THE DWELLING HOUSE OF JAMES SHEARER

The Story of the Tam O'Shanter Inn

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Written ond illustrated by JOSEPH D. SHEARER I A SOUVENIR OF THE I TAM O'STTANIER MUSEUM ( AyR- scorLAND THE DWETLING HOUSE OF JAMES SHEARER The Story of the Tam O'Shanter Inn

Written and illustrated by

JOSEPH D. SHEARER THE BUILDING SEOUENCE ON THE PROPERTY BETWEEN 1597 AND 1849

The Shapes of the Houses Before '1748 Are Only Conjecture. No Description Exists

1597 Otd House on South Part"ot Site 1647 and 1695 New House Old House Emptv

1695 Old House Collapsed Between 1695 and 1748 Area Cleared

Between 1748 and 1753 Rebuilt by James Shearer 1849 South Part ot Tenement Demolished and Made One Large Tenement and Rebuilt The Early History

The two storey building now known as the Tam O'Shanter Museum has stood on the east side of the High Street in the Townhead of Ayr for nearly two and a half centuries and is the only example left in Ayr of the dwelling house of an ordinary eighteenth century family. The earliest surviving docu- ment which mentions the property on which it stands is a Title Deed of 1597 when there was a house, already old, on the south part of the site. During the sixteenth century the house and yard had been owned by Adam Bizzert, a weaver and then by David Blair, a cooper. The area where the present museum stands was vacant and it remained thus until sometime after 1647. The old house was at that time without a tenant, perhaps uninhabitable, and the owners William and Gabriel Cunningham built another house on the vacant site and let it to Alexander Graham, a weaver. By 1695 the original house had fallen down, like many others in Ayr which was then in a state of economic depression and the whole property was purchased from Gabriel Cunningham's son by James Wilson, a merchant of Ayr who owned land and houses all over the town. Thirty years later the property passed to James Wilson's son Joseph Wilson of Barnmure, former Provost of Ayr. Sometime during the first half of the eighteenth century the original house had been demolished for by 1748 there was only one house standing, the other according to a Title Deed of that year "now taken down and only the area remaining." Whether the remaining house, built between 164'7 and 1695, was the present one is doubtful. The present building covers more than half the width of the plot and this would scarcely leave enough room for the original house on the south part of the site plus access to the plot. It is more likely that it was a one storey two-roomed cottage for in February of 1748 Elizabeth Wilson, the only surviving child and heir of Joseph Wilson, with her husband Alexander Farquhar of Gilmilnscroft, sold the property to James Shearer for nine pounds ten shillings sterling. The price was low even for those days and further suggests that the remaining house was small and perhaps rundown. In the year 1748 James Shearer was tyenty-five years old and betrothed to nineteen-year old Anne Goudie, daughter of Robert Goudie the flesher and his wife Agnes McNaught and niece of Patrick McNaught of Barns. They were to be married in Ayr Auld Kirk later that year and it is probable that during the summer and autumn before his marriage James started work on rebuilding the house or at least making it habitable. .It is certain that by April of 1753 the house had been enlarged to make one large tenement of two stories covering the whole width of the plot with the southmost part projecting by one room's width on to the street and a close giving access to the stables and ground at the back of the house. This part had three rooms upstairs, all with fireplaces, a small apartment and shop downstairs and was let to tenants. The northmost building he retained as his dwelling house. It was to be the home of James and Anne, their children and their grandchildren for the next ninety years and for more than a century after that was to become famous as the Tam O'Shanter Inn. There had been Shearers in Ayr two hundred years before James's day, probably the same family since they bear the hereditary names of William, John and Elizabeth. But there is a gap in the records in covenanting times and it cannot be certain. James's grandfather William, born in the early 1660's, was one of those who withdrew from the Kirk when Charles the Second tried to impose Episcopalian forms of worship on the Church of Scotland and it was not until 1690 with the re-introduction of Presbyterianism by William of Orange that the Shearers began to record their marriages and the births of their children. In the 1690's they followed three trades, landlabourer, tailor and wright. Landlabourers were not, as their name might suggest, farm workers but townsmen who owned and cultivated their own plots of ground, hiring themselves out with their horses, ploughs and other implements to work the land of merchants and tradesmen. In Ayr "The Landlabourers of the Tounheid" were almost a separate community living in that part of the town above the old Wallace Tower in High Street and the Cow Vennell, the modern Alloway Street. William Shearer had a house in the Vennell and besides working his land acted as one of the town's carriers, a hazardous occupation in the days when there were virtually no roads in Scotland and goods had to be carried in small quantities by packhorse. In 1700 he was commissioned to carry the town's tax money to Edinburgh and the Magistrates and Councillors made a point of having it entered in the Council Minutes that the Provost was not to be held responsible "in case the foresaid money shall meet with any disappointment, unscariadge, neglect or be taken by the way, that the same shall not be binding upon or militate against the said Provost he having done the same as ane deed of trust for the good of the toun and at their desire". William Shearer had three sons survivingby 1714, John, James and Archibald and in that year all four were included in a list of the four hundred and forty six inhabitants of military age in the burgh, that is between sixteen and sixty. George the First had