house. When the Parishes of Dreghorn and Perceton were united, Dreghorn and Perceton church owned the land surrounding the church (called 'The Glebe'). A current circular cul-de-sac called The Glebe commemorates this fact. The kirk is now called Dreghorn and Springside Parish Church. Perceton and Dreghorn Free Church In the Disruption of 1843, the Free Church of Scotland broke away. The entry for Dreghorn in Groome's Ordnance Gazetteer for 1882-4 describes the village as having "a Free Church mission station and an Evangelical Union chapel; and Dreghorn Free church is at Perceton village." Perceton and Dreghorn Free Church, at the east end of Main Street in Dreghorn, was built in 1877 for £4,000. It later became the Church of Scotland's Perceton and Dreghorn Parish Church, but eventually congregation numbers fell, so the parishes merged and the church closed in 1992. A Threatened Building Survey recorded photographs of the building in 1996. The Sun Life Corporation of Japan bought the building for £50,000. In 1996 they demolished it carefully and shipped the materials to Hiratsuka, Kanagawa, for reconstruction, at a cost of £250,000. This included the pulpit and church organ, and every block of masonry was numbered for rebuilding. The Hotel Sunlife Garden wedding complex, incorporating the reconstructed church as its central feature, was opened with a ceremony on 2 July 1999. Employment Dreghorn's historical main industries were farming and coal mining. All of the coal mines around Dreghorn were closed by the early 1980s. Dreghorn is still surrounded on two sides by farm land. The new communities of Broomlands and Bourtreehill cover the sites of some former mines. Dreghorn Primary School, on Main Street, had a school roll of 270 pupils in 2013, with 21 teachers. Greenwood Academy secondary school at the west end of the village serves several areas of Irvine as well as Dreghorn. In September 2013, its school roll was 1494 pupils, and it had 113 teachers. Other Dreghorns A pastoral property named Dreghorn had been established in north Queensland, Australia, by 1864. Gold and silver was discovered there and mined in the 1860s and 1870s, the mining town taking the name of Dreghorn. References External links Video and commentary on the old Towerlands Tram Road Villages in North Ayrshire Octagonal churches in the United Kingdom