SALTCOATS OLD and NEW

" Scotland's Quaintest Burgh "

It's Lost Links and Landmarks Restored

Through the Dockhead on Braes and Breazy Byways.

From the Shopends at the foot of the roading - that centre of town life from which all its local interests have ever diverged there stretches along the sea side of the Dockhead Street and irregular perspective, typical of the all absorbing desire of the burgher to break through the mest of old antiquity with which he is surrounded. One house leaps into the full blaze of modern pretentiousness, while its neighbour demurely retains it aspect of the long past. The corner of the Dockhead, which was John Montgomeries when houses were first rising on the brink of Saltcoats Bay, fast became divided into many pieces. Some are links, others are landmarks. The famous weaving agent, Hugh Baird, had his house here. Through his hands went to Glasgow much of that beautiful flower material that has gained for the women of Saltcoats a reputation that will not fade. Here they came on pay day to receive the reward of labour. Here also came the weavers in their sleeved waistcoats and tall hats, maintaining the dignity of toil in the full garb of their honourable calling. Baird had also for a time the Post Office. Craig's Land lay near; the Douglas Hotel, afterwards "the Albion", the quaint little surgery in days gone by of Dr Robert Miller, afterwards of Dr Brown; the establishment of Mrs Bolton, the lady barber of Saltcoats, now a drug depot, have all gone out of the picture. Robert Bryce, who died about twenty five years ago and who commenced business next door to James M'Kie's ("Book Jamie"), was a wonderful memorist, a great man for dates and a great pedestrian. HIs father knew the poet Burns in his hackling days at Irvine. Book Jamie's was the Mecca of literary Saltcoats and the proprietor himself the first to guide the pilgrim through the classic realms of bookland. 

Beside the Old White Hart Inn of Saltcoats, sometime "The Swan", when held by Ferguson, father of the Ferguson of "F & F", Glasgow's premier restaurateurs (now devoted to the uses of a bakery shop), there tottered towards the rear a row of little dwellings in which gathered most of the "character" life of the wharf. The Inn guarded the entrance to the Dockhead and the shipbuilders knew all the back ways to its queer old tap-room, where the "cares of life" were dissipated, under the potential influence of a drap o'rum or under an unlimited draught of brewery ale, "made" not "in Germany" but in Saltcoats. Even at that time there was an old-fashioned house up the Dockhead kept by Charlie Cood, which is characteristically described as having had "a weestep doon and a wee windy nae bigger than picter". The publican had two trades, He would come up off his bench with his awl in his hand to serve a dram and token of his combined professions appeared in the window in the form of a decanter side by side with a pair of tackety boots. He was fond of saying that he could "aye provide the soles and raise the speerits". The wee shop is covered over by a large refreshment house of today. Until 1809 a vacant space, with a wall fronting it, lay between the White Hart and the old thatcheds beside Porter's Shipbuilding Yard. Wooden booths and travelling shows and theatres perched upon the space. The Post Office and the house upon which it became engrafted rest upon that ancient vacuum. 

Immediately behind the Dockhead roadway lay the carpenter's yard of the Porters, with sawpits in front. The launching slip was near the centre of the bay and more central still, at the dividing points of the separate lands of the Laird of Auchenharvie and the Earl of Eglinton, were the channel up to the Boat Quay and the launching slip. Further south there burrowed into the Braes the "old Dock" (the bottle shaped configuration of which can hardly be understood in the waste of today); forming a square recess far out into the water, was the boat dock, the carpenter's shed lying between it and the Saltpans. The "Wee square dock" where the sloop came up and which had been there from a very early time, is still referrred to with pathetic veneration. The wooden saw pits, conducted by the Shearers and Barbours, were a quaint feature of this old time life, the men working the saws by hand in the dug out hollows of the beach, fed by a water channel, up which the logs were drawn towards the ever restless saws- wee men and big whell shankers drawing the logs to the Braes. A wooden erection, almost touching the water, formed the Laird of Auchenharvie's boathouse. It was one of the sights of youth to see the yacht borne on wheels as it made its way in from the direstion of the Pans. Beside the Pans there stook and old thatch house. When the laird's yacht grew bigger the house blocked the way and was thereupon demolished. By and by the old boathouse melted away and a new stone boathouse was raised further back on the Braes. One gusty day in January, 1867, the heavy door of this new house swung backwards on a boy playing near and killed him.

Original were the ways of men in those dear old primitive days at the harbour sixty years ago or more. To dredge its sludgy basin there was brought into use a form of barge known to all that little seagirt world as "the dirt boat". The barge was let down at low tide, the custodians labouring heroically at the bed of the harbour with shovels as long as the tide and their big waterproof boots would permit. When the tide came in the barge floated to the back of the sea wall and was emptied there. The ingenuity of those enterprising quixotes led to the adoption of a newer barge, with a flap at the bottom through which the silt of the harbour was dropped. Gradually, as its purpose came to an end, the barge faded away. It lay long at the mercy of tide and storm, enabling mischievous youths to avail themselves of a stolen cruise in the shore shallows. Boy, with that singular veneration for the things which give them delight, stole away pieces of this venerable cleansing cruiser until not a part was left behind. Other features vanished as well, The dock in front of the Braes, with its steps going down to the water, fell into ruin. Every storm completed the work of destruction. The whole structure at that part by which the townfolks had wandered, listening to the vendors of strange articles and watcheng the busy life on land and water, fell into a complete state of decay and the picturesque beauty of the Dockhead of Saltcoats passed into oblivion.

The story of the industrial genesis of the Braes is not too well known. It is said that it was a Quay Street baker, named Robert Roxburgh, whose hobby of purchasing wrecks was the means of bringing the first shipbuilding to the Brae. It is known that Mr Murchie was busily building in the last days of William Fourth's reign. He left for Greenock and was latterly in Troon, but he came back to build the last schooner sent out of Saltcoats, the "Jane", of Irvine. An eyewitness of the launch describes the glory of the day, the volunteers in their grey tunics (led by Robert King Barbour, a famous local lawyer), firing a feu de joie. In early sixties, fine smacks were being sent out of Archie Boyd's shipbuilding yard (afterwards covered by Mr Dillon's stores at the waterside, now demolished). In 1865, the Braes were occupied for building purposes by Daniel Stewart. When the trade had dwindled, there were several attempts at revival, the last ship to be pulled through being the "Warner", which was repaired at the Pans' end and was one of the largest to be so treated in Saltcoats. In August, 1874, an attempt was made to resuscitate the trade of the shipbuilding yard by Peter Barclay & Son, who laid down a patent slip covering over two acres of ground. A couple of wooden piers, nearly 300 feet long, were run out, with a fine stone breast. The boatyard, when some time occupied by Hugh Barclay, covered nearly the whole of the ground from the vicinity of the boathouse to the Saltpans, bordered on the seaside by what at one time had been the parapet wall outside the old boat dock or harbour. Time, the miracle worker, has wrought many changes since and never again in all probability shall the Braes see the restoration of its lost industrial life. With what tender pangs must the native of Saltcoats gaze upon that heart-rending region of unemployed and uncultivated expanse. 

