The River Irvine forms the boundary with South Ayrshire, previously 'Kyle and Carrick', Parish of Dundonald.

A 'Gatehead Toll Bar' is still marked nearby on the road to Laigh Milton mill and the Craig House estate as late as 1860 on the Ordnance Survey (OS) map of that year.

[4] He mentions a neat lodge house at Fairlie, then owned by a Captain Tait and records that the Irvine bridge has recently replaced an older one.

He goes on to say that Gatehead was established around fifty years back, i.e. circa 1825, and has neither kirk, smithy, mill or market, but it does have a station.

Craig House was sold after WWII to Glasgow Corporation as a 'respite home' for mainly Glaswegian children,[15] After the school closed it was badly vandalized and eventually burnt out becoming a ruin.

It has since been rebuilt and converted into flats with executive style houses built in the grounds extending right up to the mansion.

1636 – 52 indicates a small mansion at 'Little Drogarn',[19] and it has been suggested by McNaught that the woodland here was locally known as 'Old Rome Forest' at this time.

[24] Old Rome Forest or Old Room Ford was a house in the Fairlie estate where Jean Brown, an aunt of Burns on his mother's side, lived with her husband, James Allan.

When Burns had to go into hiding as a result of James Armour's warrant for his arrest, the poet stayed at his aunt's house.

Nothing remains of Old Rome Forest, but according to Duncan M'Naught, (in an article in the Burns Chronicle, 1893) the house was on the Fairlie estate.

A branch of rail way (sic) ran in from the Kilmarnock and Troon 'main line' near Gateside to coal works belonging to Sir William Cuninghame of Robertland Bart.

[26] On the 1923 OS mineral lines still run to collieries near Earlston, Nether Craig and Cockhill farm (Fairlie (Pit No.3)).

The 1860 OS names the 'Fairlie Branch' and indicates its operation by the Glasgow and South Western Railway company.

In 1829 the Kilmarnock & Troon Railway agreed to pay compensation to the Earl of Eglinton of £185.13s.10d for damage to East & West Gatehead Farms and land used.

[28] There was a scrap metal yard in the village which was located on the main road just south of the existing railway .