come to the throne and there was fear of a Jacobite rising in support of the exiled Stuarts. But Ayr had bitter memories of Charles II and his brother James VII and wanted no more of the Stuarts. On the 27th July 1715 "there was a general rendezvous of the fencible men within this burgh upon the news of ane intended descent upon Brittain by the Pretender". The Old Pretender did land and the Duke of Argyll, Commander-in-Chief of the Government Forces in Scotland and desperately short of men, appealed to the burghs for troops to march against the Highland Jacobites. Twenty-five year old John Shearer enlisted with other young men in the town's company of soldiers and all were admitted burgesses as an inducement. They marched north in late September of 1715 to join Argyll's army but they do not seem to have fought at Sheriffmuir. Within a few months John was back home and married to Mary Beattie. His brothers, twenty-one year old James and nineteen year old Archie, had stayed at home and James, a land- labourer like his father, married eighteen year old Agnes Kerr in April of 1716. They had four children during the next twelve years but both James and Agnes were dead before they were forty and of their children only James born in 1722 survived. He was brought up by his grandparents in the Cow Vennell and nothing is known of his early life until 1744 when at the age of twenty-one he was summoned before the Kirk Session with two other young men James Hume and John Simpson on a charge of rape brought by Margaret Smith. She accused all three of dragging her into a stable in the Carrick Vennell one night in March and raping her. They denied it, all producing witnesses who swore on oath that the accused had been elsewhere in their company at the time of the alleged assault. Someone was lying and the case dragged on for a year but was never resolved and the accused were never brought to trial. In the year James Shearer built his house Ayr had changed little since medieval days. In 1747 there were still open wells in the High Street and the in- habitants of the Townhead sent a petition to the Council complaining that the only well in their part of the town was almost ruinous, the ledges loose and partly fallen into the well. It was uncovered, almost level with the street which rendered it dangerous at night and was frequently stopped up with rubbish and dirt thrown into it by boys. The inhabitants "were obliged often to drink and make use of unwholesome water without knowing the same, which certainly cannot but be pernicious to their health through the dead dogs and catts being thrown into it in the night time." Their petition was successful and by the time James Shearer's house was built the well was covered and a pump fitted. In that year too Ayr received its first street lighting, six oil lamps which were easily blown out by a puff of wind and did little to make the streets safer or more navigable. At that time it was customary for fleshers to slaughter their beasts on the High Street in front of their booths .ln l'747 following numerous complaints a slaughterhouse was provided and the Council "unanimously prohibite and discharge all butchers and others from slaughtering any beasts upon or in view of the High Street or for laying the garbage or allowing the blood thereof to be seen thereon, under the penalty of five pounds Scots for each offence". Contraveners would be "incarcerat within the tolbooth till payment of their fines". These were improvements but even at the turn of the next century it was common to see middens and heaps of dung in front of the houses in the Townhead and Ayr was famed for its dirty streets and broken causeways. Three months after his marriage in November of 1748 James Shearer was left a house and land on the other side of High Street by his maternal grand- father William Kerr. This house too he let to tenants for at least the next twenty years and at twenty six he must have been financially secure. He had a fair- sized plot of ground behind his house and like other landlabourers he was engaged in other pursuits, working as a carrier like his grandfather who had died in 1743.In 1750 a son William was born and a daughter Agnes the following year. Four more children followed in the next seven years, three of whom died young. The next two, Elizabeth born in 1760 and James born 1762 survived, as did Patrick born 1769. These three were the only ones of James and Anne's twelve children to live into the next century. In 1765 "James Shearer, Carrier in Ayr, son in law to Robert Goudy Late Deacon of this Incorporation" was admitted to the Incorporation of Fleshers of Ayr. However, he was not a burgess and since only burgesses were permitted to trade within the burgh he carried on business as a flesher illegally, that is as an "unfree trader". Between February and April of 1767 he was warned six times to appear before the Council. He ignored all six warnings, was fined forty pounds Scots and forbidden to follow any trade in the burgh. It was three years before he gave in and sent a humble petition to the Council apologizing for his "contumacy in not appearing agreeable to the several warnings said to have been given. That his absence was owing to no contempt of the Magistrates and Council but wholly owing to his being from home when any notice was given for him to appear before them." His petition was accepted and he was admitted a burgess and Guild Brother of the Burgh. It is surprising he did not apply before as he was always entitled to be a burgess since he had married Anne Goudie, who was the daughter of a burgess. His son William was admitted the same day. In April of 1769 James Shearer bought a family Bible. It is still there in his house, now the museum, battered and much written upon by three generations of Shearers from 1769 to 1846, the ink faded but legible. The birth of James's youngest great-grandson William in 1845 is the last recorded in the Bible. William kept it in his possession until he died in 1926 when it passed to his son John then to John's son William. William presented it to the museum and there