In going round the Braes the wanderer covers a semicircle flooded with the joys and sorrows of local recollection. At the foot of the Well Close, reached by an old balcony (now taken away) was the house where Neil Shaw had his School - where, indeed, many important men "on sea and land" received their education. He was a wee man and walked lame. On a summer day, forty years ago, he lost his life at a boat race in the bay. The boat held two others, Boyd Miller and William Sharp, when all at once a squall arose and the boat was swept from beneath their feet. The others could struggle, but the wee lame man went underneath the waves. The smithy, near the corner of the quay, has been there from time immemorial. Perhaps the willage vulcan first fanned the red embers of his forges for the wants of the few fishermen who plied the nets in Saltcoats Bay. The people of today know the old house, with its nailed horseshoe on the door, as they would an intimate friend; and the roar of the bellows accompanies the crack of a crony or sends its murmur in upon the yarn of some veteran of the seas. We know it best as Arnott's there was a time when it was Peter Broadfoot's, but John Arnott long handled the hammer under his genial superintendence. Sixty years ago the Millers plied their trade in this corner, which has in its day borne the glory of three Saltpans, the queer chimneys of which long peeped above the houses and were visible through the riggings of vessels. Purposeless would it be to describe in detail if one dared, the process of saltmaking within these historic pans. Yet a link with the later days of the industry enables us to gain a glimpse of the work during Robert Maxton's management. The sea water was conducted through a great iron pipe underneath the road. Formerly this was pumped up by a wheel wrough by hand, latterly by an engine. The water was boiled in great cauldrons, round which ran an unprotected platform or staging reached by steps. From this elevation the state of the processes could be viewed. The fires having been taken off and the water evaporated, the piles of salt accumulated at the bottom. The first boiling invariably produced a glutty, unattractive surface, which was carefully skimmed and thrown back to the sea. Gradually the liquid attained a purer consistency, a pipe from the Pans carrying to a barrel outside the drippings of the "pan oil", then in universal local use for rheumatism and forming an unrivalled liniment at sixpence per bottle. The work, as a rule, took a night and a day. Men constantly tended the salt fires, access to which was reached by a descending trench, the coals being brought in on a branch railway line and tumbled down near the furnace doors. As the result of much careful handling the salt became precipitated in beautiful white crystals, which one old salter of today describes as "like icicles". The thicker material adhered to the bottom of the pans and this had to be literally hacked out by chisels. The noise made in this process was always heard outside and sagacious townfolks would say "they're crusting the pans today". The producing of the precious cubes and old salter observes, "was no' a maitter for everybody's knowledge", a kind of Free Masonic sanctity preserving the Saltworks from the intrusion of the curious. Weary enough was the conduct of the intermediate processes and the final purification. Vigilant had the salter to be as he watched the burning embers redden under repeated shovelfuls of parret, the clouds of steam rolling abouve the boiling waters and the flakes of salt gradually settling. Again and again men would test the material in the making by plunging into the pliant mass the "luggie" or splucher whereby it was handled. During the long waits and night vigils they would sit around the fires telling weird tales of those of a Nihilist society. Woe to the man who obtruded upon this privacy, as the salters sat on a great corn chest with their backs up against hugh barrels of blood and lime to be used in the purification. Woe to him, indeed, unless he was able to pronounce the magic password that he had "broken parret" or "emptied dross". Many a houseless wanderer found a downy corner on the warm ashes of the pans. Gone, alas! are the vats, the corn chest, the high pans and the laigh pans, the blood and lime barrels and the great draining tanks into which drip, drip, drip, went the "pan oil" to which so many curative virtues were attributed. The coal-rea, to which the waggons trundled with fuel for the furnaces, is now covered, as indeed the whole site of the Pans, by large dwellings. The two sidings from the railway - one to the coal-rea, one to the Pans - have left nothing but their tracks upon the quay. A mass of undistinguishable rock represents the last of the Salt Pans, so deftly wedded to the rocky foundations that a course of blasting has failed to obliterate entirely the marks of an industry that gave Saltcoats its worldwide fame. 

When the new chemical, "carbonate of soda", was "discovered", a famous man about the Salt Pans used to take trips to Ireland and come back laden with coin, Paddy accepting the powdery gem as a domestic Godsend at a shilling the packet! Other vendors got a ready market for "dairy salt, three centuries old", on which unintended fiction rested a reputation that will never die. Many were the strange characters who got a living at the shorehead in these days. One notable quayside figure was "Labster Jenny", who once attempted suicide from from the quay end. The folds of her ample clothing enabled her to make a graceful plunge and she floated like a buoy. The cold water having brought her to her senses, she called for help and was dragged out of danger. Salt and herring are concomitants and Saltcoats has had to earn its living from both. Threequarters of a century ago the fleets of fishing boats made the harbour lively. James Ritchie & Sons then had the place of shippers, as well as coopers and herring merchants, on a very large scale. The boatmen then sold all their fish direct to the dealers. There were few brisker sights than the fish wharf at early morn when the boats were moored alongside and the fish, overflowing the boxes, lay in silvery heaps on the quay stones. The Murrays have been long the leaders of the fish trade at the harbour, which, through their efforts, was repaired nearly twentyfive years ago from the Pans down to the mid breast. There was also built up a wall levelled by force of the sea some years before. The work in the curing house, were the pride of Lochfyne, is salted and spitted on racks with astonishing dexterity, is one of the sights of modern Saltcoats. The herring is brought in their own boats and it is computed that a thousand boxes a week pass through the stores at the quay. Salmon are still sought for in the Eastern Bay as they were five centuries ago, the headquarters of the industry being the house at the quay which was once the office for ships' registry and dues and from the little upstairs room of which the harbourmaster controlled the spirited operations of the vanished shipping trade. 

Few changes, except those which time makes are apparent upon the old sea wall. The effect of many tempests is visible on every stone. The sea has furrowed it in a hundred places, although it still bears all the patriarchal dignity of decay. One opening, a great jagged orifice in that deep bulk of wall, admits a pleasing glimmer of the sea in its best moods and enables it to lash, with its curdled front, the harbourhead at its worst. Shorewards another great opening once yawned, but this has a history less innocent than the dumping of ballast for which these holes were primarily made. The spot is known to only a few of the older salts as the "Ferryboat Gut", but in more ancient times it was called "The Smugglers' Creek", a natural miniature haven cutting its way in to the rocky foot of the sea wall. A world of mystery and fascination pervades the old Quay House, now hugging the sea wall. Built to endure, like the wall itself, its fabric nearly three feet deep, its harled front and ponderous rafters of Memel timber sufficiently tell its antique story. Its once massive doors, studded with heavy nails, suggest the neccessity of defence against the marauders of long ago. The original doors are still adhering to the battered lintels. A large part of the front compartment formed the bonded stores where lay the huge consigments from the gin stills of Rotterdam and plantations of Jamaica. Great must have been the ships' stores, for the earthen floor space is enormous. On the upper floor, looking today almost the same as it was left many years ago, is a quaint public room where the seafarer and his friends spent the last hours before a voyage in scampering revelry and reels. How the exuberant jolly jack came tumbling down these outside stairs without an overhead plunge into the harbour is a matter that none can understand. The view over the bay, focussed through the upper windows of the quay house, has an inexpressible charm. The old railway ran behind the quay house, but is now enclosed under its roof. On the level, formed into a stable, but unchanged since its years of usefulness, is the one time "Cleikum" Inn, which must have been the oldest place of refreshment in Saltcoats, when newcomers from abroad and old-comers from Arran clinked their glasses under the same old roof; when the lingo of the foreigner mingled with the gibberish of the island Gael and when Jack squandered his earnings gleefully at its door and in the wild glory of his homecoming, dance along the quay singing sea songs. 

