Baron of Grougar is a title of nobility in the Baronage of Scotland in north Ayrshire in the district formerly known as Cunninghame.
The earliest known family likely to have owned Grougar were the De Morvilles who were there in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries before the reign of Robert the Bruce.
[2] Grougar had returned into the hands of its former owners the Logans a long established Ayrshire family and remained with them until the late sixteenth century.
in the bailiary of Cunningham, which Robert Logan the elder and his wife Lady Elizabeth Hume had resigned, to be incorporated in the free barony of Restalrig [RGS.III.2056].
On 18 February 1581 King James VI confirmed a charter by Robert Graham of Knockdolian allocating certain land within the barony of Grougar to Thomas Lyon of Glamis and his wife Lady Agnes Gray [RGS.V.111].
On 27 July 1613, King James VI granted the barony of Grougar with its fortalice, manor place, mill, mill-lands, tenantry, etc., in the bailiary of Cunningham, Ayrshire, to Hugh, Lord Loudoun, and his heirs, formerly held by Robert Graham, Earl of Montrose, Lord Graham and Mugdock, lands in the nearby parish of Auchinleck, formerly held by Claud, Earl of Abercorn, were then incorporated in the free barony of Grougar [RGS.VII.896].
On 11 December 1617, King James VI confirmed a charter of Robert, Lord Boyd, who under his marriage contract of 9 December 1617 granted his future wife Lady Christine Hamilton, Lady Lindsay, daughter of Thomas, Lord Binning president of the College of Justice and Secretary of State, the lands and barony of Grougar [RGS.VII.1733].
He, unlike his father, was a Jacobite and fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie with the rank of General and commander of the Horse Grenadier Guards.
William Boyd, Earl of Kilmarnock, was executed as a Jacobite rebel in 1748, and his titles and lands in Ayrshire, Stirlingshire, and West Lothian were forfeited to the Crown on account of his treason.
His son and heir James, Lord Boyd, who had fought for King George at the Battle of Culloden managed to regain some of the forfeited lands but he sold them in 1758.
Sir George Colebrooke, born 1729, was Chairman of the East India Company, a merchant banker and a Member of Parliament.
He was also a land speculator in New England, the Ohio Valley, Scotland and the West Indies, and also in raw materials which led to his downfall around 1777.
In 1770 the lands of Grougar were owned by Sir George Colebrooke and were valued at £1497.16.0 according to Loretta R. Timberley's ‘A Directory of Landownership in Scotland c1770’ [Scottish Record Society, Edinburgh, 1976] Both Sir George Colebrooke and William Blane leased the various farmlands within the barony to tenant farmers.
An insight into this practice can be had through an examination of the financial records, especially tacks (leases), of William Blane of Grougar which survive for the period 1796 to 1797 [NRS.GD237.21.19].
From the Welbeck Estates Company Limited, the trustees acting under disposition and deed of trust by the Duke of Portland, the barony was acquired by Professor David Ian McLean.