On turning into Countess Street in the olden time, the eye
rested quickly upon the genteel house to the right, with its little genteel
door and knocker, where lived the three Miss Wilsons. The house maintained its
pleasant odour of gentility until removed to be turned into other uses than a
stately residence. Their place has become a depot of Italian refreshments. It
belonged to William Thomson, skipper. South of it was the house of Captain
William Service. A stretch of ground on the right was included in the
territory of James How, the skipper. This became broken into many parts.
Skipper How's own house, which had survived from 1714, re-built nearly a
hundred years later and is now the possession of Leah Caplin.
The most interesting memorials of that side concern the
site a little further on, for it was the scene of the early devotions of
Burghers. The ground in 1791 belonged to John Lusk, shipmaster and innkeeper.
There the Burghers built a small kirk only 52 feet long and 36 broad, with a
stair at the side. The little meeting house, with its urailled stair, looked,
in later days a very plain building indeed. The Reverend Mr Orr, of Fenwick,
used to take pleasure in recalling the plight in which the congregation found
themselves owing to an unfriendly proprietor who built a wall round the
church, on which occasion minister and worshippers had to mount the wall to
get to their service. The first ordination took place in a quarry and
sometimes a park was rented for a tent. It was 1798 when the late Rev James
Ellis was called, and under that remarkable man, the church rose from its
earlier depression. His humour was as broad as his learning. He gave young
preachers "dogs' wages", as they had "to bark for their
meat". Sometimes, in a fit of learned abstraction, he would seize old
John Brown, the church officer, by the hair of the head; and to a restless
child, would say, "Tam Baillie, if ye dinna sit still L'll name ye".
Here the "Associate Burgher Congregation or Society in Saltcoats"
remained until its name became shorter and its principles more modernised. The
successors of that congregation now worship on the Chapel Brae. The railway
came and swamped in its operations the Burghers' house which went to make way
for a large business establishment. Outside of the one time Burgher Church
there lay the angle of the tattered delta round which the old "Goat
Vennel" from the village ran towards Kyleshill. The square open space
formed the little "loan" and straggling eastward between the lane
and the street continued by the Earl of Eglinton, there lay the strange
collection of houses, back-houses and gardens which it is difficult to realise
with proper definiteness today. At the very angle was the little refreshment
shop of Sarah Ramsay. How often, through those crooked pends and alleys, ran
old Bob Reid, the drummer, proclaiming the savoury excellencies of Sarah's
tripe. In the recessed space or loan stood a famous old well. In continuation,
past Sarah's, were several houses terminating in Mc Allister's bakery
establishment. In the triangular space itself lay the houses, yards and
gardens of the Wilsons, the successors in the carrying trade of Saltcoats in
pre-railway times. Near the top of the lane, beyond the kirk, stood a
two-storey house with a weaver's shop below the school of which Mrs Aitken was
the preceptress. Onwards, the lane took the traveller to the gates of the
railway. To restore the way which has become erased from modern Saltcoats, one
has to indulge in much mental picturing. There were two crossings, one from
the main thoroughfare at the foot of Raise Street and another nearer
Kyleshill, known as "Tam McWhirter's Gates".
The space within the angled territory of the Goat Vennel
still bore the old name of "the Flush". To the west of Daniel
McAlister's and latterly Jean McAlister's, was the wall separating William
Wilson's ground. This and the surrounding territory had all at one time
appertained to Thomas Bradshaw, as one of the historic inn yards, with right
to a ninth part of the Bowbidge lands.
On the far side of the church the ground that had belonged
in 1773 to Samuel Mitchell, innkeeper in Saltcoats, represented the
commencement of the historic territory known as "Orr's Nine Yard". A
quarter of a century later it passed to his daughter, who married John Lusk,
the granter of the lands of the Burgher Church. There stood a two-storey slate
house, barn and stable of Robert Lusk, merchant in Saltcoats, adjoining the
ground belonging to Robert How, son of the famous Grisel. To the south lay
Captain Brown's house and to the north that of Agnes Hutcheson, Robert How's
wife. In 1730 this whole ground came to Mary Jack. Mary conferred it on John
Watt, shoemaker, in 1737. The possessions came to Thomas Vicar, in Bury, his
heir, in 1830, then to Margaret Vicar's; and this is why they obtained the
name of "Peggy Vicar's". The houses were so far sunk below the line
of the road (each with its little green and dip well) that coming over the
Kyles Bridge, the feet of the pedestrian were as high as the ridge tiles of
Peggy Vicar's roofs.
Part of the property had been derived from Robert Stevenson
in 1855; and when the railway came his trustees conveyed it to the Company,
who, under an Act of 1821, formed a new road alongside, to the east of the
Goat Lane. Here Harris had his refreshment house and his building line on the
east of the lane; but as the space between his property and the new road would
have caused the Company to build a retaining wall, the line was brought
forward and everything levelled as it is now. Upon this cluster of the
Vicars', so thoroughly illustrative of the old village life, there were
erected the handsome mansion and offices of the Royal Bank of Scotland,
surrounded by beautiful trees and as these fell under the railway operations,
a new site had to be found.
We have now emerged upon the old street up the hill from
the Harbour and formerly known as Kyle Street, before falling under the
designation of Kyleshill. Between this and the eastern Bay there lies a
palatial stretch of buildings ranging from Finlay's Brae to the outermost
point of the Bay. This is the stately Mission Coast Home, erected under a
scheme of philanthropy unexcelled in the West and conferring upon the
convalescent throughout Scotland the benefit of a comfortable home under able
and considerate management. The promoters purchased, in May, 1869, priorities
with gardens facing the sea. Before then there were only twostorey cots
forming ten apartments on elevated ground and one a few feet higher. To the
most elevated a verandah was added, with stairs leading downwards to beautiful
walks and gardens. The home was opened in May 1866, when there existed only a
room and kitchen containing five old women from the Calton district of
Glasgow. By 1874 a new hall was opened, capable of accommodating 200 people
and additions have been gradually made since. Now, looked at from the East
Promenade at night, with light hushed down and a sense of twilight glory
resting upon the building, one might be pardoned for imagining it to be like a
little palace built in air.
The Institution was the foundation of Messrs Smith and
Bryden, whose enterprise has formed the theme of many pens.
