NEW CUMNOCK
© Robert Guthrie
ROBERT BURNS
The Burns Trail :
Castle Hotel
The Castle Hotel
New Cumnock was a convenient stopping-off place for Robert Burns on his regular journeys between Mauchline and Ellisland. Here his horse could be fed and stabled overnight whilst he doubtless enjoyed the hospitality in one of the local Inns, either the Old Mill Inn or the Castle Inn, now the Castle Hotel.
Chris Rollie in his 'Robert Burns & New Cumnock' provides what little information there is available on Mrs Moore the inn-keeper at the Castle Inn during the time of Burns. She had been the house-keeper at Laight, one of several New Cumnock properties held by Captain Gilbert McAdam. However, the Captain fell on hard times in 1781 and his son-in-law John Logan acquired his properties, moving his wife Martha McAdam and his young family into Laight in the same year. By this time Mrs Moore was inn-keeper at the Castle Inn, and the Captain moved there following his misfortune.
It was care of Mrs Moore (More) that Robert Burns sent his letter to John Logan on 7th August 1789 to inform him that he had completed 'The Kirk's Alarm.' Five years later, the Castle Inn is in the hands of her local rivals the McKnights of the Old Mill Inn.
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ROBERT BURNS
Sadly the Castle Inn or the Castle Hotel as it later became, lies empty and the plaster on the walls crumbling at the edges revealing some of the original stone-work below. The saving grace is the marvellous New Cumnock Mural by Pamela Ramage that adorns the gable-end overlooking the Mary Morrison Memorial Garden, not a tribute to Rabbie's 'lovely Mary Morison', but to my late mother 'wee Mary Morrison !'