Archaeology InSites

Modernising an Estate and Enduring within the landscape

After a childhood in poverty, James Macrae became a wealthy man in India, in part as the Governor of the Presidency of Madras (1725-30). He returned home to Ayrshire in 1736, purchased Monkton House and estate and renamed it ‘Orangefield’, reflecting his admiration for William of Orange (William II of Scotland). Macrae used his wealth to establish his position in Scottish society. Sometimes this was accomplished through a grand gesture (in 1735 he gave Glasgow an equestrian statue of King William that now stands in Cathedral Square), but much of his expenditure went on the expansion and modernisation of Orangefield. This may have included erecting our windmill on the ridge above the estate, although the mill has been assigned to the 17th century, or the early 18th century by some architectural historians.

The prominent, if not exposed, location would have provided strong, steady winds for the sails of our windmill – so in part this is a very functional position. But we need to recognise that the location also stood next to the road falling down to Monkton from Kilmarnock that in the 18th century weaved its way down this ridge. This same location also overlooked both Orangefield House and the village of Monkton. So for Macrae this investment might also have been an important social statement about change, progress and his wealth. It is no coincidence that Roy’s Military Survey of Scotland (1752-55) which depicts the windmill also names the ridge ‘Crorehill’ – Crore being a borrow word from Urdu used to denote 10 million in currency. This was a self-made man, returned from extracting wealth in the emergent Empire, who sought to change the landscape around him, even to the point of renaming elements within it.

Many of the changes made by Macrae have not endured, the process of transformation he envisaged being cut short by his death in 1746. By 1795 his fortune - passed down two generations to James Dalrymple - had been wholly spent, if not frittered away. We know that the windmill was still in use in 1775 as Armstrong depicts it on the New Map of Ayrshire, but by the mid 19th century, it was no longer being used for this purpose. The floors and machinery had been removed, the caphouse and sails taken down and a conical roof added in their place. Rows of nesting-boxes were fitted into the tower and an internal revolving potence (ladder) added which allowed access to the upper levels. Our agricultural power house had become been repurposed into a doocot, a secure a home for pigeons and doves that were kept by landowners as a source of eggs, flesh and dung.

By the 19th century many doocots had also taken on a role as an ornamental feature within a landscape – and this became, in time, the dominant role of our windmill. The fittings of the doocot are long gone, but the tower and its hidden vaulted basement remain, standing proudly on the ridge overlooking the Ayrshire coast and inadvertently connecting this corner of Ayrshire with the wealth brought away from distant Madras.


Further Reading

Close, R, 1992 Ayrshire and Arran: An Illustrated Architectural Guide (Edinburgh)
Donnachie, I L and Stewart, N K, 1967 ‘Scottish Windmills: An Outline and Inventory’ Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot. 98, pp. 276-399
Douglas, G, Oglethorpe, M and Hume, J R 1984 Scottish windmills: a survey. (Glasgow) Thomas Rees - Consultant Archaeologist, Rathmell Archaeology Ltd