it remains. James Shearer saw to it that the boys of the family at least got whatever education was available and their hand-writing practice in the pages of the family Bible plainly shows this. James's efforts in educating his children parallel those of William Burnes in Alloway and of many another Scots family of the period. Patrick particularly, even after twenty five years at sea, expressed himself fluently in a beautiful hand. The girls were perhaps not so fortunate. Nothing is known of the education, if any, they received but Elizabeth Shearer at least never learned to write, nor could her daughter Anne Mitchell as late as I 836. Nothing is known either of the education James himself received. The beautiful writing on the first page of the New Testament, "James Shearer His Bible Ayr Aprile l7lh 1769 Years" is not his and may have been written by some professional scribe. James's signature survives and he always spelled his name Sherir although his children all used the modern spelling. He never entered any of the births, deaths or marriages of his children in the Bible but in 1782 the Session Clerk, William Robison, made a list of the birth and baptism dates of seven of them, perhaps the surviving ones and this was pasted on to a blank page in the Bible. There are other inscriptions by other members of the family, particularly Patrick on his return from the sea, but none by the women. Only Elizabeth Boyle, Patrick's wife, adds her name and birth date the day their daughter was born in 1817. James's grandson writes in a fine copperplate about 1810, "Peter Shearer was born in the year of our Lord" but did not finish it. Patrick at fifteen writes "Patrick Shearer coppersmith with William Stewart Ayr 1784" and some very young children practise their signatures. And lastly about 1846 James's grandson James the tailor married to Isabella Hall from the Newton makes a long list of the birth dates of his children and sometimes their deaths. Sometime between 1769 and 1785 James Shearer took a step which was to have far-reaching consequences for his dwelling house. He went into business as an innkeeper, though whether he offered accommodation as well as tavern facilities is not known. It was common in Ayr in the eighteenth century for a householder to use part of his house as a tavern, brewing his own ale in a brewhouse at the back. James Shearer had such a brewhouse, possibly the extension still to be seen at the back of the museum and plenty of accommoda- tion on the south side of his large tenement had he wished to let it to travellers. It is likely however that he continued to collect rent from tenants in that part of the building and that it was one of the rooms in his dwelling house which was used as a tavern. It cannot be said with certainty when he became an innkeeper. Up till 1769 he is described as a carrier, landlabourer, butcher and flesher. However he and his son William seem to have worked together as early as 177 l, bills being addressed to them jointly. William is described as a shopkeeper in 1770 and an innkeeper in 1776 and it is possible that the inn dates from the early 1770's. It is certain that it was in existence by 1785 for in that year it became compulsory for all persons keeping "Ale houses, tippling houses, victualing houses or selling ale beer or other excisable liquors by retail within the burgh" to hold a licence. In the Ale Licence Book for Ayr James Shearer is granted a licence and refer- red to as an innkeeper every year until his death in 1805. His widow Anne Goudie was then granted the licence until she died about 1810. James died at the age of eighty-two and subject to the liferent of his widow he left the property to his three surviving children, James, Elizabeth and Patrick, who was still at sea in the East Indies when the will was made. His eldest son William had died of a "head fever" in 1792 and his daughter Agnes in childbirth in 1793. William's only surviving son was twenty-three and a soldier in the Guards and James left him a legacy of five pounds though it is not known if he ever returned to collect it. Agnes's three remaining children received twenty pounds among them. The dwelling house, still occupied by Anne Goudie, was left to the younger James, the three rooms upstairs in the projecting section and the two stables went to Elizabeth while Patrick received the downstairs house and shop occupied by John Adam, merchant. The plot behind the house was similarly divided as well as "Sundry goods, gear, corns, cattle, horse, nolt (black cattle), sheep, debts, sums of money and every other moveable subject whatever". Anne Goudie survived her husband by five years. Patrick now forty-two had retired from the sea and was back in Ayr. In l8l I the younger James sold him the dwelling house and purchased from Patrick the downstairs apartment and shop in the projecting house. In fact they did a swap. James and his son, another James and both tailors, retained possession of this part of the property until it was acquired by the burgh in 1849. It is possible that ever since Anne Goudie died Elizabeth and her husband John Mitchell the weaver had been managing the inn. They left their own house further along High Street some time between 1806 and 1818. From 1812 till 1823 John Mitchell was granted an ale licence for an inn in the Townhead, possibly the Shearer Inn, which his wife purchased from her brother Patrick in 1814 for a hundred and eighty pounds. The deeds are explicit that she paid for it out of her own money. Elizabeth now owned the bulk of the property and it seems likely that she and her husband and family lived on the premises while using part of if as a tavern. Part of it was also certainly used as a shop during the 1820's. In spite of her illiteracy and consequent dependence on others Elizabeth seems to have shown a good deal of initiative. Having bought the building with her own money she may have resented the fact that the property was legally under her husband's control, for in 1818 John Mitchell formally renounced his claim in the building in favour of his wife, possibly at her