Historic Scotland - Stewarton

Stewarton) and his family with shops, including the bakery, on the ground
floor.
This elevation is certainly the more formal, reflecting the importance of
the street as 'one of Stewarton's most busy thoroughfares, crowded with small
shops, cottages and tenements' (Milligan p2).
There were apparently two large decorative pots on top of the entrance architrave but
these have long since gone. A cast-iron hopper with the date 1867, removed from the
building for safety, is understood to be in the possession of a former owner and it is
likely that an existing building on this site was either extended or the facade
and interior remodelled at this date.
The corner building is marked as a public house on the Ordnance Survey map of 1856
and the Commercial Buildings continued to operate as an inn or hotel into the 20th
century. In the 1920s however, the Temperance Movement put an end to alcohol
consumption in the town until the 1960s.
Robert Boag, baker, owned the property prior to World War I and sold it to
bakers Lydall and Gillies before World War 11.
The Gillies family became sole owners in 1947 and the buildings, including 8 Vennel
Street, were still in Gillies ownership until 1999 . Their bakers shop was on the corner. In
the mid 20th century, the shop on Lainshaw Street followed in Stewarton's famous
textile tradition accommodating Mrs Bowie's drapery and millinery,and the
Misses Watt Browns' millinery and dressmaking business (see illustrations in
Milligan).
List description updated as part of Stewarton Burgh resurvey, 2009.
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