The projecting arm of the sea wall is bound up with the full interest of the old shipping days. The path leads over the outer rock boulders of the reef upon which the harbour end rests and the quay having yielded like a slowly-sinking vessel, water comes up almost to the foot. One can stand at the very brink of the breakwater and look down upon the process of crumbling decay. The sea has made violent rents in the garment of this old protecting wall and lashes through its gaping holes. At the end of the pier, on a raised parapet, was an iron support for suspending a beacon of coal fire, no trace of which remains except the scorched stone near where it blazed. To guide the mariner into the haven, there stood at one time an old lighthouse - the seventh oldest in the country - with a fixed light which could be seen for six miles. It was placed there in 1810 and was the only lighthouse in the country that had a spire. It rose twenty-six feet above high-water line. At the pierhead was the flight of stairs, with a score of steps, up which the master and his men climbed to obtain the last glimpse of a departing vessel, watched its progress from the shore until it had become only a speck on the horizon. Now the old staired front against which the "Semiramis" smashed long since has gone into the deep. The lighthouse and spire have gone also and the ragged edges of the fabric look as if meditating a final plunge.

 
Ships and Stirring Shopping Days:"Neptunes" " Sea-dogs" and "Captains Courageous"

At the point where the old pier runs from the sea wall there is a hollowed groove the intention of which, an old salt explains, was to admit a great gate of wooden booms whereby, in times of violent storm, the guardians of the ancient port could shut out the angry force of the waters. The old men who sat by the quayside, looking like so many Neptunes without their tridents and who made it their duty to do service on the visiting ships - James MacDonald, an old man-o'-war's man; Tam Kennedy and others - have vanished from their yarn-spinning perch under the shelter of the old storehouse. And what yarns they loved to tell, great gales and great shipwrecks, of nautical manoeuvres unprescribed in any rule of navigation, of things they had seen that were never paralleled in the history of the sea. How those seadogs barked delightedly in all the secure consciousness of the exclusive character of their yarning and their incontrovertible nautical knowledge, which all accepted as unreservedly as Holy Writ. And of wrecks and storms theirs was an inexhaustible budget. As concerning the "Lady Montgomerie", whose crew were drowned eighty years ago just out there under the quay wall; also as to the "Semiramis", which, in the year following the Corn Law agitation, after her crew were dragged over the wall, settled down on the rocks and left not a trace behind. The "Trelawney"! who is there within a radius of a hundred miles of Saltcoats who cannot tell of this famous wreck? "It was the year in which the late Queen Victoria was born", begins the narrator of the familiar story. "She was a fine ship - four fifty tons - belonging to Glasgow, bound for Jamaica. She went ashore out there. You can see the spot along the Eastern Shore, between the Stevenston Burn and the Irvine Bar. Four men, three of them shipmasters of Saltcoats, lost ribs of the "Trelawney" cast their weird shadows on the wet sand. These unofficial pilots - most of them old man-o'-war men - had often to load her with big stones lest during the night she might be driven from the mooring posts. In the day when no royal mail steamship majestically ploughed the way to Arran, the sloop did all the work, and was the bearer of the packets.

The history of the ships of Saltcoats would require a volume as long as Deuteronomy : if the number of its captains was three hundred, what man shall attempt an account of their vessels? The first vessel of any size to ever built in Saltcoats was the boat of that name, the "Saltcoats", sacred to the memory of Captain Dunlop and launched in 1710. It was the "Stevenston", the captain of which, well on in that century, was Alexander Cuthbertson. There were also the "Big Industry" and the "Wee Industry", the "Wee Industry", captained by John Craig and the big boat, as was natural, by his brother, James. The "Big Industry" ran on behalf of the Auchenharvie Coal Company. Then there was "The Three Brothers", running from Saltcoats to Dublin with Captain MacFee in charge, afterwards Captain Robert Waters, Daniel Coleman and others. Then there were also "The Friend", which belonged to James Miller, who lived in Manse Street; the "Farnham" at the head of which, was Captain Archibald Stirling and latterly Captain Walter Little; the "Nancy" , which had the supervision of Captain Colin Shearer; and the "Eliza" guided by Captain Kennedy; and the "James", under the gallant Captain Cowie, who afterwards sailed in the "Majestic". The "Jean and Grace" is memorable as built for one of the most famous of Saltcoats merchants, Robert Stevenson of Coalhill. Her captain was James Bolton and she had this special interest, that she was the last to come into Saltcoats. All the captains belonged to Saltcoats except Daniel Coleman and Robert Walters, who were natives of Waterford and came as runners in one of the ships deserted by its crew. They became enamoured of the ladies of Saltcoats, married and settled down. Of course that is more than eighty years ago. One must not forget the wee schooner which used to came skimming over the waves, bringing propwood for the pit and known as the "Lark". The two packets remained a lively memory to most of the old inhabitants. The captains were deservedly popular. One was named John MacDonald and he sailed with letters from Saltcoats to Lamlash; the other was Charles Gray, running from Saltcoats to Brodick. Captain Gray, who was a great favourite of his time, lived many a day, after his memorable runs, in one of the little houses, under the shadow of King's Bridge, in Ardrossan Road. When under Plimsoll's order the old ships were condemned, the most interesting feature of the sailing life of Saltcoats departed and the sea was bereft of a whole host of singular sailing craft which has never been equalled since. Their purpose, at all events, was over. They existed for the coal trade and on the coal they thrived.

Most picturesque of all the memories of the Port in its palmy days are those which bring back visions of the much-burdened and important little coaler as she staggered out of Saltcoats under her black load. The story tellers may be very particular as to the cut of her "jib"; they may rend themselves in controversy over her stump top-gallant mast, or boom foresail, but they all agree as to the impression she created and the overpowering devotion of "the children of the sea". Their close domestic attachment to their floating craft cannot be understood by any on not born in the breezy latitude of the land of the salter. Pleasant it was in those days to watch the heavily charged wagons as they crawled along the curve at the pier end, were then urged over the hurries and their contents "coupit" into the darksome hold. The little vessel, loaded up to the "coomins", was safely guided out past the pierhead and then set off with as affectionate a farewell as if she were bound for the West Indies. With what solicitude the people of the port looked for her return : they could tell by the most wonderful calculation when she was due and, reckoning the chances of a breeze, the time when she would appear gliding up the Firth in a drenching sea.

Little wonder that the collier became a nursery for the Clyde captains. Her crews had the instinct of seamanship and the spirit of marvelous endurance. Strong work required strong men; they had to shovel the coal. The business of the coaler was to get to her destination the best way she could and take all the chances. She had to keep riding through the billows whether in a calm sea or weathering a fierce squall. Weather beaten were her crews actually and metaphorically. The coal trade made sailors "worth their salt" and the skippers no mere "carpet captains". "Our was the best of schools", says a survivor, "and don't forget that Captain Cook first went to sea aboard a coal boat". Not a few of the great ones of our own day commenced their career behind the apple-shaped bows of a Saltcoats coaler, whether it was a handy brigantine or a trig schooner is no matter.