insistence. In 1825 she made a will leaving the property to her nine children, divided equally among them. Patrick, like his brother James, apparently did not want the dwelling house and may have lived elsewhere in town. Back at his old trade of coppersmith he married thirty-one year old Elizabeth Boyle in 1816 when he was forty-seven and a daughter Maria was born the following year, all duly recorded in the family Bible, but not, for some reason, in the Parish Registers. But after that there is no record of him. In l82l and 1827 Elizabeth and John used the property as security for sums of fifty pounds borrowed from the bank. Both were dead by 1835 and the money was repaid by their eldest son John. Although the dwelling house and the upstairs apartment were to be shared equally among the children John Junior, who was a weaver, wanted it all for himself and in 1836 purchased the shares of his brothers and sisters, except Sarah who refused to sell' He con- tinued to live in the upstairs three rooms above his cousin James Shearer's house while letting the old dwelling house to tenants. If it did indeed continue as an inn after Anne Goudie died it was never con- sidered important enough to be included in any of the directories of the period. But from 1834 until 1849 when the property passed out of the hands of the Mitchells and Shearers there is ample evidence to show that it was a public house. In 1834 the tenants were Robert Goudie beer retailer and his wife, followed by James Kerr in 1837, his twenty-one year old wife Agnes and their two small children. The inn is called the Tam O'Shanter Tavern in the Ayr Directory for 1841-42 at the end of Kerr's tenancy though the name may have been used earlier. The old brewhouse at the back was probably not in use any more, liquor being bought wholesale from the brewery in Mill Street. The Kerrs were there for five years until 1842 when William Thomson became innkeeper. A Cumnock man aged forty-three, he and his wife Elizabeth and their four children remained at the inn for fifteen years until 1857 when the family moved to the Blue Bell Inn further along High Street past the Wallace Tower. Very little is known about the years of Thomson's occupancy of the inn beyond the fact that the name Tam O'Shanter Inn coincides with his first application for a licence in 1842 though it was referred to as both inn and tavern for the next fifteen years. There is no indication of what the place looked like at this time. Photography was still in its infancy and since the building was never considered to have any connection with Burns it is neither mentioned nor illustrated in any publication of the time. We do not know what signs Thomson placed on the inn, whether a painting of Tam leaving the premises was there in his day or whether it even occurred to him that the name Tam O'Shanter was anything more than just a name everyone would recognise. The only noteworthy event recorded during the tenancy of the Thomsons occurred in 1849 when the projecting house occupied by John Mitchell junior and his cousin James Shearer the tailor was demolished and rebuilt. By 1849 Ayr was becoming a busy, prosperous and in places, attractive town. The volume of traffic in High Street had increased considerably since the beginning of the century but the layout of the two main streets, Sandgate and High Street, was and still is that of the medieval burgh. Projecting houses similar to James Shearer's were a feature of High Street, particularly on the west side of the road and were becoming an intolerable nuisance and incon- venience to pedestrians who had to step on to the road to get round them. The new Wallace Tower, set up in 1832, effectively prevented the street from being widened at that point as it does to this day. But it was possible to demolish and set back encroaching houses at various places along High Street and the projecting houses in the Townhead were finally pulled down. It illustrates the changes which had taken place in Ayr in the previous fifty years. In the eighteenth century applications by householders to the council to extend their property on to the public highway were invariably granted, indicating that the public was not inconvenienced thereby. Wheeled transport in fact was prac- tically non-existent until roads were improved later in the century, the packhorse being still the principal means of transport. In 1849 John Mitchell and James Shearer agreed to sell their respective shares in the property to the burgh so that demolition could take place. There was also a miniscule share owned by John Parker son of Sarah Mitchell who had refused to hand over her share to her brother years before and he too agreed to sell. James appears to have been willing to sell as the previous year he had purchased at roup a house and ground in Fullarton Street but John Mitchell would rather have stayed where he was in the upstairs apartment for he made a condition of sale that two rooms in the new rebuilt section be leased to him to use as a dwelling and workshop. However, before it could be accomplished he died aged sixty-four and the upstairs flat was let to tenants. The property did not stay long in the hands of the burgh which had only wanted it so that the projecting part could be demolished. In 1850 it was sold to the Incorporation of Weavers who owned it for the next forty years using it frequently as security for loans, of which they seemed to be perpetually in need. The upstairs apartment, now part of the museum, was completely rebuilt in 1849. It may be that in the downstairs part, underneath the covering of cement, old James's rubble-built walls still exist. It cannot now be known and what was once the house and shop let to John Adam in the 1790's and owned by James Shearer the tailor and his son till 1849 is.no longer part of the story of the Tam O' Shanter Inn. ,;:/?7,*"il*.r ilt e*^/-7/L,/.*-r , " i ;, .(.4J:l)7''*^ t,/o.-o =rr^r,,'))/"W@:A"";*" - ,,A". ,,{';> .L;i;-*^/' d)u^r' r, /L,t /^;t"r-11 [-*f'k'r tL> Aczti", il''--/ E> /^/{ ,I; ,.V *-F-21, A /:f"^'- 93Aof +1oJ::1"t, , e> uL/A,r';;. r/ ^'h3//,-,. /+M-'pg

