Barclay House

Barclay house is a conversion of the former Caledonia Works, which is a category B listed building of the former Andrew Barclay & Son Railway Engineers; and is now home to 62 apartments in a contemporary style. The development is central to Kilmarnock Town Centre and the Bus and Railway Stations.

Grange Campus

Bonnyton is now home to three fairly recently built schools, Grange Academy, Annanhill Primary and Park School which have been joined to form Grange Campus. The Grange Campus opened to pupils in 2008.

Grange Academy plays host to a Scottish Rugby Union 'School of Rugby'.^[5] In 2012, the school was selected as the Ayrshire base for the Scottish Football Association's Performance Schools, a system devised to support the development of the best young talented footballers across the country (there are seven such schools across Scotland).

Grange Academy is home to the Scottish Football Association performance school, one of seven schools in Scotland that have been operating since 2012 with the aim to support the development of Scotland's best young footballing talent. The Performance Schools programme is designed to give talented boys and girls, with the best potential to develop their abilities, the opportunity to practise football everyday within an educational environment.^[6]

Andrew Barclay Railway Heritage Centre

First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond visited Bonnyton to officially open the Andrew Barclay Railway Heritage Centre. Opened in January 2008 The Heritage Centre is home to Drake 2086, a locomotive originally built by Andrew Barclay Sons & Co. in 1940.^[7]

The heritage centre has been dubbed as "the cornerstone of the Barclay House development". The redevelopment of the site consisted of the transformation of the previous traditional built industrial office block to create a complex of 100 apartments. One third of the apartments were available for rental, and went on the market on a fully serviced and furnished basis. The conversion project was privately funded without grants or any form of public contribution. The newly created apartments featured a private residents lounge with bar access and a coffee hub, plasma TV installed along with internet facility, and benefit from concierge services.^[8]

Economy

Brownings The Bakers factory located in the Bonnyton Industrial Estate located in Munro Place

Former Andrew Barclay Sons & Co. offices in Bonnyton, now the HQ of property development firm The KLIN Group

In 2020, the Scottish Government reported that Bonnyton had 475 business sites currently active and operational, contributing business and operational income towards the Economy of Scotland.^[9]

Property development and regeneration company The KLIN Group have their main HQ in Bonnyton, housed at Barclay House on West Langlands Street.^[10] The area is home to the Bonnyton Industrial Estate situated in Munro Place, just off Munro Avenue. The estate serves as the production base for companies including Brownings the Bakers, All Things Office and The Electrical Network.^[11] Popular fish and chip shop, The Bonnyton Cafe, is located on the Bonnyton Road area and has long been a popular eatery for locals.^[12]

Like much of the town of Kilmarnock, Bonnyton was home to a number of industrial and factory plants. Carpet yarn firm Blackwood Brothers Ltd. was located between Munro Avenue and Western Road. In October 1999, it was announced that Blackwood Brothers Ltd. was being put up for sale, claiming that it is a "loss making business that is continuing to make loses". At the time, the factory in Bonnyton employed 330 people.^[13] The factory closed later in 1999.^[14] Fashion brand and retailer Jaeger formerly occupied a large unit in the Bonnyton Industrial Estate which closed in 2002. At the time of the closure, 300 people were employed at the factory.^[15]

Economic history of the area focused largely around coal mining and the production of coal, with various coal mining sites located around Bonnyton, including the Bonnyton Colliery and Bonnyton Pit No 6.^[16] The Bonnyton Fireclay Works were established on the west side of the area, south of the Dalry–Kilmarnock railway line. Bonnyton Fireclay Works is thought to have been established around 1876 by John Gilmour & Co. on the site of the Southhook Colliery No. 1 pit. Following bankruptcy in 1883, the company was bought by Anderson, Gilmour & Co., before Gilmour, Morton & Co. took over the business in 1899. In October 1899, the site suffered a serious fire within three drying sheds due to overheating stoves. Liquidation of the company occurred in 1908, at which time the company was in possession of 400,000 enamelled bricks within their stock.

Following liquidation, the company was taken over by Southook and Shawsrigg Fire Clay Co. Ltd, and the first rotary gas fired kiln to be installed in Ayrshire was installed at the Bonnyton Works factory in 1925. The company specialised in the production of white glazed sanitary ware, including the popular Espevit closet set, consisting of a toilet pan and water tank. In addition to this, wall mountable sinks and basins were also manufactured at the site, in addition to larger urinals that were commonly installed within mens toilets. One of the last remaining buildings in Kilmarnock to contain Southhook manufactured white glazed bricks is located in the areas North Hamilton Street, incorporated into a terrace of houses that were erected in 1883 and designed by Robert Ingram. Southhook also produced firebricks, sewage pipes, drain pipes and other unglazed goods, and at one time employed around 500 employees. By the early 1970s, the company became known as Howie–Southhook Ltd, before closing shortly after and the site being cleared by 1973. As of 2023, the site of the former Fireclay Works and Southhook factories are occupied by residential housing at Margaret Parker Avenue as well as occupied by the Southhook Industrial Estate. ^[17]

Delivery firm Yodel had, until 2021, its main delivery depot in Bonnyton at the Southhook Industrial Estate, just off Munro Avenue. The company left the site in 2021 and moved to nearby Munro Place.