Of the "Clitus", the ship which will ever be associated with the name of the redoubtable Betsy Miller, one who sailed with her says that it carried 200 tons. Her chief mission was to take coal to the Irish ports and bring back limestone to Ardrossan. "As every square inch of room was wanted to stow cargo, life in the fo'castle", he says, "made you feel like a giant in Lilliput". There was room enough when you got there; 'twas like sleeping in a travelling mine, sometime in a bunk, sometimes in hammock, but always with all pervading consciousness of being in a world of coal, in coal black depths, with coal sometimes forcing its gritty powder into your hair or choicest articles of food, eaten sometimes by the light of a candle. The glare of day was only admitted by a hatch like the lid of a box, which was lifted to let the water off. As a rule, when you got out of your bunk you had to dress on the scuttle. Betsy's house on deck was really a house, for it was a poop, the only poop of the time in that class of brig. A little window to the right enabled her to sight the operations on the deck level. At night or at early morn you were never sure as to what orifice she would shoot the becapped head out of, with the regulation question : "Hoo's she dae'n noo lads"? "She was a sonsy woman, weel favor't, neither wee nor tall, an' wi' as much sense o' humour as made life aboard gang pleasantly". "Captain" Betsy was by no means inconsiderate of the creature comforts of men who had worked their way amongst the ironbound coasts in temptuous weather and had faced dangers which would have made the crew of a big merchantman of today tremble. A hint given to her that a drop of grog would restore the faded animation of the men, was ever promptly acted upon. A royal grant right royally appreciated. This queen of the water highways never misjudged her crew. She needed no pilot to acquaint her with her way about. She knew the run of the tides and was familiar with the ways of men, money and boats. She was purser more ways than one. When "Captain" Betsy Miller withdrew from the sevice of the sea, there passed out of the maritime life of old Saltcoats the most striking of its unique personalities. For a time her sister Hannah guided the responsibilities of the ship, but eventually the "Clitus" was left on the rocks near the North Pans to be torn to pieces by the angry sea. Some parts of its battered timbers are still visible under the water just outside the bathing basin.

Around the Braes, on the onetime fashionable crescent of the bay of Saltcoats, rest the gardens of the early settlers; here and there a deserted courtyards, with a blighted tree forming the only mark of an earlier civilisation, cleft by backways and closes, into which a man might readily dive and emerge from some far off hole. Even yet after nightfall, when black beams of shadow shoot across these alleys and impart an inky gloom to the corners of the Braes, a stranger hesitates to pass through; but the days when they were dangerous have long since passed. No townsman today pays his shilling to "The Protection Society of Saltcoats", as he had to do in 1793 when foreign vessels brought strange visitors. No longer does the swinging lantern of a friendly seaman illumine those eerie passages, crying the state of the wind for anxious mariners and waking skippers from their airy dreams. The long dyke at the rear of Orr's is a reminder of the sailorman who, two hundred years ago, set up his little kingdom behind it, little dreaming that a busy thoroughfare would rise beside his place of habitation and that in front of that boundary wall the restless sea would bring to Saltcoats shore all the glory of a busy port, destined to flourish for a time; then to fall for ever into a condition of decline from which it would never rise. Truly the tide of that older life have ebbed.

In the Haunts of the "Closs Mailing": Through the Hole in the Wa': "The House with the Painted Room".

Deep hidden behind the newer buildings near the smiddy lies much of the history of Quay Street, with its quaint identities with the ancient mansion of the Millers, its long banished forestair, garden and "closs dyke". What a world of social exclusiveness is represented in its old village renown as the "house with the painted room", in the words of the ancient documents (kindly made available to the author James Dillon), "the large boxed room, commonly called the painted room, with the bedchamber thereto", . . . . and various other curious apartments, all portentiously set forth as pertaining to that house, the first built in the highway, described as "the big slate house in Saltcoats from the forestair thereof to Robert Miller's house and a part of the yard following it from the closs stone dyke downwards and the vacuum between it and the dyke".

There is still visible the yard used in the days of the "Cross Keys" and of Tam Graham, ho was the carrier to the Arran boats, his carts coming in at the gate that is still open as it was then. A close ran through here from the Pan Brae. In its time it was Miller's Close, but in the days of Sandy Ramsay it was "Sawnie Ramasy's Close"; but now it has suffered as complete an annihilation as the personality of its owner, who was known by the complimentary soubriquet of "Sandy Naething". Under one of the old buildings in front was the saddlery of John Banks, whose kindly efforts to teach young Saltcoats, across his counter, the rudiments of learning in those far off days when schools were few, merits the gratitude of posterity. Very few could recognize today the close which led down to Neil Shaw's School and was in later years known as Bannatyne's Close; so narrow that, in its lower half, one has to squeeze sideways between the walls. There still exists, although little known today, the "Hole in the Wa", the singular orifice through which fugitives from justice or the press-gang used to dive to freedom, not a uniformed man daring to follow as they made their way through to the bewildering mazes of the Well Close. The press-gang came here very often. A boat-load of men would land on the beach and make a rush upon the closes, sometimes taking men from their beds. There is a familiar story of the gang having been on one occasion grandly outwitted by the workers in Porter's shipyard, when they were having a dance. The men stole through the waiting officers wrapping in the cloaks and hoods of their partners. But they were not always so successful. In a house in the Well Close an aged crone was so irritatingly obtuse during search, that the officer in charge having kicked the cutty stool on which she sat, her shawl fell off, revealing the hardy and weather-beaten countenance of a jolly jack tar. He was of course carried off. Hereabouts, many years ago, lived a curious character, who, under the name of "Baldie Jergs", moved through the streets selling fish from his hand barrow a strange figure in itself of the fishing life in which Baldie moved. It was ornamented with the rigs of boats, a big red-backed "cruiben" adorning the mast-head and from each corner of this quaint travelling handcart there came forth the sound of little bells. Baldie's grotesque turn out attracted a great crowd of street urchins, over whose heads he usually flourished a gully. 

The Well Close, still the main artery between the onetime highway and the Braes, is the survivor of the "Close Mailing" of pristine days of the village. Narrow, crooked, confined and impenetrable was the "Closewell" of half a century ago; with half its width made to bear the course of an unsavoury burn called "the Goat". The benighted native who had stayed too long in the little thatched change-house at the foot ran a narrow risk of being waylaid by shore prowlers. The antiquity of the close is still traceable, but the "goat" has disappeared. The close takes its name from the venerable ell, now also gone, known as the "Back Yett Well". It was the people's well and gave the ships their necessary supplies, the treasured water for a long journey being rolled in barrels down the strand to boats and transported to the vessels. A coat pit was in use near the well in 1760. It preceded on behind the Saracen's begun in 1780. The quaint old access occupying the northmost corner of the Braes leads through the garden and "closs" of Miss Montgomerie, a genteel residence in the days of Quay Street gentility, known in olden times as "Jenny Mann's Close". Hardly a memory of Jenny Mann remains, but the one time elegance of the place forces itself into its present abandonment. Miss Montgomerie's door was never open; now it is never closed.

