Cumnock, 40-43 The Square, Black Bull Hotel
Hotel (18th Century), Public House (18th Century)
Site Name Cumnock, 40-43 The Square, Black Bull Hotel
Classification Hotel (18th Century), Public House (18th Century)
Alternative Name(s) Black Bull Close; Mercat Hotel
Canmore ID 204175
Site Number NS52SE 67
NGR NS 56826 20182
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/204175
- Council East Ayrshire
- Parish Old Cumnock
- Former Region Strathclyde
- Former District Cumnock And Doon Valley
- Former County Ayrshire
Publication Account (1995)
Flanking the Square are a number of old buildings, recalling much of the character of eighteenth-century Cumnock, although not all were constructed as early as this figure 18. To the south, 3-14 the square figure 15.C, is an especially complete range of eighteenth century houses, probably the finest surviving group in Ayrshire, standing on the site of earlier merchant houses and shops. One, now a shoe repairers and kebab and pizza house, retains its Victorian panelled pilasters and modillioned cornice. The houses' rears face on to what used to be called Tower Street figure 17.
Some of the buildings around the Square post-date the abandonment of the graveyard in the mid eighteenth century. If the building line of these encroached onto the earlier graveyard, there is a possibility that burials may be preserved, sealed beneath their floor levels.
On other sides of the Square, old inns are reminders of Cumnock's role as a market centre for the rural surroundings and as a resting place for travellers using either the eastwest route between Edinburgh and Ayr, or the north-south route from Glasgow to Carlisle. To the west is the eighteenth-century two-storeyed Sun Inn; and to the east, the Mercat is the old Black Bull Hotel with its eighteenth-century core, but the recessed, central three-storeyed portion of which belongs to the early nineteenth century. On the south-east corner, the Craighead Inn, remodelled in the nineteenth century, stands with its gable end to the bridge over the Glaisnock.
Information from ‘Historic Cumnock: The Archaeological Implications of Development’ (1995).