4- by 3-bay classically detailed, town institute with curved corner, including library and recreation rooms, on corner site. Red sandstone, bull-faced and coursed (smooth squared and snecked to rears and recessed bay) with ashlar base course, giant angle pilasters and modillioned cornice, blocking course, architraved windows, lugged at 1st floor, deeply battered cills at ground floor.

MAIN STREET ELEVATION: ashlar pilastered and corniced doorpiece in bay to penultimate right with 'Brown's Institute' carved on frieze and date '1870' carved on blocking course, cavetto jambs; 2-leaf, chevron boarded doors with decorative hinges and plate glass fanlight. Regular fenestration to remaining bays.

CORNER BAY: curved with framing pilasters and stone mullioned tripartite window to each floor, both with deeply battered cills.

CRAIGVIEW ROAD ELEVATION: 2 widely spaced bays to centre and right, with wallhead between flanked by consoles and carved with date '1869'.

Recessed bay to left with window to each floor and on return of centre bay.

REAR ELEVATIONS: adjoined to single storey shop in Main Street, blank elevation with wallhead stack. Alley between neighbouring property in Craigview Road.

Timber sash and case windows with 4-pane glazing, plate glass to side lights of tripartite windows (some blocked 1997). Grey slate piended roof. Wallhead stacks.

INTERIOR: not seen 1997. Plaster roses to ceilings.

COURTYARD WALL AND GATEPIERS: squared stone wall with semicircular coping enclosing small court to Craigview Road, with pyramidally capped ashlar gatepiers.

Statement of Interest

Presented to the burgh of Newmilns by Martha Brown, the last member of the landed family of Lanfine, a generous patron who also sponsored the building of institutes in Galston and Darvel. It is a modest building of appropriate dignity at the centre of the burgh, prominently positioned. Mair details its use by numerous local groups such as the Good Templars, the Rechabites, Loudoun Choral Society, the Plymouth Brethren and the Salvation Army: it was also the venue for many of the town's weddings and annual social events.

External Links

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