Ayr Accommodation

Burns Cottage, Alloway, Ayrshire. Birthplace of Poet Robert Burns

Burnsiana - on display in the Burns Museum, Burns National Heritage Park, Alloway

Inside Burns Cottage, Box Bed Birthplace of Robert Burns

Burns Cottage Alloway, the Byre

Burns Cottage, Alloway. The Family Room.

Robert Burns Cottage, Heritage Centre, Robert Burns Biography Alloway Ayrshire

"Man to man the world over, Shall brothers be for all that". Alloway is all things Robert Burns, as you'd expect in the village where Scotland's official national poet was born. The Burns National Heritage Park in Alloway, just to the south of Ayr is a mecca for Burns fans. Within the Burns Heritage Park sits Burns Cottage where the poet was born, the adjacent superb Burns Museum with its huge Burns archive which includes original letters, manuscripts and journels kept by Burns. A visit here to Alloway gives a real sense of the early influences on Burns, and the formation of his accessible humanity and human comradeship.

Robert Burns Biography - Burns National Heritage Park, Alloway

The Robert Burns National Heritage Park in Burn's birthplace Alloway just south of Ayr is one of the most popular tourist sites in Scotland. Always busy, the complex has grown over the years but at its heart sits the Burns Cottage, originally built by William Burnes, the poet's father, in 1757. It is in the Burns Cottage that Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet voted 'Scot of the Millennium in 2000 by people across Scotland, was born on 25th January 1759.

Adjacent to the Burns Cottage sits the Burns Museum crammed with an impressive Burns archive consisting of numerous letters written by Burns, Journals, publications and articles belonging to the poet such as quils and ink pots and pistols carried by Burns when he was an exciseman in Dumfries. There's also a fascinating collection here of Burns memorabilia with items such as Burns cigars, Burns postcards and more which digs into interpretations and representations of Burns over the years. The Burns archive in the museum will be of particular interest to Burns lovers.

In more recent years the Tam o'Shanter Experience has emerged and is a superb introduction to Burns poetry (specifically it's an audio-visual film of Burns' Tam o'Shanter poem) for children. Adjacent free parking is available at the Tam o'Shanter Experience, plus a gift shop and superb good Scottish fayre restaurant are on-site. Numerous family activities and childrens events are held here throughout the year (see the Burns Heritage Park weblink right for event listings). Also on-site is a children's area, toilets, baby-changing facilities and ample garden space around the centre.

From the Tam o'Shanter Experience you can walk down to the Burns Monument & Gardens dating from 1832 and built by the Burns Monument Trust. Also within walking distance, and of particular interest for their parts played in Burns' poem 'Tam o'Shanter', you can visit the surviving Kirk Alloway, a spooky ruin still and home to the grave of Burns' father and other people who mixed with Burns. Just down from the Burns Monument is Brig o'Doon, the bridge featured in the poem, over which Tam just manages to escape albeit minus his mule Meg's tail! In Burns' time in Alloway this bridge was the only route into Alloway.

Burns Cottage, The Birthplace of Robert Burns

Located slightly away from the Tam O'Shanter Experience but within walking distance is the Burns Cottage, the highlight for many on the Alloway Ayrshire Burns Trail. (more parking is available nearer to the Burns Cottage if needed). Many notables have visited the birthplace of Robert Burns, with two of the first tourists to arrive being William Wordsworth and John Keats. Before Robert Burns was born his father William Burnes arrived in Ayrshire in 1750 (Robert later dropped the 'e' from Burns). A migrant worker from Kincardineshire and forced to move during unsettling times afte the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, Burns' father William sought work from one of many rich families based in the South West of Scotland. He became a gardener for initially the Doonside then the Doonhom estate.

Doing rather well as a gardener, William Burnes raised some money to buy his own plot of land. By that time he'd met his future wife Agnes Broun. He leased seven and a half acres in Alloway and on it he built what is now the Burns Cottage. He married Agnes in December 1757 and in 1759 their first son Robert was born. By 1766 the Burnes family had moved on, but it's young Robert's experience of childhood spent here, listening to stories told to him by distant cousin Betty Davidson that was to influence his poetry the most.

Inside the Burns Cottage reconstructions depict what it was like in Burns' day. Both family and animals would have lived side by side in the cottage, the family in one room serving as kitchen and sleeping quarters and animals in the Byre. The Box Bed where Robert Burns was born is a highlight within the cottage.

William Burnes' intentions to use the surrounding land for a market garden didn't work out, so the family farmed it as a smallholding with Agnes also making cheese. When the family moved out in 1766 it was sold on to an Ayr shoemakers and then later became an alehouse. The rising popularity of Burns' poetry meant that the cottages was finally purchased in 1881 by the trustees of the Burns Monument. They spent the next 20 years painstakingly restoring it.

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