Go on about 70yds to Burns’ Cottage. This is where Scotland’s National Bard was born on the 25th January 1759 and shortly afterwards, on the 4th February 1759, the roof and gable end were blown in on a very stormy night resulting in Agnes Burnes and baby Robert being taken to a neighbour’s house.
John Murdoch, who was tutor to Robert and Gilbert Burns, with some neighbouring boys, from May 1765, referred to Burns Cottage as the ‘argillaceous fabric’, ‘mud ediface’, ‘tabernacle of clay’ or at worst ‘the auld clay biggin’. The Burnes family left it in 1766 for Mount Oliphant but could not sell the cottage until 1781 when the Incorporation of Shoemakers bought it – after which it became a public house.
In 1881 the Incorporation sold it to the Burns Monument Trustees.