From the minute book of the Incorporotion of Fleshers of Ayr (Scottish Record Office Ref. No. E870/6/1.) (Published by permission of the Controller of H.M. Stotionery Office.)

Page from the Ale Licence Book of Ayr 1786. (Reproduced by permission of the Director of Kyle and Carrick District Librqries ond Museums.) 10 James Shearer's Settlement and Disposition of 1803

THREE ROOMS UPSTAIRS, TWO STABLES AND CELLAR rerr ro ELTZABETH I I DWELLING HOUSE LEFT TO JAMES JR. -rlm [-rl I lFTl APARTMENTrul AND SHOP DOWNSTAIRS LEFTl*J TO PATRICK

The property left to Jomes Shearer's surviving children. l.',.::lt

Jantes Sheorer's lorge tenernent os it mo)) have oppeored about 1785 The back of the house as it may hove appeored about 1785 based on James Shearer's description. rlii.rirr: i:Jiit*.r..i:!rr'it::r:tt .l ,1:,:,,:l,,iia:irl .i:!.9i$+ -. ..:;$:

High Streel os it mo)) hove appeared in the 1780's looking tov,ords the old Wallace Tower, based on the earliest photographs when many lSth Century lhotched houses were still standing. Reconstruction drawing bctsed on Wood's mop of I8l8 showing projecting houses in the Townhead with Mill Stree! in lhe foreground. The downstairs room ss it moy have oppeared in 1760 showing Jomes and Anne Sheorer wilh their children ll'illiam, Agnes ond Ann. When he grew up William mqrried o distont cousin named Agnes Shearer and died of a "head fever" ot forty-t\'ro. His sisler Agnes married Thomas McKean the blacksmith when she was thirty-one. Ann had an illegitimate daughter when she wos twenty-lwo, fleeing to Dumfries for lhe birth to escape the h)rath of ,4yr Kirk Sesslon. But she wos reported and had to do public penance in the Auld Kirk. f{l .P,;' & ::i ,i:

-.J.1 "'i ,.:iri$H

.. .'fr. j rne{

The upstairs room as it moy hove appeored in 1780 showing thirteen-year-old Mary in the hurley, Agnes ot twenty-nine putting on her mutch and lwenty-yeor-old Elizabet h The Tam O'Shanter lnn abctut 1876 based on o photograph by G. W. L|/ilson. The Lqter History

It may have been James Kerr who first gave the inn the name Tam O'shanter and it may have been William Thomson who fostered the idea that the inn had some connection with the characters in Burns's poem, but it was certainly Andrew Glass who firmly established the legend and declared it to be fact. Andrew Glass became innkeeper of the Tam O'Shanter Inn in 1857. He had previously been a tailor and clothier with a shop in High Street near the Auld Brig and was a member of the Finance Committee of the Incorporation of Weavers when they purchased the inn in 1850. Widowed with a small daughter in 1848 he had married his servant Marion Stewart, a young woman from Kilmory in Bute, in 185 I . He was forty-six when he took over the tenancy from William Thomson and he and his family remained at the inn for the next twenty one years, transforming it by clever publicity from an average pub to a famous landmark revered by Burns lovers all over the world. "The house where Tam O'shanter and Souter Johnny held their meetings" declared a sign high up on the front of the inn. "The original chairs and caup are in the house," proclaimed another. And to press home the point, above the door was an enormous painting depicting Tam on his horse being farewelled at the door of the inn by Souter Johnny, James Shearer and Anne Goudie, while above the door of the inn in the painting was displayed a sign saying "Jas. Shearer, Spirits and Ales." This large painting was the first of four which have adorned the front of the building since the 1850's. Andrew Glass had he lived today would have made a highly successful advertising executive. By his well displayed signs and his advertisements in the Ayr Directories illustrated with Thom's well-known figures of Tam and the Souter he made his Inn famous. The fame has lasted to the present day and for a good part of the twentieth century the legend he created inspired Burns enthusiasts to fight for the inn's survival when it was in danger of being destroyed or shipped stone by stone to America. Andrew Glass died in the summer of 1875 while visiting relatives at Bridge of Allan and his widow managed the T4p O'Shanter Inn for the next three and a half years until Christmas 1878 when'the tenancy was taken over by Andrew Brown. By this time the inn's supposed association with the fictitious characters in Burns's poem had become widely accepted and credulous visitors were well catered for. "The room upstairs in which Tam was 'glorious' is still pointed out," writes T. Dykes in tvtaitr.lillan's Magazine about 1880, "But the chairs of the Carrick Farmer and Souter Johnny have been recently purchased by the Ayr Burns Club and placed in the Memorial Room in the Cottage where he was born at Alloway." The cup too was sold, to another publican across the street. "But," writes the same'visitor, "the present landlord shows a facsimile in a well- executed piece of dovetailed woodwork, bound together with a silver hoop, which is filled and emptied by enthusiasts, as was the old one." Facsimile it may have been, but the sign on the front of the inn was not changed, nor were the advertisements in the Ayr Directories declaring that the original drinking l9 cup was in the house. And so, miraculously, were the chairs which were also at the same time in Burns's cottage. Andrew Brown relinquished the tenancy in 1884 and John Scott, innkeeper until 1907 (and Mrs. Scott till l92l) carried the legend a step further. Some time in the 1890's he put a sign above the close declaring that Burns himself and his friends used to meet there. "Burns and his Cronies Ca house" he called it. The sign is still there. The statement is still believed by many. But it is no more than an assertion. There is no evidence whatever that Burns or his friends frequented James Shearer's inn. If the building had any connection with Robert Burns then every visitor to Ayr who wrote anything about the town before Andrew Glass's day was quite unaware of it. In 1820 Hew Ainslie visited that part of High Street and wrote about it in "A Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns". He toured the town and inspected the old wallace Tower, but for all his enthusiasm for Burns makes no mention of the inn, though he was within yards of it. James Shearer's projecting house is mentioned in another source in 1820 as being near the spot where the town gate stood. But the inn itself is not men- tioned, though if it had associations with Burns it would surely have made a better landmark. In 1837, forty years after Burns died and before the Tam O' Shanter Inn had got its name Professor wilson of Edinburgh University travelled through the Burns country and wrote a book "The Land of Burns" in which he devoted a chapter to Burns's stay in Kirkoswald when he was sixteen and the background to the characters and story of Tam O'Shanter. He spoke to many of the people who remembered Burns (though their memories may have been influenced by the prospect of having their names associated with so famous a man) and wrote in detail of the visits of Douglas Graham, the supposed prototype of Tam O' Shanter, to Ayr. But nowhere does he mention the inn. Its omission from this publication is particularly significant since the pur- pose of the book was to record and illustrate every place in scotland which had any connection with the poet. The inn is conspicuous by its absence. And yet, deception though it may have been in the beginning, Andrew Glass was perhaps nearer the truth than he knew. Professor Wilson states, ,,The visits of Graham to Ayr were more frequent than those of his neighbours in consequence of his supplying malt to a great number of public houses in that burgh and on the road to it, it being then the custom for every person who sold ale to make the liquor at home . . . as Graham had to call for liquor at every customer's house, by way of showing respect and gratitude, he had much more of that commodity at his disposal than he chose to make use of himself; and he was accordingly very glad when the Souter or any other friend went in with him to partake of it." He goes on to say that one taverner in Ayr, Benjie Graham, was particularly hospitable to the pair and that it was from Benjie's inn that Douglas rode off one wild night and lost his "gude blue bunnet" containing the banknotes earned at the market that day. In consequence he trumped up a story to tell his wife about being pursued by witches on passing Alloway Kirk and losing his bonnet in the process. According to Wilson the sixteen year old Burns heard the tale and this was the basis of his poem when he eventually came to write Tam O'Shanter many years later.

