Newfield Mains Stables, Dundonald

Classical, symmetrical U-plan former stables with later infill forming quadrangular courtyard.

Newfield Mains accompanied Newfield House (demolished 1964) thought to have been built by Captain Nugent, circa 1725. In 1783 Major Crawfurd, an Ayrshire man who made his fortune in India, purchased the estate. It is likely the walled garden is 18th century and that the stables were built when Crawfurd's eldest son inherited the house in 1794. The date stone of 1843 probably inserted in the gable signifies the sale of the estate to James Finnie, one of the family of wealthy coal owners in Ayrshire. Newfield House was extended in the later 19th century in a French Baronial style.

The stables are a good example of their type though now in poor condition (2003). The arrangement is formal and practical, typical of the improvement era in farming that began in the mid 18th century, and was designed to incorporate cartsheds, stables for as many as twenty Clydesdale horses, barn and threshing barn, hayloft and
granary, grooms' and farmworkers' accommodation. A circular horse-engine house once stood to the south east. A doocot is incorporated over the entrance pend which, by the mid to late 18th century, was a more common type than the freestanding larger doocots of the 17th and early 18th centuries. Doocots remained fashionable long after they ceased to be a necessary requirement for food but by the 19th century were becoming less so (Robinson p106).

The walled garden is particularly large and served as a market garden for the estate and surrounding farms with as many as 36 gardeners employed at one time. The coursed whinstone construction of the buildings is of good quality and would originally have been harled up to the dressed sandstone margins. The stone was quarried at the nearby Hillhouse quarry. Newfield Mains is all that remains of this once grand estate. (Historic Scotland)

December 2003: Local planners bring the stables to the attention of the Buildings at Risk Service. The local planners report that their site visits have revealed them to be in disrepair though currently used for farm storage, with unsympathetic patching throughout. Certain sections of the roof are in particularly poor condition having lost their slates. The sandstone entrance is beginning to crumble and the stonework in general is in need of repointing. February 2004: The stables are C(S)-listed. September 2005: Local authority confirm that a planning application to convert that buildings to residential use has been submitted. (There had been a previous application made and subsequently withdrawn in March 2003 before the buildings were listed.) 13th March 2006:a member of the public informs SCT that a planning application for a residential development by Commodore Homes Ltd was withdrawn in March 2006.

February 2010: Local planners report that proposals to convert the buildings to residental use were approved in July 2009 (ref: 06/01392/COU & 06/01399/LBC)

March 2012: Local planners report the building remains at risk

18 May 2012: External inspection finds the building has a number of roof problems. There are several holes as well as lost or broken rooflights and lost or slipped slates. The walls are overgrown in a number of places.

16 September 2014: External inspection finds the building remains in much the same condition as seen previously. The complex appears to remain in agricultural use.