Scotland’s Architecture

Auchencairn

Landscape and setting

Auchencairn stands in the lower ground behind Auchencairn Bay, within an agricultural and coastal landscape in the historic parish of Rerrick. The Place is centred on the village’s Main Street and its immediate surroundings. It includes the nearby Collin Mill Bridge fort but does not absorb the separate estates and named sites at Orchardton, Collin House, Seaside or Auchencairn House.

How Auchencairn developed

The village is recorded as an agricultural settlement with a fishery and small port connection, and its oldest surviving houses cluster near the site of a former corn mill. Late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses, inns and a church show how the settlement grew along an irregular road rather than through a formal planned layout. The former Commercial Hotel and Old Smugglers Inn preserve evidence of travel and hospitality even though their historic business uses have ended.

Architecture and continuing use

Painted rubble, local granite, sandstone dressings, slate roofs and closely spaced street fronts give the historic centre much of its character. The selected records balance modest houses, larger commercial buildings, the parish church and one scheduled prehistoric site. Current use is stated only where a recent official or operator source supports it; private occupancy and uncertain building functions are not inferred from names alone.

Explore responsibly

Most buildings should be viewed from lawful public routes without entering gardens, closes or private premises. Respect worship and community activity at the church. The fort is an archaeological site rather than a managed visitor attraction: do not assume access, cross private land without permission or disturb earthworks.

Context sources

Heritage records

Heritage records

Explore Auchencairn on the map

Every teal SA marker is a reviewed Scotland’s Architecture record. A small A, B, C or SM badge records its designation without turning it into a live HES marker. Optional map layers add separate official HES listed buildings and scheduled monuments, nearby Wikipedia articles, NLS historical mapping, walking notes and device location. Nearby SA markers are grouped at wider views. Skip the map and browse the A–Z record list.

Marker key: reviewed Scotland’s Architecture record small badge = designationHES, SM and W markers belong to the optional live layers
Map layers:SA records: 10HES listed: offScheduled monuments: offWikipedia: off

Use the + and − controls at the map’s upper-left to change scale. They work with both the modern and historical maps.

Showing 10 mapped records. Locations are approximate catalogue points.

Map information, accuracy and rights

Locations are approximate catalogue points, not property boundaries or route guidance. Showing your location is optional: the site uses it only in this page and does not save it. Nearby distances are straight-line estimates. Current-use notes do not establish opening, access, ownership or route safety. Modern map tiles are supplied by OpenStreetMap. The optional historical overlay is the Ordnance Survey six-inch first edition for Scotland, principally surveyed in the 1840s–1880s, supplied by the National Library of Scotland. Sheet dates and coverage vary, and the historical map must not be read as current geography.

Marker links open the exact coordinates in Google Maps satellite view; they do not automatically select a panorama and do not require a paid Street View integration. On desktop, drag Pegman onto a blue road. On mobile, turn on the Street View layer and tap a blue road. Other photo markers may be user-contributed. The optional listed-buildings layer appears from city and large-town scale (zoom 12), clusters nearby designations, and links to official HES records. Lettered markers show the authoritative HES listing categories A, B and C. The separate scheduled-monuments layer appears from regional scale (zoom 10), uses purple SM markers at approximate designation centres, and links to official HES records for the full statutory boundary. It is independent of the listed-building category filter. Purple SM markers already attached to Scotland’s Architecture records remain curated catalogue markers. The separate, opt-in Wikipedia layer shows geotagged English Wikipedia articles in the current close map view. W markers are supplied independently by Wikipedia, may cover subjects beyond architecture, and are not affected by HES filters. Turning it on sends the visible map centre and approximate radius to Wikimedia; Scotland’s Architecture does not save that request. Plan a heritage walk loads a Place-wide inventory independently of the current zoom, suggests a Category A-led order of principal stops, and divides longer itineraries into Google Maps legs. It uses no paid Google integration and does not reproduce Google route geometry. The site map deliberately shows numbered stops without a connecting line; Google supplies the live pedestrian streets, paths, distance and time. Optional Category B and C candidates are selected only by proximity to a principal landmark marker and are not assumed to lie on Google’s route. Printable notes retain complete active URLs. This is a discovery aid rather than a statutory property-boundary search. For additional historic-map comparison and wider archaeological layers, visit PastMap; check current designation status and full legal extent in the linked official HES record.

Historical map: Ordnance Survey six-inch first edition, Scotland, 1843–1882, National Library of Scotland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Listed-building and scheduled-monument data contains Historic Environment Scotland and OS data © Historic Environment Scotland and Crown Copyright and database right 2026, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Wikipedia article titles, coordinates and links are supplied by Wikipedia contributors.

31 Main Street, Auchencairn

This compact late-eighteenth-century house retains the low-eaved proportions and painted rubble construction of Auchencairn’s earliest Main Street fabric.

Auchencairn Church

Auchencairn Church is a compact neo-Gothic building whose lancets, traceried gables and small bellcote establish a clear ecclesiastical landmark.

Blairmae, Main Street, Auchencairn

Blairmae adapts the familiar three-bay village house to a steep site, using painted rubble, raised margins and a compact slate-roofed form.

Collin Mill Bridge Fort

A scheduled fort west of the village introduces a prehistoric defensive layer to Auchencairn’s immediate landscape, though its legacy record is deliberately sparse.

Craignair, Auchencairn

Craignair is a compact early-nineteenth-century house whose double-pile plan and paired M-shaped roofs give greater depth than its modest three-bay front suggests.

Former Commercial Hotel, Auchencairn

The former Commercial Hotel preserves the balanced form of an early inn: a two-storey centre, low wings and broad tripartite windows facing Main Street.

McLure House, Auchencairn

McLure House is a restrained late-eighteenth-century dwelling whose symmetrical Main Street face conceals an L-plan created by a rear wing.

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