Extract from 'The History of Old Cumnock' -- John Warrick M.A.
Another interesting case occurs under the date 1595. In it the Laird of Logan becomes security for a large amount, that the tenant of Garlaff shall do no personal injury to a neighbour.
The document runs this way:- "Registration by Mr Robert Irving as procurator of band (bond) by George Logan of that Ilk for George Murdoch in Garlaff £500, not to harme Johnne Browne there, as by letters, dated Edinburgh, 15th November, subscribed at Cumnock, 3rd December, before James Gibsoun, Notary, Stephen Tennant in Burnoksyde, and James Wallace servitor to John Gemmel, Notary in Cunmock, writer hereof, Gemmel signing for Logan."
Many such entries occur in the old Register, testifying to the great amount of business of this kind done by the Privy Council, in the interests of law and order.
The Councillors could not have been idle men, when they had to attend to cases of this nature submitted to them in countless number from every Parish in the land.
It will be noticed that two of the witnesses to this document, at the close of the sixteenth century, were Notaries, both of whom lived in Cumnock.
Disputes, involving the intervention of men skilled in law, must have been frequent in a sparsely populated parish such as Cumnock was then, in order to support at least two notaries.
We can only hope that in this case, Logan was not called upon to pay his bond, and that Johnne Broune lived to the end of his days unharmed by George Murdoch of Garlaff. (R McNab)
Alternate spelling 1729 Garlaph (birth of William McLanachan)
Andrew McLanachan (various spellings) and Helen Hannay 1720s and 1730s
Farm Horse Tax 1797-98 William Key, Garlaff, 5 horses, 4 taxed
James McKerrow and Janet McLanachan were at Garlaff between 1838- 1844 before emigrating to the USA
1851 census
Garlaff
John Cameron 40 overseer of farm of 10 acres employing an average of 10 labourer
John Cameron 17
Janet Carmeron 10
Thomas Cameron 8
Jean Cameron 6
Jean Mcnab 28 dairy maid (see below)
Anne Wilson 26
1851 Extract from Ayr Sheriff Court DecreesMcNabVs.HoseAt Ayr the sixteenth day of December eighteen hundred and fifty one years; Sitting in Judgement James Robinson Esquire; re an action before the Sheriff Court at the instance of Jane McNab, sometime servant at Whitehill near Ayr and now at Garlaff near Cumnock, Pursuer against Thomas Hose sometime servant at Whitehill aforesaid, now at Glengall near Ayr Defender: The said Sherriff Substitute in absence Decerned and Ordained and hereby Decerns and Ordains the said Thomas Hose Defender to make payment to the said Jane McNab Pursuer of the sum of £1 – 10/- Sterling of inlying expenses attending the birth of a male child born by her to him on the Twentieth day of February Eighteen Hundred Fifty. Item of the sum of Four pounds Ten shillings Sterling yearly of aliment payable quarterly and per advance from and since the birth of said child aye and until it shall attain the age of twelve years complete: Item of the legal interest on each quarters aliment from and after the same becomes due and till paid (Deducting always from said inlying expenses and aliment the sum of One pound fifteen shillings Sterling paid at sundry times to account and interest corresponding thereto) Item to make payment of the sum of Two pounds and eight pence Sterling of expenses of process besides the six shillings farther as the dues of Extracting and Recording this DecreetSigned 26th December 1851Written by James B McKill
Jean McNab was a dairy maid at Garlaff in 1851 census and Thomas Hose at Whitehill. He married another girl Jane McCreath in May 1851 in Ayr and a few years laters emigrated to Australia, possibly to avoid paying the aliment. Not yet found the chld
1860 Extract from Ayr Sheriff Court Decrees
Vs.