All around here speaks of the romantic life of old Saltcoats. As the land of the mariners, the pulse of the little populace on the Braes beat responsively in joy or sorrow as the murmur of the sea brought its message of loved ones on the main. Sometimes there were tidings of disaster other than the foundering of ships. With what aching hearts must the families ashore have heard of the capture of their friends as prisoners of war. During the conflict with France many Saltcoats men were in French prisons. There is a man living on the Braes today whose father was brought up under the care of a French nurse, who came over to this country at that time. A pretty story is that of the two brothers taken prisoners by the French, who were released through the cleverness of their captor's daughter. One of the brothers married his deliverer and brought her home to Saltcoats, where she learned to lisp with unfaltering accent the not too fluent patois of Saltland. Her gallant husband died and she became the wife of his brother, thus completing the romantic interest of one of the most singular incidents of a stirring time. Saltcoats had its day of naval warfare. There was living in the sixties, James M'Donald, who had served with the "Powerful" and was the only survivor of the battle of Camperdown. Even in his advanced years he was able to handle a gun with the best and was entrusted with the duty of firing the cannon at Seabank on occasions of local rejoicing.

Time has not dealt too rudely with the landmarks; but sooner or later the victorious march of improvement must overwhelm them. 

Most of the houses of entertainment, giving back all the imagined echo of older merriment, are gone this many a year. 

Impossible is it in these changed days to trace, in the surroundings of old water gates of the ancient town - black with age some of them and with the barnacles of many a score years - the whole wynds, lanes, port, "lands" and courts, of which some battered balcony and projecting turret stairs are the only with which the Braes abounded; the now dingy and dusty tenements where the best days of the skippers of old were spent on the fringe of the sea they loved.

The Rock of Romance: Castleweerock and the Windmill. The Ancient Craigwell

The northwest horn of the harbour bay forms a rocky promontory accessible at low water, but at some times completely surrounded by the sea. Tradition has assigned to it the place of an old Pictish castle. For time out of count it has been known as "Castleweerock". There is no trace of the castle, which stood there in all its solitariness centuries ago. One is left to fancy the time when the Pict wandered here, listening to the wild wash of the sea and the piercing notes of the seagulls. It has been the rock of romance for young Saltcoats. Mothers who, as children, had played on the peninsula or dabbled their hands in the surrounding pools, revelled in the wild legends bequeathed to them; and children who grew old became equally enthusiastic over the memories of that wonderful fairyland - sweeter and more poetic than the scene of any of Grimm's enchanting tales. To the native abroad no word of greeting strikes the key-note of home with such singular sympathetic force as the word "Castle-Weerock". There is little difficulty in realising the unkempt glories of the site even half a century ago, the old tumbledown thatch houses, thrown here and there without plan, some crossing the pathway, or dipping their gable-ends into the puddles of the seashore; others sitting on rocky headlands with steps down to the shingle and looking, when lit at night, like the dreamland pictures of the story book. One of the two outermost houses blocked, for years the access of the wayfarer. The pathway between the houses and the land was so narrow as to afford little footing and the ends of the houses, dipping into the seafront, left no way round them at all. In fact, the houses on the rocks became, at times, complete little "Castle-Weerock" in themselves and the residents acquired so distinct a feeling of moral as well as geographical independence that to this hour one who has hailed from the "Weerock" regards himself as a superior being. On the wild stretch of bent and furze that lay behind the rocks stood, long ago, the old Windmill, a quaint old ruin with rusty iron bars in the places where widows had been. Some said that the bars were the relics of its former use as a prison. Modern improvement has made short work of the historic landmark. The green fields by which it was surrounded have become covered up and the grassy slopes turned into more prosaic uses than play-places for the village. The last relic of the Windmill, its rotund base, lies at the back of tall tenements. It has been displace from its throne of distinction in older Saltcoats and only its name is given to the one-time rocky pathway, now turned into Windmill Street. In the days of the American War, the site near the Windmill was unbuilt on. The lands of the Misk park extended down to the water edge and the roadside wound itself towards the Salt Pans. Perhaps the most interesting house in the vicinity of the Windmill was that which belonged to William Fairrie and which became, in 1804, the residence of the famous Captain John Dunlop. Near there also was the house of the M'Phees, well-known in the seafaring life of Saltcoats; and beyond that, almost at the Windmill foot, the house of Charles Little, whose experiences on the Spanish Main formed a never ending source of recollection. He was full of the days of Lord Nelson and had had the experience of being taken away by the press-gangs in the midst of a courtship. After along absence abroad, he completed the most romantic of stories by coming home to find his intended bride still ready to receive him. Murphy, the famous carpenter and boatbuilder of the Braes, lived near by until his transference to Greenock.

Before 1780 little of the Windmill land was built on. In that year the stretch of rocky beach was enclosed; but for many years a space was kept vacant to allow of the in-dwellers drawing water from an old well in a cool, recessed square. This was the ancient and entirely forgotten "Craigwell". Here, in days gone by, Adam Kelso had his house and weaving shop. His grandson was one of the notable captains of Saltcoats. The shuttle was long plied in this strange old house by the rocks and after many vicissitudes the house was burned down. Now a three storey building sits upon the venerable Craigwell and the quaint old thatched cots, with the upturned boats that lay upon the rocky bulwark at their doors, have been eliminated from this picturesque corner under and unpoetic hammer of modern improvement. That part of the old Windmill territory verging on the Dockhead and now covered by the curing houses, was built on for the first time in 1814. Alexander Ritchie had boats hereabouts a good many years ago. Tom Bolton, whose name figures prominently in the older annals of the town, had his garden ground on what is now a range of old buildings. The passage across the road behind the weaver's shop down to the sea, known as Bolton's Lane, has gone out of remembrance. There was always possible a circular walk round the shore to the back of Hill's Park, part of the ground resting on a rocky eminence (now Eglinton Street) afterwards blasted to make a street through to the sea. It is long since a way was made round the beach to join the noble seafront. What was there previously was a quagmire. Economical ideas of the time led to the application of the loose fabric of the Windmill to the improvement of the roadway. Further along the sea track and resting within another peninsular cluster of rock, is the "Lady's Pool" the circular enclosure of water being less elegantly described as the "Buckie Pat". This the people have surrounded with all the fascination of mystery and romance. Beside it, however, was the unromantic chemical work of the North Pans and it was used for steeping the lime required for making carbonate of soda. Upon the very rim of the "pat" there still rests the gable of the North Pans, against which was built the Bathing House, now forming so artistic a feature of the water crescent viewed from any point. At the foot, in all its alluring immensity, lies the largest bathing basin in Scotland. Between Castleweerock and the Bathing Pond, on a stretch of level ground now washed away, stood an old sawmill, with logs lying in the adjacent creeks. The sturdy old gable at the corner of the now fashionable street - Eglinton Street - arrests attention by reason of its rampart-like wall slanting obliquely from the thoroughfare. This house, which marked the commencement of the lane to the "cow pasture", dates from 1828 and stood next to the place of a famous currier, which has disappeared. No part of the town has worn its garb of antiquity so threadbare as the street of the Windmill, yet the strong arm of improvement has brushed aside many of its ancient charms.

