1 Monktonhead House, Monkton

There is a carved bee above the well house at Monktonhead, located in the original grounds. Beneath it sit two words, Non Sibi. Not for self. It was the motto of the Connal family, cut into the stone in 1909, a year before the house itself was finished. A shipbuilder's household motto, carried from the yards of the Clyde to a hillside above Prestwick and Troon.

1 Monktonhead House is the larger part of that original building, a two storey Arts and Crafts house of hanging red tiles, half timbering and prominent brick chimneys, standing in its own grounds of around 4.3 acres in all. It offers roughly 4,300 sq ft of accommodation across two floors, five bedrooms, and a garden elevation built for long summer evenings.

BUILT BY JAMES MILLER

James Miller built railway stations before he built this. The curved glass canopy at Wemyss Bay, the great sweep of Glasgow Central, the ticket hall at St Enoch. By 1910, when Kenneth Connal, a Glasgow shipbuilder, commissioned a country retreat at Monktonhead, Miller had already reshaped how Scotland moved through its cities. Here he built something quieter, a house with a half timbered, gabled porch under a Tudor arch, deep bracketed eaves and hanging tiles, in a style rarely attempted in Scotland and owing a clear debt to Richard Norman Shaw. It earned the house its Category B listing, and its description still singles out the timber panelled hall and the open well staircase with its barley sugar balusters. The carved bee and its motto, Non Sibi, survive too, cut into a small well building dated 1909 that now stands in the neighbouring grounds.

Monktonhead House sits in fine company with Miller also designing the hotel at Turnberry and at Gleneagles. This house shows a different, more private side of his practice, built for a family rather than a company, and for a man whose motto was not for self.

THE HOUSE

The original building was divided some decades ago, and 1 Monktonhead House is the larger of the two resulting homes. Much of what made it special remains. Timber panelling runs throughout the entrance hall and the long dining and music room, open fires in the sitting room and billiard room, and a solid fuel stove serving the dining and music room. The garden elevation keeps its recessed terrace beneath a moulded timber cornice, looking out over lawn and woodland.

Across two floors there is a breakfast kitchen, one long panelled room combining the dining and music areas beneath its beamed ceiling, and a living room looking toward the garden, together with a billiard room, a utility room and a ground floor bathroom. Upstairs, five bedrooms are arranged around a broad landing, the principal room served by its own en-suite, with a further bathroom for the remaining rooms.

OUTSIDE

A double garage of brick and tile stands apart from the house, built for two cars and finished with tiles to match the roofline above. The grounds extend to around 4.3 acres of lawns and woodland, reached along a shared tarmac driveway.

THE SETTING

Monkton sits back from the coast, a couple of miles inland from Prestwick, reached off the A78. Prestwick and Troon are a short drive away, Troon with a working harbour and marina. For golfers, a claim on history of their own as Prestwick Golf Club and Royal Troon are both close by whilst Turnberry, the hotel James Miller himself would go on to design, lies a little further down the coast. Glasgow Prestwick Airport is minutes away, and both Troon and Prestwick's mainline station connects to Glasgow in well under an hour.

IMPORTANT NOTES

There is a right of pre-emption over either side of the house. This has not been exercised by the neighbouring property.

Photography and particulars prepared August/September 2026.

Acreage has been taken from measurements referenced in the title deeds.