[14] By a disposition and settlement dated 19 March 1869, Margaret Gibson Spier put money in trust for the founding of a "ragged" or charitable school near Glasgow, and gave instructions that construction was to begin within a year of her death.

She stipulated that the school should provide places for 24 children, who were not to have pauper or tradesmen parents and were to be of any religious denomination except for Roman Catholicism.

In addition to the money for the school, she charged her lands of Cuff with a yearly payment of £25 to the Ministers of Beith Kirk to provide warm clothing and coals to the deserving poor of the town and parish.

[15] However, this led to disputes and delays, and an investigation by a Royal Commission, and a final plan emerged from that for a co-educational day school at Beith which would be equipped to take a small number of boarders.

[21] The school opened on 22 September 1888, with 140 pupils, mostly from North Ayrshire, and with Robert Bruce Lockhart, previously head of Waid Academy, as the first headmaster.

Some of the ornamental stonework was recovered after demolition and lay near the staff car park at Garnock Academy, Kilbirnie; some of the stones were built into a commemorative seat.

Spier's school or college when first completed had a 100-foot (30 m) belltower, hall, boardrooms, 10 classrooms and school-house all designed in the 17th-century style by Campbell Douglas and James Sellars, a Glasgow architectural firm.

The Spier's Trust Working Group and the Regional Council made various attempts to find a new use for the buildings, even employing ASSIST, a Glasgow Architectural practice, in 1981.

[37] The 7.28 acres (29,500 m2) 'Marshland' (sic) playing fields are mainly used for football now and facilities are provided in the form of large metal trans-shipment containers based at the car park.

[42] The 1888 order for trees from Samson Nurseries survives and lists the trees ordered for the arboretum as 300 sycamores; 300 Scotch elm; 400 beech; 1000 Scotch fir (sic); 200 Austrian pine; 200 black spruce; 200 black spruce; 50 English elm; 200 Norway maple; 175 limes; 50 English oak; 50 turkey oak; 75 horse chestnut; 50 hornbeam; 200 weeping birch; 100 rhododendron; 100 rowans; and also ash and willows for the hedge.

The site near the Broadstone Arch with three sides formed from a yew hedge was the World War II Garden of Remembrance and now contains a labyrinth.

[43] An order for the Kitchen Garden lists five espalier pear, six apple, one plum and two cherry varieties for the five foot high walls and twelve standard fruit trees for planting internally.

It was damaged at the top during a money raising drive to fell trees for firewood for sale.55°44.713′N 4°37.505′W / 55.745217°N 4.625083°W / 55.745217; -4.625083 (Coronation garden) The altitude of the site is between 95 m and 100 m. The area of woodland near the back entrance to Geilsland School is dominated by a ground layer of ivy and was known as the 'Ivy Palace' to the pupils of Spier's.

A fine boundary wall surrounds the 16-acre (65,000 m2) site, punctuated by gates which led onto the track which ran on the field's side or onto Barrmill and Geilsland Roads respectively.

[50] In October 2011 Gateside Primary School pupils placed a 'Wish for the Future' time capsule in the Diamond Jubilee Wood site.

In 1829 and 1834 cholera broke out in Beith and although "clothes were burned, bedding fumigated, stairs and closes whitewashed, a nurse who was a veteran of the Dalry outbreak was engaged and a ban placed on entertainments at funerals."

The grounds had previously been the farmland of Marshalland farm and the evidence from OS maps does not show the presence of any old woodland after the mid-eighteenth century.

In 2011 the exceptionally rare common broomrape (Orobanche minor) was discovered growing at Spier's and has been the subject of a conservation project since that date.

The Scottish Ornithologists Club (SOC) have identified Spier's as a site for birdwatching with, amongst others, tits, finches, thrushes, greater spotted woodpecker, chiffchaff, blackcap, willow and garden warbler.

Old maps show that apart from a small patch of woodland around the farm and outbuildings, all the rest was open fields with hedgerow boundaries, probably containing a few mature trees such as beech, ash, birch, and oak.

The tradition of enhancing the grounds continues to this day with memorial and celebratory tree plantings and along the way notable additions have been the exceedingly rare Arran whitebeam, the dawn redwood at the 1953 Coronation Garden, the Camperdown Elm and the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Wood of 2012.

A fruit trees and shrubs order for the walled garden also survives, listing a total of 371 pears, apples, plums, cherries, gooseberries, currants and raspberries, with several varieties of each.

The Spier's Memorial, now at Beith Auld Kirk, described as a "Monumental Shrine" in the RSA Exhibition of 1861, was designed by Frederick Thomas Pilkington, and sculpted by William Brodie.

Garnock Academy holds the details of the grant of a Coat of Arms to Spier's, a number of stained glass windows, a mineralogical collection and the rector's old table and chairs from the study.

It has a fine pub, primary school, plant nursery, Millennium garden, and the Isobel Patrick of Trearne Memorial Hall.

Several large fallen trees at Spier's Old School Grounds have their roots embedded in rock which is derived from an old lava flow known as a 'dike,' one of a 'swarm' that exist locally.

The whinstone is therefore derived from volcanic activity and often shows itself as 'dikes' which are usually linear seams of hardened lava which was originally pushed up through the overlying limestone or coal.

Ken Stewart of Dalry brought Wesley, his Clydesdale horse, to extract logs from the woodlands, providing a spectacle for visitors and removing fallen timber with minimal damage to the habitats.

A Sustainable Return on Investment (SRoI) project was trialed at Spier's, organised by the Greenspace group and part financed by Scottish Natural Heritage.

The farm still has ornamental and functional entrance gates and gateposts from the Victorian era and magnificent lanes lined with beech trees.