Girvan, Knockcushan Street, Girvan Steeple

Known locally as 'Auld Stumpy', this steeple is situated on the S side of Knockcushan Street, overlooking the Water of Girvan and the harbour. It was erected in 1825-7 to serve as a jail, and although now freestanding it originally adjoined the E side of a town hall of about 1822, while the ground-floor pend gave access to a courtyard on the S. Following the demolition of the town hall in 1909 the steeple was incorporated into the side-elevation of the new McMaster Hall, but this was destroyed by fire in 1939. This fire also destroyed the spire of the steeple, which was subsequently renewed.

The steeple is built of sandstone ashlar and is almost square on plan, measuring 7.5m across the main (N) front by 6.6m. Its overall height is 29m and the walls of the lower half, which is divided by string-courses into four stages, rise with a slight batter to a corbelled parapet. At the next stage the clock-faces are enclosed by open pediments carried on Tuscan angle-pilasters. The belfry stage above this is octagonal, having a louvred round-headed opening in each principal face and blind arches in the oblique ones, and it terminates in a crenellated parapet enclosing the rebuilt octagonal lead-covered spire.

Segmental-headed archways in the N and S walls are framed by battered pilaster-buttresses terminating in cornices, and there are small recessed thermal windows in these walls at the next three stages. Access as far as third-floor level is provided by a newel-stair in the SE angle, and all of the storeys up to the clock-stage are barrel-vaulted. The first, second and third floors each comprise a single cell having a latrine in the SW angle. The intended arrangement of two cells at each level was altered at the suggestion of the contractors, 'thereby giving additional strength to the outer Walls'. The belfry contains a bell, 0.84m in diameter, which was cast by Stephen Miller, Glasgow, in 1826 and installed in the following year.

HISTORY

A plot of ground bounded on the N by Knockcushan Street and on the E by Dalrymple Street was acquired by Girvan town council in 1787 for market and other use. A tolbooth was built on part of the site, but by about 1820 it was ruinous. A market-house having a town hall on the upper floor was built on the W part of the site about 1822, and the steeple in 1825-7. The architect is unknown but the steeple and three houses on the E part of the burgh's property were built by local contractors, Denham, Davidson and McWhinnie, at a total cost of £1 ,633. Ten years after the completion of the steeple the prisons inspector noted that 'a marked improvement in the peace of the town is said to have followed the building of this prison'.

Information from ‘Tolbooths and Town-Houses: Civic Architecture in Scotland to 1833’ (1996).