Robert Thomson
At Ayr, the third day of August and eighteenth day of October Eighteen hundred and sixty years. Sitting in Judgement James Robison Esquire Advocate Sheriff Substitute of the County of Ayr, in an action before the Sheriff Court of the said County, at the instance of Marion Mair residing at Garlaff parish of Cumnock Pursuer against Robert Thomson Contractor Birkley parish of Muirkirk Defender, the said Sheriff Substitute after sundry steps of procedure had in said action of the first date hereof Decerned and ordained and hereby decerns and ordains the said Robert Thomson Defender, to pay to the said Marion Mair Pursuer the sum of Two pounds sterling of in lying expenses attending the birth of twin illegitimate children male & female of which she was delivered on or about the tenth day of February current Eighteen hundred and sixty and of which the defender is the father; Item of the legal interest thereof from and since the birth of said children until paid. Item of the sum of Eight pounds sterling yearly of aliment for said children payable quarterly and in advance from and since the said tenth day of February current Eighteen hundred and sixty, until said children shall have attained the ages following Viz: till the male infant arrives at the age of seven years and the female attains the age of ten years, but under reservation of the pursuer's right to claim an extension of the aliment till each of the Children reaches the age of twelve years. Item of the legal interest of each quarter's aliment from the time the same becomes until payment: Item of the second date hereof Decerned and Ordained and hereby Decerns and Ordains the said Robert Thomson Defender to pay to the said Marion Mair pursuer the sum Seven pounds seven shillings and eight pence sterling of taxed expenses of process besides four shillings farther as the dues of extracting this decreet and of recording the same.
(signed) 8th November 1860
In November 1860 it was reported to the Kirk Session that corn had been carted in on the Sabbath day. We don't know how the matter was resolved as the Kirk Session records online currently don't go beyond the end of 1860.
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| scotlandspeople.gov.uk Kirk Session Minute of 27 November 1860 |
1871 census for
Garlaff, Cumnock shows Patrick Wardrop 49, Agnes Wardrop 29 David 10 Hellen 9 John 7 Patrick D 4 Mary W 2 Agnes 6 Mo
Robert Wardrop 51 brother
John Reid 26
Margaret Stevenson 19
Margaret Buck 16
1881 census shows Patrick D Wardrop 59, his wife Agnes 39 and family.
Robert Wardrop 61 brother
Sons David 20, John 16, Patrick 14, Robert 8, William 3, and Thomas 1
Daughters Ellen 18, Mary 12, Agnes 10, and Maggie 5.
they have one farm servant Mary McGrath 22 living in.
They are farming 204 acres employing 1 man and 1 girl
Valuation Roll
1855 tenant Joseph Whitfield
1865 proprietor Marquis of Bute
1905 tenant Patrick Wardrop.
1920 proprietor Patrick Wardrop
1930 proprietor John Cook
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Retiral presentation to Pate Wardrop on the family leaving Garlaff for Derbyshire 1926, Cumnock Chronicle |
The following is from Russell McNab
Garlaff – The Last Hundred Years
The Lands of Garlaff lie across the B7046 ‘Skares Road’ to the west and south of ‘Garlaff Toll’ where the back road leads off to Benston Crossroads.
It is interesting to note that the tenants of Garlaff at one time, not wishing to pay the nearby toll every time they passed, actually built a hard road along two sides one of their fields from the middle of ‘Garlaff Brae’ and re-entering the main road at Garallan School. Thus avoiding the toll!
Back in 1920, Patrick Wardrop bought Garlaff from the Marquis of Bute (Dumfries House Estate) and later in 1926, sold the farm to John Cook, then left Garlaff, and moved to Derbyshire.
In 1968 the McNab family bought the farm of Garlaff and took possession of it on 28th November at Martinmas that year, the ‘November Term’.
(Whitsunday 28th April and Martinmas 28th November were the two common entry dates for a purchaser to take possession of a farm at one time).
Garlaff had been owned for the previous 42 years by John (Jake) Cook, a bachelor, who arrived at Garlaff from a farm in the Strathaven area, along with his spinster sister.
It was noted in the farmhouse at that time, that there was a piano in one of the rooms, and Jake Cook related the sad story of his sister, who had played the piano, and insisted on bringing it with her from their home in Strathaven, but sadly, she had passed away at an early age.
With neglect, the room where the piano sat had the wooden floor joists sitting on clay and rotting, and when seen in 1968, the piano was in danger of collapsing through the floor.
Jake had become despondent after the untimely death of his sister, and perhaps this had caused the farm and lands to slip into disrepair. The lower fields were all of an old sward and played host to docks and ragwort as were the higher fields but there with scrub and rushes. For many years, neighbours who had finished securing their own hay and harvests, would lend a hand to Jake who was always struggling.
Nevertheless, still a ‘character’, Jake was well known for the yarns which he could spin, many of them filled with home-spun exaggerations.
Leaving Garlaff in 1968, Jake went to live with his housekeeper Maggie, in Keir Hardie Hill in Cumnock, where he lived out his latter days.
When the McNabs had viewed Garlaff in 1968, it was in a very poor and run-down state. The land was impoverished as was the farmhouse and steading.
