Robinson[1] gives the Scots word "blout" as meaning "an eruption of fluid", or a place that is soft or wet.

[2] Bloak was once part of the "Lands of Kirkwood" that formed a small estate in the Parish of Stewarton, East Ayrshire lying between Stewarton and Dunlop, which in 1678 became part of the lands of Lainshaw, known as the Lainshaw, Kirkwood and Bridgehouse Estate.

This arrangement led to small farm towns like Bloak being established with accommodation for at least four men and their families, living in six to eight houses.

[4] The school had been built by the Cunninghams of Lainshaw and the schoolmaster's only salary was the fees paid by the parents.

[11] Johnson's map of 1828 marks Bloak as a group of four buildings at Bowhouse Farm road end.

A well recorded as Bloak Well was first discovered in 1800,[17] around 1826 (Paterson 1866) or 1810[18] or 1800, by the fact that pigeons from Lainshaw House and the neighbouring parishes were found to flock here to drink.

Mr. Cunningham of Lainshaw built a handsome house over the well in 1833 and appointed a keeper to take care of it as the mineral water was of some value owing to healing properties attributed to it.

He refurbished and extended in the cottage in the 1930s as a retirement home but failed to persuade his wife to move there.

The cottage was let rent free for a number of years as John hoped, in vain, that it would eventually become the retirement home.

Saltwells as it was then known returned to family use in 1947 when John's newly married youngest son and his wife moved in.

[24] The Kilmarnock Standard reported a fatal accident at Bloak mill in January 1860 when "Mr Robert Steel, corn miller, lost his life.

It seems that deceased had been oiling the machinery of the mill, and had got caught by some portion of it; the pressure of his body, however, caused the machinery to go out of gearing, by which he was enabled to extricate himself, after which he succeeded in reaching the mill door, where his cries soon attracted the inmates of the house; but when they reached him, he was only able to say ‘I’m gone,’ and in a few minutes thereafter he expired.

[29] John Gillies Shields was born 12 November 1834 in Bloak, Stewarton, Ayrshire, and died 22 September 1908 in the nearby Galloway Ford farm.

William was born 1785 in Bloak and married Janet Kerr on 8 November 1811 and secondly Elizabeth Jamieson.