With visitors passing and reposing from early morn till dewy eve, while the happy summer lasts, Eglinton Street - the transformed Carter's Lane of long ago - seems as if its great width were all too narrow for the swarming crowds from Glasgow who pour through it. The Holly House Temperance Hotel, which is at the corner of Windmill Street touching the main thoroughfare, is a relic of bright and interesting days. Until 1877, when Dr Ritchie Brown lived there, the house, with its fine garden and commanding stretch of frontage, was occupied by Miss Ellis, the daughter of the late Rev Mr Ellis, the famous Burgher minister, who was a familiar figure in the Saltcoats of the stagecoach days. The reverend gentleman was well known in the streets, carrying his stick, which he used alike in the interests of peace and war, either to clinch an argument or to terrify some fighting urchin. It was called "the Bishop's Crosier". Taking off his coat once in the heat of a spirited argument he said, "Taking off divinity' here's Jamie Ellis". No one can pass that fine old house without having in mind the little upstairs snuggery in the minister's study at the corner where he and his henchman, the Rev Mr Ronald, bent themselves to the loved task of dishing probationers. "Go to Banff" was laconic instruction addressed to a timorous young clergyman, who was left in considerable doubt as to the exact geographical destination intended. What is now a fashionable way to the front (made in 1859) was at one time a stretch of rocky ground, known as the "Cow roading", no wider than about a dozen feet, with water splashes here and there, "reel-rall" plots of ground and ditches and bogs, that were a source of danger to the wayfarer. This narrow strip was assigned to the carters of Saltcoats and their machines and horses were housed here. Overgrown as it was with patches of reeds and coarse grasses and chequered with pools and brackish water, it was then as unattractive a place as one might wish for. Mrs Graham's park, which became Melbourne Park, was at first intended to be "the Victoria Park". No one would imagine the old condition of the site from its pretentious residences leading directly to the public park and bandstand, giving access in summer to the golden sands. Windmill Street originally adjoined Chapelwell Street in one continuous line. A lane passed through the run-rigs leading to the townend. This in 1812 was opened out as "the New Road", now Hamilton Street, for a long time there were few houses and only a hedge on the right hand. The ambition was to break through the ancient environment and develop a new and fashionable thoroughfare. This expectation has not been yet realised, the people still clinging to the to the joys of shopping in Dockhead Street and at most times Sabbatic quiet reigns in this ninetyseven years old "New Road". Barclay's represents the manse of the Anti-Burgher minister, the Rev Mr Ronald. Further out was the West School, kept by Alexander Smith, the father of Captain John Smith. The house was in 1836 the second outmost in the street; but a stretch of building was rapidly thrown up beyond it. Here first reading or literary parties were held. Here, in 1837, the Mechanics' Institute, under the presidency of the notable chemist, William Burns, had its beginning. A dairy now marks what was a piece of vacant ground beside the manse of the famous Dr Landsborough. The manse was acquired in 1849. There the respected doctor fell a victim to cholera and died. At the same time his sister-in-law and a servant both succumbed to the plague.

From the Town End to the Old "Kirk Stile" and the Manse. The Chapel on the Chapel Brae.

For many years there stood in lonesome isolation at the Town-end, at the path leading to the Salt Pans, the genteel old mansion of the Curries, now a public office. The pleasant retreat beside the Catholic Church dates from 1861. St Mary's "Star of the Sea" was already in existence, this community having been gathering for ten years over from the little school hall in Bradshaw Roading to their church and presbytery, which, with a fine tree shaded approach, have long formed an attractive feature of the Ardrossan Road. The internal embellishments and decorated sanctuary make the church one of the prettiest in the West. A vanished beauty spot of the road was the Burnside Cottage, afterwards burned down. It stood where the garden is now, on the banks of the Galloway Burn, which ran across the way towards the sea, sparkling in and out amongst the rough scrub and whins. The picturesque sight of the women laying out their clean white washings on the heath and youth "guddling" for minnows in the burn (which often overflowed across the roadway) is a thing of the long past. The burn has disappeared, the only memorial of its existence being a slab of stone projecting from the base the parapet at Dr Campbell's, which was part of the Stonework of the rustic bridge. The building of the railway embankment brought into existence the "King's Bridge", which takes its name from no more royal source than Peter King, its builder. The little cots sheltering under the shadow of the embankment had their chimney-tops appearing above the parapet line. The diverting sight of smoke issuing from the dyke, like some goblin picture in the fairy tale book, was not lost upon the youths of Saltcoats, who were wont take great delight in placing their caps on the heads of the chimneys and precipitating volumes of smoke upon the dwellers beneath. In those outer boundaries of old Saltland touching the border line of Ardrossan, the magicians of the mason-craft have been busy. The "little planting" has gone under. It would be hard to find the "Beechcroft" of the past and the little "but and ben" on the roadside; the mill house of Mrs Logan, better known to history as "Jean Neil's". The corner shop at Stanley Place now stands almost upon the spot. There have been countless changes in the Ardrossan Road. Many sigh over the past skating pleasures of the marshy hollow now buried under Bay View Cottage garden; the child-like glories of the once beautiful Planting, with its climbing tree, its rustic bridge, wimpling stream and little mineral water house, now under the benign directorate of the Mineral Well Syndicate, through whom the waters of the old "physic well" are disposed of at a penny per glass. The three cornered patch of ground, the recently abandoned Police Station standing upon it, brings back the very quaint methods of incarceration of sixty-five years ago. At that time it was only one house and prisoners were kept as in a regular jail, being permitted the pleasure of "hard labour in the garden". At night, when all was still, they were allowed into the dark recesses of the moorland and exercised as far as Ardrossan. They never ran away except in fun, giving occasional irritation to Jamie Davidson, who accompanied them with his big retriever dog. When sometimes they would hide behind the whins Jamie would say, "If you dinna come this meenit you'll never git oot again".

Almost under the shadow of the North Parish Church, at the angle of the old public green. the populace came, in the summer of 1835, to hail with acclamations the famous Irish Liberator, Dan O'Connell. This had been for years the meeting place of the weavers to discuss the affairs of State and hear the newspapers read. The church further down has reached its record of half a century. In the autumn of the same year they formed themselves into a church and the building with the Gothic door and pointed windows arose in the beginning of 1863 from the architectural designs of Lewis Fullarton.

