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Irvine

The largest town in North Ayrshire, Irvine is an ancient seaport and royal burgh which, in the 1960s, was designated as Britain’s first seaside new town. It is a mixture of old and new, and has many unattractive industrial estates surrounding it. However, the historical core has been preserved, though a brutally modern and totally unnecessary shopping mall straddling the River Irvine dominates it. Robert Burns learned flax dressing in Irvine in 1781 and lodged in a house in the cobbled Glasgow Vennel. A small museum has been created within both it and the heckling (flax-dressing) shop behind it. The national bard is also celebrated by an impressive 9 feet high statue on the bank of the River Irvine.

Irvine has other, more unexpected, literary associations.. In 1815 the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, spent a couple of months in the town, attending the local school. It is said that part of his lessons was to copy the epitaphs from the tombstones in the kirkyard of the Parish Kirk which may have prepared him for some of the macabre tales he wrote in later life. Alexander MacMillan, who founded the great publishing house, was also a native of the town.

In the nearby village of Dreghorn was born in 1840 yet another famous Ayrshireman - John Boyd Dunlop, who invented the pneumatic tyre. Born in 1840, he came from a farming background, and graduated from Edinburgh University as a veterinary surgeon. He practised in Edinburgh and then Belfast. He found the roads of Ulster to be stony and rough, and eventually invented an inflatable tyre to overcome the discomfort of travelling on them. Unfortunately, unknown to him, another Scot, Robert William Thomson, had patented the idea before him and only after a court case could he set up the Dunlop Rubber Company.

Dreghorn Parish Church, built in 1780, is unusual in that it is six-sided in plan. It was built by Archibald, the 11th Earl of Eglinton, and used to have the nickname of the “threepenny church”, as its shape reminded people of the old threepenny bit.

The ruins of Seagate Castle date from the early 1500s and it is said that Mary Stuart lodged here briefly in 1563. Every August the town has its Marymass Week, which supposedly commemorates her visit. However, the celebrations probably have more to do with a pre-Reformation religious festival, as the parish church was formerly dedicated to St Mary.

In the 18th century, Irvine saw the founding of perhaps the most unusual religious cult ever seen in Scotland - the Buchanites. Elspet Buchan was the daughter of a publican, and claimed she could bestow immortality on a person by breathing on them, and that she herself was immortal. She attracted a wide following, including a gullible Irvine clergyman, but was hounded from the town along with her followers. She eventually died a natural death, and the cult broke up.

Down by the harbour side is the Magnum Leisure Centre, one of the biggest centres of its kind in Scotland. It has a theatre and concert hall, an indoor bowling green, an ice rink, swimming pool and fitness and coaching areas.

Near the Magnum Centre is one of the three sites of the Scottish Maritime Museum. It houses a large collection of ships and small craft. There’s also the Linthouse Engine Works, which houses a vast collection of maritime machinery, such as engines, winding gear and so on. In the Shipworker’s Tenement Flat, a typical “room and kitchen” flat dating from the 1920s has been re-created, showing how shipyard workers lived in those days. Visitors can also board the Spartan, one of the last puffers in Scotland. These small cargo boats, immortalised in the Para Handy tales by Neil Munro, sailed the west coast of Scotland for many years.

In 1839, Irvine was the setting of the grand Eglinton Tournament, organised by the 13th Earl of Eglinton at his home, Eglinton Castle, on the outskirts of the town. Here, a great medieval tournament was to be re-created, with jousting, horse riding and other knightly pursuits for the great and the good. They attended from all over Europe, but alas, the three-day event was a wash out due to colossal rainstorms. Little remains of the castle, but the grounds have been turned into Eglinton Country Park.