The farmhouse, which for sanitation only had one fireclay sink with a section of drainpipe wedged underneath to run water to a cesspool, and had sported an open outside toilet built from old ammunition boxes, obviously required substantial renovation, much of it carried out by Russell McNab, John’s son.
After this was done, John McNab and his wife Margaret moved in. From 1970, Russell, who at the time worked for his father-in law, Jimmy Murray at the nearby Benston Farm, (Russell’s wife’s home farm), had himself built a bungalow at Garlaff in his spare time, and he and his wife Isobel moved into the new bungalow in 1971 to start on the job of rejuvenating the farm and its 243 acres of lands, with Russell taking over the tenancy and his father John as landlord.
Some four years later in 1975, Russell and his father John ‘swapped’ houses, allowing Russell, his wife Isobel and daughters May, Margaret and Christine to live in the farmhouse, to be near the work, and be able to be close at hand to tend the stock.
With Russell attending to the ongoing care of the land, fencing, drainage, re-seeding and cropping, and a good stock of 100 beef cows and 300 sheep, the farm began to respond, and with Russell also erecting many new buildings himself, Garlaff became well known as a prosperous farm. Some of the past residents of the long since demolished ‘Skares Rows’ who had moved into Cumnock, still walked up past Garlaff to visit what was left of their old village at Skares. Many would stop at Garlaff and reminisce with Russell and comment on the many changes at Garlaff, most of them remembering the days of Jake Cook and his struggle to keep going. One who did the reverse walk as he still stayed in Skares was Isaac Hewitson. Isaac had lost an arm at one time in an accident when he worked at Whitehill Pit, Skares. He was a regular walker past Garlaff and he would look in for a chat and wonder at all the changes which were taking place.
The improvements initiated great interest from the Department of Agriculture at the time, and over the ensuing years, there were many visits from Auchincruive students doing study tours of the farm.
Like many farms in the Cumnock area, Garlaff sat on a certain amount of coal, and by the early 1980s many farmers were being approached by mining companies with a view to opencast coal mining. Garlaff was no exception of course, but it was also unique in the area, as it also sat on a huge deposit of whinstone which was noticeable right on the surface of some of the fields.
There were many changes at Garlaff during the 1980s, one of which came about with the death of John McNab in 1983, after which Russell bought out Garlaff in his own right from his father’s estate.
Towards the latter part of the 1980s, there had been many faltering approaches to Russell about the possibility of an opencast coal scheme at Garlaff. However, faltering had been the word, as by 1989, nothing had transpired to that end.
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| Kojack, Russell McNab and daughter Christine |
However, at that time the Cumnock bypass was becoming a reality, with the contract having been awarded to Ayrshire Civil Engineering Contractors, Barr Limited. Word reached Russell that Barr intended hauling stone material from their quarry at Tormitchell near Girvan, about 30 miles away. It was an obvious move for him to approach Barr with the proposal that there was whinstone lying under Garlaff, only about three miles away from the site of the new bypass. A deal was struck, and quarrying began at the beginning of 1990 and supplied stone for the entire project of the Cumnock bypass, until its completion in 1992.
quarrying continued for about four years after that with stone being hauled from Garlaff to Barr’s batching Plant at Killoch, Ochiltree. In all, from 1990 to 1996, over one million tonnes of stone were extracted from under the fields of Garlaff.
Although still living at Garlaff, with the onslaught of the quarry in 1990, Russell gave up active farming, and began a career in joiner work and house renovations.
By 1993 he purchased the Farm of Springs at Stair, and after renovating the farmhouse there, he and Isobel moved to Springs in 1995.
Meanwhile at Garlaff of course, there was a huge void left from the quarrying operations.
An interesting point here on wildlife. There had always been oystercatchers on Garlaff. Over the years they disappeared (maybe because of local opencasts). But when the quarrying got established at Garlaff with various basins of water where the extraction of stone had taken place, the oystercatchers returned, and were quite happy to share their habitat with the diggers and dump trucks!
As the stone extraction neared exhaustion, Barr struck a deal with the local councils to begin landfilling the huge void, and this began in the latter part of 1995.
Opencast coal operators had still been hovering around however but the coal on Garlaff had always been termed ‘high ratio’ (too many tonnes of overburden to shift for not enough tonnes of coal extracted). As the proposed opencast coal area lay alongside the quarrying/landfill area, a deal was struck that the overburden could be removed and deposited on land on either side, to backfill voids already created by other opencast coal workings, doing away with the cost of backfilling the opencast void on Garlaff and making such a project viable.