20 Benjamin Graham was a well-known figure in Ayr. He is first mentioned in the Kirk Session Records of 1757 when he and his widowed mother are described as being very poor. He married Elizabeth Limond and since her family was in- fluential in the town this may have helped him improve his prospects. At any rate he was an innkeeper by 1770 and in August of that year he bought a house across the road from James Shearer's. By the end of the 1780's he owned three houses and two barns in High Street and Kyle Street, one of the houses being only four doors away from the Shearer property. He was also Deacon of the Incorporation of Fleshers for several years, many of whose meetings were held in his house and was responsible for compiling the first valuation roll for that part of Ayr in 1789. He and James Shearer knew each other well for half a century and were probably close friends for after James's death Graham acted on behalf of Elizabeth Shearer when her sasine was registered in 1807. It cannot be said with certainty which of Graham's houses he used as an inn but it is ironic that the legend which grew up around James Shearer's inn could equally well have been applied to Benjamin Graham's and perhaps with more truth. There is on the other hand a possibility and it is no more than that that the whole tradition is genuine and that -Douglas Graham (with or without- Souter Johnny) did on occasion drink at James Shearer's inn and that this was well known to old James's son and grandson. The grandson was a tailor as was Andrew Glass, both were members of the Incorporation of Tailors and certainly knew each other, though how well we do no know. Andrew Glass obviously knew that the eldest James had been the innkeeper in Burns's day since his name was on the painting on the front of the inn. Obviously too, he would have access to sources of information which have since been lost to us. But this is only conjecture and must be set aside as an intriguing but unproveable theory. It is however extremely unlikely that Burns had James's inn in mind when he wrote the poem, or indeed any inn. Douglas Graham is said to have frequented many of the taverns in Ayr and any one would have sufficed for the setting of the poem. Burns himself may never have been anywhere near James Shearer's house. The road from Mauchline would bring him into the Newton side of the Auld Brig and in the 1780's there were about twenty five inns and innumerable alehouses to choose from before reaching the Shearer premises in the Townhead. By 1889 the Incorporation of Weavers, who owned the inn, was no longer in existence and the property passed into the hands of the Crown. In 1893 it was sold at auction, the highest being Andrew Turner, Spirit Merchant. It remained the property of the Turners until the middle of the twentieth century and continued to be used throughout this period as a public house. In the early 1930's the proprietors considered disposing of the property and a meeting of Ayr Burns Club was called to discuss the question of the purchase of the Tam O'Shanter Inn and its ground. A committee was formed and the matter raised with Ayr Town Council which promised to contribute a certain sum towards the purchase price of f4000 if the Club could raise the rest. Ayr Burns Club decided to issue subscription sheets to all Burns Clubs throughout the world and to private individuals, as well as raising funds themselves through concerts, whist drives and private gifts. 2l The sum required was raised and the Council took over the property in 1944 with the intention of ensuring that the inn would be used as a Burns memorial. Messrs Turner were allowed to occupy the premises until alternative accom- modation for their business was found elsewhere. They vacated the premises in 1954 and after a period for renovations made without altering the structure of the building and a successful trial period in the summer of 1956 the Tam O'Shanter Museum was officially opened on Saturday the l9th of January 1957. crowds lined the pavements and after the opening ceremony the official party of about two hundred, including Members of Parliament, Town councillors and officials, Burns club delegates and guests retired to the Town Hall for an evening of speeches, music and Burns songs. Mr. John Gray told the story of the twenty five year fight to save the Inn. Tributes were paid to "The enthusiastic members of Ayr Burns Club, who saw visions many years ago, of this historic building being preserved as a memorial to our national bard". And, ''The Burgh of Ayr has now got an attraction for visitors who are lovers of Burns, that will rival the cottage itself, in the numbers who will visit it. Another step has been taken to honour the memory of that great-hearted soul who was born in this town and walked its streeti. Ayr Town Council, by its decision to preserve this building, has earned the esteem and thanks of Burns lovers the world over". He could also have added that the decision had earned the thanks of all Scots interested in preserving a unique piece of eighteenth century burgh architec- ture. For interesting though its history may have been as the Tam o'Shanter inn the building's importance as the only example left in Ayr of an eighteenth ce-ntury family's home ought to be recognised. The unquestioning acceptance of the Inn's spurious association with Burns has in the past discouraged impartial inquiry into the building's earlier history. The romanticised aura which has too often surrounded Burns has also touched the inn which bears the name of his most famous poem. For in spite of alterations this is still basically the house twenty-five year old James Shearer rebuilt from an old cottage in the summer and autumn of 1748. It survived into the twentieth century because someone called it the Tam o'shanter Inn and Andrew Glass had the clever notion of publicising it as the inn where the prototypes of Burns's fictional characters Tam and the souter used to meet. But a hundred years before Andrew Glass and the legend this was a family's dwelling house and in places can still can be recognised as such. In the front room downstairs with the fireplace and the swee, in the large room upstairs and in the attic rooms reached by the hidden staircase in the cupboard (no longer accessible) it is still possible to conjure up a picture of unidealised eighteenth century family life in Ayr, with its few comforts and many harsh realities. A high rate of infant mortality was an accepted commonplace and of the twelve children born to James Shearer and Anne Goudie less than half reached adulthood and of these only one, another James, carried on the family name. The others died of smallpox and fever and the other mysterious illnesses which no doctor of the time could cure Ann, Robert, Jean, Marion, another Jean and Marion before they were three- and nineteen year old Mary in the year Robert Burns published his poems.