Transport

A train bound for Kilmarnock passes through Bonnyton at Bonnyton Road

Given its centralised location in Kilmarnock, Bonnyton has ample transportation services including regular bus services from Kilmarnock bus station to locations such as University Hospital Crosshouse, Irvine and Ardrossan. The area is connected to Troon by a Stagecoach bus service operating between Kilmarnock bus station and Troon, with the bus passing through Bonnyton. The Stagecoach Number 11 bus service passes through Bonnyton at the Irvine road before finally terminating at Ardrossan in North Ayrshire.

The Kilmarnock railway station is located within Bonnyton, with train services from Kilmarnock to Glasgow Central railway station. Taxi company, Thistle Cabs, is located in Bonnyton, with its control centre on Bonnyton Road.^[18]

Bonnyton, and the wider Kilmarnock area, has no international airport. The area is however served by nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport (14 mi). Ryanair provide a number of flights from Glasgow Prestwick to various destinations across Europe.

Geography

Welcome to Bonnyton floral display

Previously a village in its own right, Bonnyton was subsumed into Kilmarnock following extensive growth of the Kilmarnock area in 1871.^[19] It is situated in the west of Kilmarnock, with the town centre coming under the Bonnyton catchment for the purposes of population census gathering. It is situated closely to the nearby village of Crosshouse which lies just outside Kilmarnock.

Bonnyton is a large geographic area, with an area hectare of 130ha. The majority of its population mostly lives out-with the centre of Bonnyton in areas such as Munro Avenue, Bonnyton Road, Lennox Crescent, Stirling Avenue and Yorke Place. As the majority of Bonnyton now lies within the town centre of Kilmarnock, most housing construction for residential purposes had to be constructed from the centre of the area away from industrial estates, factories and other areas of economic production of which Bonnyton (and Kilmarnock) were common for during the areas period of rapid growth.^[20] To combat concerns over housing shortages in the area, East Ayrshire Council began building new houses within the centre of Bonnyton at Langlands Court, practice that had until 2015 been avoided due to the proximity to economic output areas. The housing project was completed by March 2015, marking the first housing development within the "centre area" of Bonnyton and not out-with the centre.^[21]

Demographics

In the 2001 Scottish population census, Bonnyton had an estimated population of 3,722 inhabitants.^[22]

In 2017, Scottish Government data indicated that within Bonnyton there were 2,325 dwellings, with an average cost in 1997 of £37,784 (£87,000 in 2023) and a median cost of £32,000.^[23] By 2018, house prices in Bonnyton had reached an average of £75,000, a decrease from an average of £81,000 in 2014.^[24] House prices reached a peak in 2017 when the average cost was estimated at £88,600.^[25]

With a 94% attendance rate average across primary schools and the only secondary school, Grange Academy, educational attainment and performance in Bonnyton tends to be high.^[26] In 2012/2013, the ratio of secondary school pupils who had achieved 5 SCQF awards by S4 was an average of 39.1% of pupils, above the local authority average within East Ayrshire of 35% of pupils.^[27] In the same calculation period, 100% of secondary school pupils at S4 had attained gained awards in English and Maths at SCQF Level 3 or above,^[28] against a local authority average of 92.4%.^[29]

Housing and living standards

Typical housing in Bonnyton, consisting of four in a block flats and semi-detached houses

In 2008/2009, the Scottish Government indicated that the estimated average median weekly income for households in Bonnyton was £371 per week which was slightly lower than the East Ayrshire average of £431 per week and the national average in Scotland of £468 per week in the same period. ^[30][31]

By 2017, Bonnyton's housing consisted of various types of housing, a mixture of social housing provided by the local authority, privately owned housing development and ex-local authority housing bought by tenants under the Right to Buy scheme. The Right to Buy scheme in Scotland ended in July 2016, meaning tenants of council properties were no longer permitted to by their home from the local authority.^[32]

Data collated in 2017 by the Scottish Government found that within Bonnyton 4.5% were detached houses, 70% flats, 17% semi-detached houses and 9.1% terraced houses.^[33] In 2022, East Ayrshire Council granted permission for new social housing in Bonnyton, the councils first net zero housing development in the Bellevue Gardens area.^[34]