Girgenti House

Girgenti House (OS grid reference: NS 36502 43575) was a small, rather eccentric mansion built on part of the old Barony of Bonshaw in the parish of Stewarton, East Ayrshire, Scotland.

Born there was Doctor Robert Watt, the eminent Scotsman who published the Bibliotheca Britannica in 1824, shortly before he died;[1] it records more than 200,000 books, pamphlets and periodicals printed from 1450 to the early nineteenth century and took him 25 years to compile.

[2] His portrait hangs in the entrance hall of the Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, and his direct descendants still live in the Stewarton area.

In 1827 he paid Thomas Reid £1350[5] for the property, totalling 50 Scotch acres, and at a cost of £6000 he demolished the old Bonnyton farm steading and built a rather eccentric mansion house and offices and planted extensive plantations and shrubberies on what had been a wild moss-land.

Cheape's only sister, Marianne, who was first married to Sir Alexander Campbell of Ardkinglass in 1792, became the third wife of Thomas, 11th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne in 1817; their residence was Glamis Castle (where the Queen Mother would spend a great deal of her childhood and where Princess Margaret was born).

Finished in 1843, it stands 80 feet (24 m) tall, has four clock faces,[11] his family coat of arms and a motto—Didus Fructus ("Let it spread its fruit abroad")—all on the outer surfaces.

[12] The nearby ruins of Auchenharvie Castle and Darnshaw Farm are linked to stories of smuggling corpses for dissection by Glasgow medical students.

The farm was next sold in 1932 to Mr Sword, chairman of the Western SMT Company, who took considerable interest in the outbuildings and had the tower restored and the clock repaired.