22 There were no landlabourers in Ayr after old James's day and.the Shearers who came after were tailors and cabinetmakers, policemen and engineers, joiners and doctors, dressmakers and scientists. Their subsequent history is similar to that of any other Scottish family of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and today the descendants of James and Anne Shearer are to be found not only in Ayr but in Glasgow and Edinburgh, the south of England and the north east of Scotland, in America and Australia. They were, like Douglas Graham and John Davidson, Andrew Glass, Nance Tinnock, Jean Armour and all the rest, the ordinary people of Ayrshire and it is perhaps fitting that in the end the house of James Shearer should be a memorial to the genius who sprang from the ranks of ordinary people - Robert Burns.

4 -,- AE 1*l

- ct> ? o C5 6 = GA 6t

AIIDREW GLA88, ProPrietor.

'Well-aired Bedg- mil even ,ttention paial to the comJort of Yisiton. The Orieiurl Tam 6'Shanter Ch;irs aDd Drinking Cup ia the Eloue. StaEUnq. Cabs in wailiag at the Rai.[Yay Statiol Largo Edl let or Mod=erate tem.

Andrew Glass's advertisement in the Ayr Directory 1873.

The Tam O'Shanter Inn about 1884, John Scott, Innkeeper. (Reproduced by permission of the Director of Kyle and Carrick District Libraries and Museums.) 23 The Building