The history of the Crofthead is full of subtle pathos and romantic mystery that make the work of a storyteller at the one moment delightful and difficult, intricate and congenial. From the Braefoot to the town-end undulations to the sea front. The Boltons had been possessors in the demise in 1665 of Grisel Bolton, "spouse to John Brown, younger in Crofthead". That they assumed of a chevron between three fleurs-de-lys. Prior to 1780 there were few houses and even half a century ago the croft looked the very model of the an Ayrshire clachan of the olden time. In that field, held the ground that has long since lost its interesting name of Bartlemore's Garden. On the main ridge of the ancient croft was what is known still as "Crofthead House", dating from 1782. It pertained in the old days to a famous weaver, John Smyllie and in 1849 belonged to James Miller, shipmaster, in the Crofthead. An old dry dyke builder, named Vennart, built out of his earnings the little centre of life known as Vennart Place, Up to Sandringham Park, into the heart of a place of rural simplicity and peace, came the railway, the engines shunting and puffing all day long, to take away the coal thrown down on what had been the Sandy Park of an older time. It was in September, 1860, that the founders of the Bowling Club secured for a nominal fee a part of the ground of the Crofthead plots, bounded by the garden wall of the manse and having an entrance from the Gasworks Bridge., The green was opened in the summer of 1861. William Brown, of Parkend, the president, made the address. The first Eglinton Gold Medal was won by a shoemaker, Thomas Shaw. 

What a world of fascination lies behind the grand old days recalled by the heavy timbered rafters and low browed doorways still visible in the old Crofthead. Some have been outwardly remodelled, but within there are the queer old presses, stairways gliding behind mysterious doors, capacious fireplaces suggestive of the hook and swivel and ben-rooms with a step down equally reminiscent of the old clay floors. 

Such a model is James Beattie's, which was Grier's in the days gone by. Once inside the passageway one sees the old trap up which the materials for the loom were hoisted. At the back door are quaint faces carved in wood modelling, the bonneted heads of the weavers of long ago. At the foot of the long garden rests something of historic interest, for it is the DEER PARK of the Earls of Eglinton, bringing back, in one interesting flood of association, the time when that whole stretch was an uninvaded territory, bearing from here to the sea the serenity of the still earlier time when the sandaled feet of monks threaded the green mazes of the park and the Chaplain of Saltcoats lived in his rectory close by, little dreaming of the whirlwind of chance and change which was to overwhelm this place of onetime sanctity and sequestered beauty.

Deep in the recesses of the past are the reflections called up by the Kirk Stile, which stood at the gap leading into the old church, that Kirk Stile, which a well-known local bard sings so touchingly:

"Tho' my darg is sair an' heavy, for I toil frae dawn to dark,
still the thocht that Mary loes me is solace in my wark;
an' it mak's the lang day shorter, an' It brighter semms the while 
When I think upon the Gloamin' an' the auld Kirk Stile".

Now the stile is replace by an ancient but unromantic gate. A little pathway led from the Crofthead to the Kirk Stile, to the southeast of which was a square plot. Around this lay the kirkyard and the yard dyke of a sailor. Here came to live and die one whose name will go down to posterity, Hugh Higgin, the occupant of the curious large building known as the "HERO-HOUSE". The name is a vexation to the antiquarians, but its origin is simple, the word "Hero" representing the name of the ship in which the daughter of one of its former occupants shared. It dates from 1783 and looks today much the same as it did when Hugh had his weaving shop and beaming loft here. Hugh lies in the churchyard almost in a straight line from its gable. One of the figures of the neighbourhood was Peter Kelly, the collier poet, born in the Eighteenth Century, who was living up to 1832 in an old building a stone's-throw from the manse. He thought himself equal to Burns, and preserved his dignity as Saltcoats Poet Laureate by his costume, consisting of Kneebreeches and white belt. On Sundays he was conspicuous in his red vest and blue coat. Of a later time was Robert Irvine, the great Freemason, one of the founders of St John's of Ardrossan, who died in 1859.

Two other well-known worthies of the Crofthead were the brothers Ralph and Tom Bolton, who, in their free-and-easy moments, contributed to the local humour, maintaining at most times the old regulation dress chimney-top hat and cutaway coat. One moved in rear of the other, Ralph's favourite saying being:

"Ralph tills the ground;
Tom melts the money".

"Ladysmith" sits on the site of their dwelling place. The Manse, resting far back in its elegant enclosure, with its pretentious lodge and gateway, bridge approach and shady trees, is the most interesting feature of the Crofthead, to which it has given the newer name of "Manse Street". The ancient Parish Manse with its but and ben, little study and thatched roof, stood on the right bank of the Stanley Burn; but as it was too far off for the then minister, Mr Dow, he never inhabited it. He lived in a hired house at Saltcoats until 1746. Here he resided until his death in 1787. The present manse was built a little further back on the glebe in that year.

The first house of the ministers has been described as of one storey in height with a flower plot in front, a fence separating it from the street, the front receiving adornment from its green painted gate and rosetipped garden plot. At the end of 1860 a lodge had to be provided at the entrance, in view of the exposed state of the gateway and approach. In front of this stood the Manse Well, which has disappeared. It was Alexander, the tenth Earl of Eglinton, who first conferred the glebe. As the manse and glebe nearer Ardrossan were in his way, his lordship agreed to give a new glebe at Saltcoats adjoining the church and the old manse was turned into a stable. The churchyard was of earlier foundation. It was not until 1760 that the public ceased to bury in the old churchyard on Ardrossan Hill, although the Earl had then given ground for the purpose around the church. Included in this grant was the Deer Park of Earls of Eglinton, now the south-west end of the Manse Street gardens. Additions to the churchyard were made at later dates, the last to be thrown in being taken from what had been Mrs Barr's garden. There are many living who remember the advent of the hearse in 1860 when the little kirkyard pathways had to be widened to let it in. Robert Craig, of the Queen's Arms, had the first funeral carriage "to hold four inside the hearse underneath."

Respecting the church yard, with its piles of crumbling grave-stones half hidden in the neglected grass, a resident near by recalls with horror the time of the cholera visitation, when the patients were taken to wooden building erected within the place of interment. Gruesome as the thought is, the poor sufferer must have experienced a shudder as he realised the character of his surroundings. Many used to pass with melancholy state over the solemn heaps which the kirkyard encloses, but few of late years troubled themselves about this Necropolis of Saltland's illustrious dead. The story of old Saltcoats is traceable on every head-stone and all around, the pathos of its maritime life is made apparent by memorials to those who have found a watery grave. The memory of the ministers of the church is conspicuously perpetuated.

The churchyard has its own weird contributions to the thrilling legends of the resurrectionist days, when men sat through the night guarding the dead against the despoilers and with a singular admixture of veneration and callousness, playing cards for "three-bawbee stakes", or tendering the "double six" ower a strong "quairt"; putting "speerits doon to keep the speerits up". The parish church of Ardrossan at Saltcoats was built in 1744. Its life was a romantic one and its vicissitudes many. The Church's story ended on 29th November 1908, when it was closed for ever; when the echo of the Psalms of David no longer resounded over the deep-bottomed balcony, filled with the spirits of the skippers and mariners of long ago; when the great gaunt, square pews in which the lairds of Cadell and Montefode, of Boydston and Knockwart and Dykes and Kirkhall worshipped, were occupied for the last time. No longer are the good folks of the town called to devotion by the sounding of the old bell, which followed the fortunes of the church from a rowan tree on the Cannon Hill, down to Saltcoats. Its tongue has ceased to vibrate and the old chain, already rusty and weather worn, which unites the rope to its movement, dangles idly in the breeze.

