📍Burns Cottage, Alloway, Ayr KA7 4PQ, UK
1759 – 1766“My father, William Burnes, was a gardener and tenant farmer who designed and built this long, low cottage of clay and thatch with his own hands in 1757, and I was born in it two years later, in the box bed in the kitchen. Under one roof lived my parents, the children, and at the far end the cow and the horse. My father had little money but a great respect for learning, and he and the neighbouring families hired a young teacher so that we children could be properly schooled. In the evenings an old relative of my mother's who lived with us filled my head with tales of ghosts, witches, warlocks and spunkies, more than any boy should hear. A short walk down the road stood the roofless old kirk of Alloway, and the auld brig over the Doon — years later they became the setting of Tam o' Shanter, where Tam spies the witches dancing. We left for a bigger farm when I was seven, and hard years of ploughing followed. My father is buried in that kirkyard, and the cottage is now part of the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today