Auchengreoch Farmhouse

Auchengreoch - green fields

 

http://rlhf.info/wp-content/uploads/9.3-Johnstone-Castle-Henry.pdf

 

Looking at the background history we ran up against the first problem. What was the real Johnstone Castle? Timothy Pont's map of 1595 shows Johnstone (lhonftoun) Castle to be sited on the other side of the Black Cart Water, near Kilbarchan. This "house and lands of Johnston" have interesting links to another subject explored by the Forum in the past year. Crawfurd attributes some considerable age to this site as "An ancient family, of the surname of Wallace, did possess these lands for several ages".

 

The lands were acquired by the Houston family in the reign of Charles II and in 1733 George Houston (or Houstoun) sold the house and lands to Major James Milliken. He demolished the house and built a modern mansion called Milliken House as the Houstons had retained the title of Johnston.

 

So on to Johnstone Castle No.2. At Easter Cochrane the Houstons occupied the Tower House which they renamed Johnstone Castle. This was the situation in 1796 when John Ainslie's map was published. This Tower House was not the Cochrane Castle later to give its name to the housing estate. That building, in Auchengreoch Road, was already a ruin by the early 18th century.

 

A later George Houston erected a small tower on that site in 1896, building in a plaque with the Cochran arms and the date 1592 although Cochran's holding of the land goes back much further, certainly to the mid 15th Century and possibly the 14th Century.

RLHF Journal Vol.9 (1998)

Pont Map 33 of Scotland, ca. 1583-1614