The house must have presented problems when first built since the plot does not run at right angles to High Street but twists as it approaches the street. Since easy access to the plot and stables was paramount the house has been forced to sit awkwardly in the corner of the site with scarcely a right angle in the whole fabric. It is almost impossible now to trace chronogically the alterations and additions made to the original building. In the reception room which was the bar of the Tam o'Shanter Inn nothing unfortunately is left to show what it was like up to the 1950's. Photographs of the 1870's- show that the original window (the present one dates from the early 1880's) was never meant to open, but nothing can now be deduced of the room's original function. It is known that this was the bar of the inn at least since the time of John Scott in 1884 and probably earlier and it is possible that it had served that purpose ever since the eighteenth century. The room opposite remains much as it must have been two hundred years ago. It still has the original fireplace with the swee (the swivel for hanging pots over the fire) and the wide area for placing pots each side of the grate. The floor in the mid-eighteenth century would probably have been of biaten cray smoothed flat. The present fired clay tiles may have been added later in the century or in the early nineteenth century. Rugs may or may not have been used. with so many weavers in the town they would certainly be available and their use at least in the winter months would be common sense. This room was shortened when a lavatory was added to the house sometime in the last century, probably soon after the Public Health Act of 1848. In the eighteenth century there would have been a small outhouse containing the cess pit up the yard and such a structure shows on the first surveyed map of 181g. It is likely that there was a box bed where the present lavatory is. fhe size of the area is exactly right. The ceiling also belongs to a later period and would originally have shown the wooden beams. The sink was added some time after 1855. Previously water was pumped from wells in the street and carried to the houses in buckets. The position of these pumps is marked on the ordnance survey map of 1855 and there was one two doors away from the house. None can be seen in photographs of the 1870's. There must always have been a cup- board in the corner of the room as it is directly under the stairs. A dresser for preparing food probably stood under the present plate rack, convenient to the fireplace and the buckets of water which may have stood on the broad window sill. A table and benches would have completed the furnishings of the room. Separate rooms for beds which were unused during the day would be con- sidered wasteful in the eighteenth century and most rooms would have a box bed with sliding doors or hanging curtains for privacy at night. During the day the beds could be used as seating or couches. A trundle bed known as a hurley was often stored under the box bed. The stairway with its unpainted wooden planks which may be original also retains its eighteenth century character although the stairs themselves will have gone through many replacements in two hundred and fifty years. An original 24 hand hewn beam can still be seen on the right at the top of the stajrs above the - doorway. The large upstairs room has in the corner a door concealing a staircase which leads to two rooms under the thatch. These three rooms were let as accom- modation for travellers during Andrew Glass's tenancy. In all three can still be seen the wires attached to bell pulls which were connected to the row of bells still to be seen in the reception room, another indication that this room was the bar from the earliest days of the Tam O'Shanter Inn. Gaslight fittings can also be seen in the attic rooms under the thatch which must have presented something of a fire hazard. Inside the roof can still be seen the original roof beams of slender saplings, left in position in modern times when new machine cut beams were installed to support the thatch. After Andrew Glass's day the inn no longer offered accommodation, the family occupying living in the 1849 rebuilt section. The upstairs rooms may have been used for drinking as were the other rooms of the building, but having customers so far away from the bar cannot have been satisfactory and sometime during the present century a gate was placed at the foot of the stairs. The upstairs part was made accessible only on certain occasions. The whole building in fact was never suitable for a twentieth century style pub, however cosy it may have been in earlier times. The bar in the present reception room was far too small and it was too easy for customers in the other rooms to linger over their drinks, an unsatisfactory state of affairs from the publican's point of view. In 1884 at the beginning of John Scott's tenancy the building was given its present facing of cement to replace the original whitewashed plaster and curved brass plates were attached to each side of the doorway. The present ones replaced the very worn originals in 1957. The lamp over the door which was the hallmark of the Tam O'Shanter Inn first appears in a photograph of 1878 though it was not there in 1876. Almost every hotel and tavern in High Street had such a lamp in the nineteenth century. If the front of the Tam O'Shanter was well photographed from the 1870's onwards, the rear of the building is a very different matter. No known illustrations exist before a photograph and sketch ofthe 1930's. It is possible however to form a reasonable picture of the appearance of the building at the back in the eighteenth century since James Shearer himself states that his dwelling house had "a brewhouse at the back thereof" and "three rooms with fireplaces immediately above the house and shop possessed (i.e. occupied) by John Adam, Merchant". He further states that there were two stables on the south part of the site, and what was definitely a stable can still be seen on the south side of the plot. Even the ventilation holes are there and the rubble-built wall at the rear suggests that it is, in part at least, James Shearer's original stable. The ground level on the plot has risen considerably in recent years with the construction of public toilets but at the rear of the house it has only risen about 65 cm. The extension.covering the width of the house at the back, which may have been the original brewhouse, had its roof raised some time after 1850, covering the back upstairs window and cutting across the windows of the houses on either side. The smaller extension, which does not show on the l8l8 map, belongs to a later period as it cuts in on the south west corner to avoid the already existing window of the larger extension. It was already there in 1855.

25 One important addition which was made to the property was a hall built by Andrew Glass in 1857. This seems to have been situated right at the end of the yard and shortly after being built was converted to a bakehouse, which it remained for the next ten years. It was then once again advertised as a hall to let ,,at moderate terms" and remained thus until the end of the century. It seems to have survived as a storehouse or workshop until it was swept away in the alterations of the 1960's.

UPSTAIRS

26 Tam o'Shanter Inn # METRES

DOWNSTAIRS

27 THE DWELLING HOUSE OF JAMES SHEARER Owners Occupiers

James Shearer 1748- 1 805 James Shearer 1748- 1 805 James Shearer Jr. 1805-l8ll Mrs Anne Shearer 1805-1 810 Patrick Shearer l8l l-1814 Not definitely known l8l0-r 834

Elizabeth Shearer l8l4-1835 Robert Goudie I 834- 1 837 John Mitchell her son l 835- I 849 James Kerr 1837-1842 Burgh of Ayr l 849- r 850 William Thomson 1842-1857

Incorporation of Weavers I 850- I 889 Andrew Glass I 857- 1 875 The Crown I 889- I 893 Mrs Marion Glass 1875-1878

Messrs Turner, Brewers t893-1944 Andrew Brown I 878- 1 884 Burgh of Ayr 1944- John Scott l 884- I 907 3 Mrs Christina Scott 1907-1921 o Mrs Walker t92t-1922 ; t\) Arthur L. Turner. 1922-1937 =@ Messrs Turner, Brewers 1937-1954 3 Period in which the building is known to have been used, partly or wholly, as an Inn (i.e. Tavem or Public House) - 1785-1810, 183+1954. - SOURCES OF INFORMATION FOR THE HISTORY OF THE TAM O'SHANTER INN Title Deeds to the property and James Shearer's Settlement Ayr Kirk Session Records. and Disposition of 1803 held by the Estates Department Census Returns for Ayr 1841-1891. of the Kyle and Carrick District Council. Valuation Rolls 1789-1960. The Shearer Family Bible held by Ayr Burns Club. Ayr Burgh Council Minutes. Ayr Directories from 1829. Protocol Books. Files of the Ayr Advertiser and Ayrshire Post. Registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths from 1855. Registers of Sasines. Miscellaneous Minute Books, Documents and Accounts Registers of Deeds. from the Eighteenth Century Records of Ayr. Ale Licence Book for Ayr. Photographs from the Royal Commission on the Ancient Minute Book of the Incorporation of Fleshers of Ayr. and Historical Monuments of Scotland. Old Parish Registers. l9th Century Commercial Directories for Scotland.