Earlier Houses: There was an earlier 16th century tower house on the site of the current house.

Built / Designed For: Richard Oswald

House & Family History: Richard Oswald, who purchased the Auchincruive estate in 1759 and built a new Adam-designed house here in the 1760s, was a Scottish merchant and slave trader. Oswald got his start as a merchant during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48). In 1756 he took on a forage contract for the British Army and later prospered as a supplier of bread during the Seven Years' War (1756-63). Oswald was influential in directing English businessmen to America to grow indigo and rice on plantations. He also owned slave-populated plantations in America himself, including in Virginia, Georgia, and East Florida (a British colony between 1763 and 1783). Oswald operated a slave-trading empire that spanned America, Africa, and the Caribbean. His hub was Bance Island on the Sierra Leone River, which he purchased in 1748 as a part of a British consortium that established a trading station for the trafficking of African people on the island. In 1925 the Auchincruive Estate was sold by the Oswald family to John Hannah, a local farmer, who bequeathed it in 1927 to the secretary of state for Scotland to be used as the West of Scotland Agricultural College. In 2007 the Scottish Agricultural College, formed in 1990 from the merger of the West of Scotland Agricultural College and other agricultural colleges, decided to move its campus to a new site in Ayr. In December 2012 Auchincruive was purchased for £1 million by biotech company Neogen for use as its European headquarters.

Garden & Outbuildings: Adam's 1778 Oswald's Temple, a castellated tea house, is extant.

John Bernard (J.B.) Burke, published under the title of A Visitation of the Seats and Arms of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland, among other titles: Vol. I, p. 121, 1852.

Country Life: LXXII, 690, 1932.

House Listed: Category A

Park Listed: Listed

Past Seat / Home of: SEATED AT EARLIER HOUSE: Wallace family, 13th century. Cathcart family, 14th century. SEATED AT CURRENT HOUSE: James Murray, 18th century. Richard Oswald, 18th century; Oswald family here from 1759 until 1925. John Hannah, 1925-27.

Current Ownership Type: Corporation

Primary Current Ownership Use: Offices

Ownership Details: Since 2012 the European headquarters of Neogen.

House Open to Public: No

Phone: 01292-525-600

Email: [email protected]

Website: http://www.neogeneurope.com

Historic Houses Member: No