Alloway & Fisherton
Parish Church

Situated in the heart of Robert Burns' birthplace, we are an attraction to many visitors searching the sites of the Bard’s poems.  Robert was born on 25 January 1759, just along the road, in a small cottage, which his father had built, and the cottage stands to this day. 

The heart of that famous poem, Tam O’ Shanter, takes place right outside our Church, the Auld Kirk, the ruin of which still stands opposite us and was described as Alloway’s Auld Haunted Kirk; and the Brig O Doon, at the side of the Church, features the dramatic climax of that poem.

Robert Burns was baptised in the cottage of his birth in 1759 by Rev William Dalrymple, minister of Ayr’s Auld Kirk.  Robert's father is buried in the Churchyard of Alloway Kirk.

While Burns loathed the hypocritical nature of religion in his day, which many still do to this day,  what is clear in his writings is his love of God’s created order, in the natural world around him – a mountain daisy; a rosebud by his early walk; a wounded hare; a field mouse – all made their appeal to him and through his eyes and words to us.