Glengarnock Castle

No clear account survives of when Glengarnock's keep was raised, or by whom — it may have been built by the Cunninghams, or by the Riddels who preceded them. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the lands were held for the King by the De Morvilles, hereditary Great Constables of Scotland; the Barony of Glengarnock then passed to the Riddels and the Cunninghames. The keep with attached courtyard dates from 1400–1542, set on a remote rocky promontory above the River Garnock north of Kilbirnie, its only landward approach once guarded by a dry moat and drawbridge.

In 1609 Sir James Cunningham assigned the Lands of Glengarnock to his creditors and went to Ireland to manage the 12,000 acres King James VI had granted him. The creditors sold the estate to Cunningham of Robertland, whose son could not retain it; Adam Watt, Clerk to the Signet, obtained the lands before selling them in 1630 to the Honourable Patrick Lindsay, husband of the heiress of Kilbirnie.

A storm in 1839 brought partial collapse, and in 1841 William Cochran Patrick of Ladyland stabilised the ruins: undermined foundations secured, wasted portions of wall taken down and restored, the interior cleared of the rubbish of more than a hundred years of abandonment. The quadrilateral tower and its lower eastern ranges still deteriorate — though without those repairs little would have survived.