The Armoury

When Robert Adam designed this part of the house in 1777, it was two rooms divided by a wall on the columns. The inner part with the fireplace was the true Entrance Hall. The chimney piece is original and its decoration matches the overdoors and the frieze. The smaller room was the buffet room and here, although the frieze has been altered to match that of the old Entrance Hall, the overdoor is different, retaining Adam's Buffet room design. Following advice from the Armouries at the Tower of London, the entire collection was cleaned and restored by a job creation team.

Most of the weapons are those which were issued to the West Lowland Fencible Regiment when it was raised in the early years of the 19th century by the 12th Earl of Cassillis to meet the threat of invason by Napoleon I. Many of them where old-fashioned at the time. The most numerous are the light Dragoon flintlock pistols which from the large, oval display around the coat-of-arms of the Marquesses of Ailsa on the west wall. These date from 1775. The latticed frame is made up of one hundred and eleven Hanger swords.

The forty pistols arranged in a circle around the clock above the firplace date from the reign of King George II, and are Heavy Fragoon flintlock holster pistols engraved with the Royal Cypher. The various smaller pistols round the outside are all holster pistols of Turkish or North Africa origin.

The weapons beyond the columns on the same wall as the enter