This of course, left an enormous void for the land filling operation to continue as it has done now for around twenty-five years (at 2020).
After the McNabs had moved away to Springs Farm in 1995, the farmhouse at Garlaff was utilised by Barr as site offices with the farm steading and remaining 82 acres of undeveloped land rented to neighbouring farmers for grazing.
This situation continued for many years but around 2008, Barr had been taken over by McLaughlin & Harvey, who centralised the offices back at Killoch, Ochiltree. This left the farmhouse at Garlaff empty and abandoned. The bungalow had a series of tenants over the years but was now also empty and abandoned.
Eventually dereliction set into the farmhouse, steading and bungalow, and the difficult decision was taken to demolish what had once been a thriving farm. Safety was one of the main factors, which brought this about. With buildings having become unstable, roofs beginning to sag, the danger of loose slates falling, intrusion of vermin etc. And so, in the autumn of 2018 the entire farm and the bungalow were demolished, and the site cleared, leaving nothing but memories, although also some satisfaction in the fact that Garlaff had once been brought back from what it was in 1968 to a successful prosperous farm.
Some may think that the development on Garlaff over the last 30 years or so, was not something to be welcomed; maybe not ‘green’. On hindsight, Garlaff has given up a very generous bounty to the community when everything is taken into consideration.
Garlaff has provided the stone to build Cumnock’s bypass along with many other projects. It has provided coal to supply energy. It has, and is still supplying, re-cycling and vital void space for waste disposal. And with the methane gas from the site being harnessed into generators, it is supplying electricity to this day. A generous bounty from 120 acres on a high lying Cumnock farm.
After the demolition, on the remaining 82 acres of the lower fields at Garlaff, left untouched by development, a decision was made to enter into a forestry scheme, and the planting of some 96,000 young trees took place late 2018/early 2019 over this whole area, with the young trees now becoming established. It was felt that this green, conservation type scheme went at least some way towards balancing out the developments which had taken place on the other fields of Garlaff. Some day in the future, the landfill site will possibly become forestry as well, so that all the lands of Garlaff will provide timber for the benefit of future generations. Not too shabby, for a marginal farm on the Skares Road!
Russell & Isobel’s oldest daughter May passed away in 1996 at 29 years old. Their middle daughter Margaret Watson lives near Southampton with her sons Billy, Jack, and Adam. Their youngest daughter Christine Cuthbertson lives in Dundonald and is well known as Area Manager for NFU Scotland. Christine is married to Ian. The ownership of Garlaff remains in the McNab family.
Aerial photos 1974, 1979, 1989
Russell sends us this description from his daughter of the road.
Christine Cuthbertson’s story about the road in darkness and the road in daylight refers to Garlaff roadend. This was inspired by Christine when she would come off the school bus and walk home always to visit her Gran and Papa’s house on her way up to the farm. She would be about 7 or 8 years old when she wrote this!THE ROAD IN DAYLIGHTI know almost every nook and cranny in my road, leading up to the farmhouse. I always look at the cottage and remember going in every night and visiting my Gran and Papa and getting a tea biscuit and raspberry jam. I can remember walking on the sticky tar in summer and pushing through the snow in winter. I liked to look into the stack-yard with its heavy metal gates and to see the old tree that was struck down by lightning. But the best bit I like is the barn with its neatly slated roof…… I like to look at the coach house and imagining all the horse carts that used to be kept there and I always look at the sign that says, ‘caution drive slowly’ and then you see the farmhouse. I am always glad to see the house in bad weather. But even if it is bad weather………. I still love the road.THE ROAD IN DARKNESSThe road is very very spooky at night with the tree’s branches sticking out like bony fingers. I hate going down the road at HALLOWE’EN because you think that a witch or something will come leaping out of a tree and grab you. And I always look at the moon smiling at me. I also hate to walk by the coach house and hear the mice screeching. And walking by the field and seeing the sheep’s devilish eyes, and the wind swoops through the trees as if it’s chasing after something. I hate walking down the road in darkness…...
Christine wearing grandpa's bunnet
Margaret sitting on Russell McNab's knee and Alex (Ike) McKewan from New Cumnock who used to come and help with the hay and many other jobs at Garlaff as well.
