Hessilhead hamlet

Hessilhead hamlet or Haselet is a small settlement or clachan in North Ayrshire, Scotland. It is situated to the east of the town of Beith and stands on the course of the Dusk Water that once drove the local mill. Hazlehead or Hasslehead are also previously used names for the estate that the hamlet was originally a part of.

The 1858 OS map shows a small settlement with a school, a dwelling called Damback, a sawmill and a corn mill combined with a mill pond and dam with a sluice upstream. The hamlet may have once been known at Nethertoun and locally it is known as 'Haselet', probably derived from 'Hessilhead Hamlet'. It is said to have originally been the dwelling of the retainers of the lairds at Hessilhead Castle and to stretch a point such settlements often arose at the site where the workers who built the castle encamped.

The hamlet's small school had closed by 1897. The school had originally been single-storied and thatched; however, a second storey was added in 1844 with substantial outside steps and it was slated at that time.

Matthew Pollock, who established Beith's Caledonia Cabinet Works in the town and at the Bark Mill, was educated there and after the school's closure he obtained the bell for use at his works in Beith to signal the start and end of the day. Howie's of Dunlop, the owners of the estate at the time, obtained the bell in the 1930s to Dunlop. It is now located at North Netherhouses, near old Templehouse, Dunlop.

The Haselet or Hessilhead 'Farm Town' hamlet still exists, dating from at least the 1740s judging by William Roy's map as previously noted. The site, although undergoing rapid change, appears to be a rare survival of a typical 18th-century 'Ferm Toun'. Porterfield in his booklet titled "Rambles Round Beith" relates that the name of this clachan was 'Haselet' from 'Hasslehead Hamlet' (sic), previously 'Nethertown'. In 1832, John Thomson's map of Ayrshire shows the hamlet in much the same layout as it exists today.

The origin of 'Farm Towns' lies in the common medieval sub-division of land called a ploughgate (104 acres), the extent of land which one plough team of oxen could till in a year. This area was again subdivided into four husbandlands, each of 26 acres (110,000 m²). Each husbandland could provide two oxen and eight oxen were needed for a plough-team. This arrangement led to small farm towns like Haselet being established with accommodation for at least four men in six to eight houses, taking practical considerations into account. A similar 'ferm toun' existed at Bloak, near Auchentiber, until the 1890s.

Duskwater Cottage was the blacksmith's and a cobbler also worked there. A fine example of an old well survives, thirty feet deep with a sandstone slab cover, pierced with a hole that once held the hand pump.

Hessilhead Mill has been demolished; however, the circular grain kiln remnants survive, attached to the ruins of the miller's house. The course of the lade running from the Dusk Water is discernable and the watergate or sluice is apparent. Steps once led down to the waterwheel, which was not removed but was buried in situ. In 1897 the mill dam is no longer marked on the OS maps and the mill is recorded solely as a saw mill.