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Kirkoswald

It was to Kirkoswald, in 1775, that Burns came for one term to learn surveying. Though his poem Tam o’ Shanter is set in Alloway, all the characters in it have their origins in the parish of Kirkoswald which was where his maternal grandparents came from.

Kirkoswald Parish Church dates from 1777, and was designed by Robert Adam while he was working on Culzean Castle. Dwight D. Eisenhower worshipped here twice, one of the occasions being when he was president of the United States. Another visitor is not so well known, though the airline he helped to found is. The late Randolph Fields, together with Richard Branson, founded Virgin Airlines. Randolph loved this part of Ayrshire, and when he died in 1997 he left some money for the restoration of the church. A year later his widow presented the church with a small table, on which is a plaque commemorating his donation.

The old parish Church of St Oswald stands at the heart of the village. It is a ruin now, but in its kirkyard are the graves of many people associated with Burns, including David Graham of Shanter Farm near Maidens, the real life “Tam o’ Shanter”.

The church also contains one interesting relic - Robert the Bruce’s Baptismal Font. Both Lochmaben in Dumfriesshire and Turnberry Castle, within the parish of Kirkoswald, claim to have been the birthplace of Robert the Bruce. Turnberry is the more likely, as it was the ancestral home of the Countess of Carrick, Bruce’s mother, and it is known that she was living there at about the time of the birth. The story goes that the baby was premature, and that he was rushed to Crossraguel Abbey for baptism in case he died. The abbey’s font was used, and when Crossraguel was abandoned after the Reformation, the people of Kirkoswald rescued the font and put it in their own church.

Within the village you’ll also find Souter Johnnie’s Cottage (National Trust for Scotland). John Davidson was a “souter”, or cobbler, and featured in Tam o’ Shanter. Now his thatched cottage, built in 1785, has been turned into a small museum. One room at the back of the cottage is given over to the souter’s workshop, complete with fire and all the tools needed for shoemaking. At the other end of the cottage is a room re-creating aspects of the parlour, with a large dresser and fire, and a bedroom complete with box beds along one wall. In the garden are life-size stone statues of a jovial-looking Souter Johnnie and other characters from Tam O’Shanter. They were carved in 1802 and exhibited around Scotland and England before being brought to the cottage in 1924.