The church has had a distinguished ministry and is full of interesting tradition, which have been elsewhere recently dealt with, in connection with its transference to the handsome new Parish Church in the Westend. It was the Rev James Steven (afterwards Dr Steven, of Kilwinning), who obtained the poem of "The Calf", written by Burns. The mystery surrounding its delivery has never been solved. The story goes that a knock came to the minister's door, then in the south wall next to the pulpit, now built up. A packet, with black seals, was delivered to the bellman by a man muffled in a horseman's coat. The suspicion has been long entertained that the mysterious horseman was Burns himself.

A singular ornament of the old church, transferred to the new, is the model frigate suspended from the roof. It represents a vessel of fifty guns, a miniature of the "Sans Josef", captured from the Spanish in 1797, on which Lord Nelson received the swords of the officers of the vanquished squadron. It was the work of one Willie Dunlop, "gunner's mate", a Canal Street youth, who had a narrow escape from death by a shot which passed over him while he was lying in his hammock. The model has been in the church for fully a hundred years.

The Parish Church and churchyard has had its quaint officers. In 1806, John Reid was keeper of the mortcloth. It is long since a mortcloth was used. The ravages of cholera in 1834 led to the abandonment of what had become a serious danger. William Sharp was sexton in 1864. Latterly the offices of gravedigger and bellman were combined. There is still a lively memory of Jack "Ardrossan", who was a foundling and was so called because, being filius nullus, "the pairish had nane ither to gie 'im".

The original church of the parish stood on Ardrossan Hill, occupying the site of a still more ancient establishment. Enthusiastic searchers have measured its depth and breadth and pictured its four feet of descent beneath the churchyard level, the few steps that went down to the clay floor, the old pulpit of fir and the holes and tatters of its quaint "thek"; but few have been able to picture its pre-Reformation predecessor, beyond the vague conception of its "two altars and valued pictures", its "holy water font" and belfry, from which there tinkled merry music far down the estuary of the Clyde. Obscure also is the record of its dedication; some describe it as being to St Peter, others to the Virgin, but there is everything to justify the belief that, as it had altars to both, it was under the patronage of both, which means that it would bear the composite title (as in the old grants of the Earls of Eglinton) to "the Blessed Virgin Mother and Saint Peter in bonds". There is no doubt as to St Peter's altar for it is mentioned in a charter by John Lockart, Lord of Barr, providing for an annual rent to the chaplain to celebrate three Masses yearly for the repose of his soul. This is dated March 12 1438. The patronage of the church was under the Archbishop of Glasgow; but the presentation of a vicar was within the Royal prerogative. It existed as far back as the early years of the Thirteenth Century, as is shown by a document in the Glasgow Chartulary, dated 1226, being an agreement between Walter, Bishop of Glasgow and John, Abbot of Kilwinning, whereby the bishop granted to the abbot sixteen shillings in name of pension payable from the church of Ardrossan. The authorities bear that the kirk had "two dependent chapels within the Barony, one at Saltcoats, one at Busbie" and that, as Saltcoats was a town when Ardrossan was still without population, the so-styled "Ardrossan Church" lived by and for Saltcoats. The superabundant flow of fervour which could sustain a church on Ardrossan Hill and a Chapel within Saltcoats presents its own compliment to the early piety of the good people of Saltcoats. 

On the Footprints of the Monastics. Through the Cloister and Orchards. A Ruin and a Relic.

From the fact that the church of later years was transferred from Ardrossan Hill to Saltcoats, many have been led to surmise that the church of those early days referred to in the monastic vellum may have been the church of the parish of Ardrossan at Saltcoats. It may be no reflection on the dignity of Ardrossan to say that such a view is not ill grounded. What is important is that Saltcoats has from the very earliest times had its own chapel, of which the Chapelhill, the Priest Dyke, the Chapelbrae and the Chapelwell, form sufficiently intelligible evidence. The little eminence upon which the early chapel stood is still fragrant with memories of its beautiful past. Any endeavour to resurrect the exact location of this early religious house is regarded as vain and the lapse of time and the alteration and obliteration of landmarks and, it must be added, the neglect of early antiquarians, have made the task impossible. That it stood on the brae which still bears its name is an obvious conclusion. That it rested at the extremety of the Chapelhill Gardens is equally so and as the "Priest croft" and the "Priest dyke" can be readily defined by any one familiar with the site, the tract of investigation becomes narrowed down to a small area indeed. Not a vestige of any ruin remains today and no distinct oral or other evidence has floated down the stream of tradition. A lady, who lived three-quarters of a century ago in one of the old houses on the Chapel Brae, says that there lay at the back of her garden the remains of an old ruin, grown over with wild green and docken, which an ancient forbear had assured her was the original chapel of Saltcoats. It stood twenty or thirty feet from the wall at the top of the brae and as far as two gable lengths from the front of the house. It has disappeared underneath the new Erskine Church, now built on the brae; but as it fits with singular exactness into the scope of enquiry and seems to have commanded a considerable degree of authenticity and the support of long tradition amongst the older residents of the neighbourhood, the belief that it was the veritable ruin of the Chapel merits a greater degree of approval than all the written or merely speculative material which has appeared. Hardly any doubt has been expressed as to the old and crumbling fabric of the "Priest dyke", which even today is regarded by the most disinterested amongst the older settlers as having enclosed the priest's house and garden or croft. It was a dry dyke of the ancient pattern and was in the last stages of dilapidation when taken down by John Vennart a good many years ago. With the location of the old Chapel of Saltcoats all but accurately realised and the "priest's dyke" not long removed from human vision, it is less difficult to call up the gardens of the Chapelhill. Along the descending ground through which the railway now runs and up which narrow streets and lanes came to be drawn steeply, were the fair gardens owned by the monks of Kilwinning and tilled with their own hands. To them a sensible tradition has assigned a little monastery, for the frocked community must needs have had wherewith to dwell and eat and sleep and intone the Latin Psalms. At the Chapelhill foot lay the Chapel Well, which is still called "the Monks' Well", as indeed it rightly was, since it filled alike the chalice and wallet. The long four-sided space to which have been given the names of four streets, was then a cloister, with its fair smooth sward of grass, set about with flowers, with here and there a tree and divers carols or nooks where a monk might read his office alone. From the well the monastic enclosure ran eastward to the village green. Beside the well, in a cool recess at the foot of the brae, sat long ago a little ruin which the townspeople had come to regard as the last relic of that early monastic establishment which has vanished as if it had never been. A great gaswork sits on part of the site of the pleasant orchards, the last of which were growing their fruit until only a few years ago; and the commercial life and interest of the town have encircled the onetime realm of sanctuary and retirement. Happy must these poor Benedictines have been as they lived by the waterside deep in the arts of farming and gardening, carrying out the spirit of the Tyronesian order to whom they belonged, "Ora it labora". The present church on the brae, with its fine spire rising eighty-five feet from the base, presents a landmark of newer "Crofthead" to which the most artistic taste could not take exception; and it comes into view with restful harmonious effect amongst many survivors of a far older past. It is the home of the United Presbyterians, and the story of its quaint rise and development has been most interestingly dealt with in a volume published on the occasion of its Centenary Memorial in 1892. It was opened on 8 July 1866, by Dr Robson, of Glasgow, during the pastorate of Rev George Fairgrieve, who had been a colleague with Mr Ronald in the old church in Countess Street, of which something remains to be said in another chapter.

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