Mauchline, Scotland

Mauchline is a town visited principally for its connections with Robert Burns, and was formerly noted for the manufacture of wooden snuff-boxes. Some of Burns’s
children and friends, including Gavin Hamilton, are buried
in the churchyard, the scene of the poet’s “Holy Fair,”
but the Church itself was rebuilt in 1829. The “ Burns
House,” where he set up home with Jean Armour, is now a museum, and nearby is “Auld Nanse Tinnock’s.”

In the house of Gavin Hamilton, once Burns’s landlord, is the room in which the poet was married in 1788.
“Poosie Nansie’s” cottage, and the former “ Whitefoord
Arms” Inn both have well-known Burns associations.
Mauchline Castle, or Abbot Hunter’s Tower is of 15th cent. date, and contains a fine vaulted hall. An obelisk recalls five Covenanters hanged in 1685. About a mile to the north of the town is the Burns Memorial Tower,
neighboured by some model cottages. A little farther west is Mossgiel farm, rented by Burns and his brother between 1784 and 1788, and where much of his first volume of poems was completed, before he visited Edinburgh, in 1786. The farm was rebuilt in 1859. To the north-west, about 2 miles distant, is Lochlea farm, where the Burns family lived from 1777 to 1784.

Return To Scottish Placename Anecdotes