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 chimneytops 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 Syndi-cate, 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
sixtyfive 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 Sandringhanm 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, brigg 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 idley 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".
