Burns Cottage

Burns Cottage in Alloway, South Ayrshire, Scotland is the birthplace of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns (1759–1796). It is now part of the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway, owned and run by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS).^[1]

Burns was born in the cottage, built by his father William Burnes (1721–1784), on 25 January 1759, a date now widely celebrated as Burns Night.^[2] Although it consisted of four rooms, the family shared the accommodation with their livestock,^[3] which perhaps explains why some sources describe the cottage as consisting of only two rooms. The National Register of Historic Places describes a replica built by the Burns Club of Atlanta, opened in 1911, as following the traditional four areas for such a cottage: but, benScots term describing the architecture of a two-roomed cottage., barn and byre; the replica replaces the barn and byre with a meeting room.^[4]

Burns spent almost the first seven years of his life in the cottage, until in late 1765 his father leased a larger house on Provost Fergusson’s farm at Mount Oliphant, near Alloway.^[2]

The cottage was subsequently used as an alehouse for much of the 19th century, until its restoration by the Burns Monument Trust in 1881.^[3]