Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 1

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Newton ; two U.P. churches are Cathcart Street (1816 ;
1182 sittings) and Darlington Place (1860 ; 820 sittings).
Other places of worship are a United Original Secession
church (1799 ; 605 sittings), a Moravian cliapel, an
Evangelical Union chapel, a Wesleyan chapel (1813 ;
530 sittings), Trinity Episcopal church (1839), Early
English in style, and the pro-cathedral of the Bishop of
Glasgow, and St Margaret's Roman Catholic church
(1827 ; 684 sittings), a Gothic edifice, built at a cost of
£1900. — The original cemetery lay around St John's
Church ; the next cemetery was that around the old
parochial church ; and a beautiful new cemetery is
on the river Ayr, about i mile from the town. — A
Dominican friary, St Catherine's, was founded in 1230
somewhere about the head of Mill Street, but has been
so completely effaced that even its precise site cannot
now be ascertained. An Observants' friary, founded
in 1472, stood on the site of the present Old Church ;
and is now represented by nothing but an excellent
spring, the Friars' Well. A chapel dedicated to St
Leonard stood in what is now called Chapel Park,
about 1^ mile SW of the town ; and left ruins which
existed into the present century, but have now entirely
disappeared.
A public school, dating from 1264, or perhaps from
1233, was connected till the Reformation with St John's
Church, passing thereafter under the town council's
management. It had for its rector, in 1727 and follow-
ing years, the celebrated grammarian Mair, author of
the Introduction to Latin Composition. Reconstituted,
under the name of Ayr Academy, in 1794, it received a
royal charter in 1798 ; gives instruction (1881) to 394
pupils in classics, modern languages, mathematics, etc. ;
is conducted by a rector, four masters, and a large staff of
assistants ; and passed under the Burgh school-board in
1873. The original building stood at the head of School
Vennel, the present Academy Street ; and was a plain
quaint structure, with a thatched roof. The next, in an
open healthy situation, near the site of Cromwell's citadel,
w T as erected in 1810 at a cost of £3000, and in 1880 was
superseded by the present edifice, which, costing £8000,
stands in front of the old, and can accommodate between
500 and 600 pupils. A plain but massive Grecian two-
storied structure, with rustic basement, centre, and two
wings, it measures 140 by nearly 300 feet ; a tetrastyle
Corinthian portico is adorned with medallions of Wilkie,
Watt, and Burns. The public schools, with their accom-
modation, average attendance, and grants for the year
1879-80, were :— the Grammar School (245, 245, £233,
2s. 6d.), Newton Academy (400, 233, £202, 12s.), Smith's
Institution (351, 271, £180), Lady Jane Hamilton's school
(350, 174, £142, 3s. ), Wallacetown (4S6, 328, £238, lis.),
and Newtonhead (4S6, 492, £369, 5s. ). Totals for the
six were : — average attendance, 1743 ; number examined,
1362 ; number of passes, 3044 ; school fees, £1194,
7s. lOd. ; grants, £1365, 13s. 6d. There are also Epis-
copal and Roman Catholic schools, which, with respec-
tive accommodation for 176 and 155 children, had (1879)
an average attendance of 140and 123, and grants of £120,
2s. and £69, 14s. — The mechanics' institution, founded
in 1825, had a large and excellent library, but it has
since been incorporated with the public library and read-
ing-room in Macneille Buildings. Other institutions are
a branch of the Royal Lifeboat Institution, an auxiliary
shipwrecked fishers' and mariners' benevolent society, a
sailors' society (1581), an incorporation of whipmen, a
religious tract society, a Bible society, an agricultural
association, etc. The district lunatic asylum, opened in
July 1S69, has accommodation for 230 patients, and in
July 1880 had 97 inmates. The Kyle union poorhouse
(1860), to the E of the station, contains accommodation
for 168 paupers ; and had 126 inmates in July 1880. A
little beyond it a new two-storied hospital, 400 feet long,
for 44 general and 20 fever patients, is (1881) in course
of erection at a cost of £8000, the fever ward being
detached.
The town has a head post office, branches of the
Bank of Scotland, the British Linen Co., the Clydes-
dale, Commercial, National, Royal, and Union banks ;
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and 45 insurance agencies. There are 12 chief hotels
and inns, besides 3 temperance hotels, and a Working
Man's Public House, erected in 18S0 at a cost of £6000
by Henry and William Houldsworth, Esqs. Papers
are the Thursday Liberal Ayr Advertiser (1803), the
Tuesday and Friday Conservative Ayr Observer (1832),
the Saturday Ayrshire Aryus and Express (1857), and
the Tuesday and Friday Liberal Ayrshire Post (1880).
Tuesday and Friday are market-days, and fairs are
held on New Year's day, the Thursday before the
second Wednesday of January, the first and third
Tuesday and the last Friday of April, the Thursday
and Friday before the second Monday of July, and the
second Thursday and third Tuesday of October. On the
racecourse, to the S of the town, is held in September
the three days' Western Meeting. Coaches, in com-
munication with railway trains run to Kirkmiehael and
Straiton every Tuesday, and to Ochiltree and Cumnock
every Tuesday and Friday. The town had anciently so
great trade as to be styled by Buchanan ' emporium, non
ignobile;' and Brereton in 1634 described it as 'a dainty,
pleasant-seated town, most inhabiting in which are
merchants trading into and bred in France.' From
causes, however, not well understood, it greatly declined
in prosperity, so that Defoe wrote early in the 18th
century : — ' It is now like an old beauty, and shows the
ruins of a good face, but is still decaying every day ;
and from having been the fifth best town in Scotland,
as the townsmen say, it is now the fifth worst ; which is
owing to the decay of its trade. So true it is that com-
merce is the life of cities, of nations, and even of king-
doms. What was the reason of the decay of trade in this
place is not easy to determine, the people themselves
being either unwilling or unable to tell ' ( Tour through
Great Britain, ed. 1745, p. 114). The writer of the
New Statistical account of it in 1837 also says : — ; It has
often been a matter of surprise, that Ayr has not been
more benefited by manufactures and public works, pos-
sessing, as it does, so many advantages for this purpose,
and such facilities of communication with other places,
both by sea and land. With such an extensive grain
country surrounding it, distilleries could not fail to
thrive ; the price of labour is low rated, and all the
other requisites are easily procurable. Cotton works
might prosper as well here as at Catrine, the town being
as favourably situated in regard to all the materials
necessary — coal, water, and labourers in abundance ;
while it has greatly the advantage, by enjoying the
means of sea, as well as of land, carriage. And we can see
nothing to hinder the manufacture of wool in its various
branches, particularly in the weaving of carpets, from
succeeding as well in this place as in Kilmarnock, which
owes to this cause so much of its wealth and prosperity. '
The woollen manufacture, as a matter of fact, was in-
troduced in 1832, and has been prosperous. Begun, for
wool-spinning and carpet-weaving, in a small building,
once a cotton mill, it succeeded so well as to occasion
great extensions of the premises from time to time, till
they came to cover a large area ; and in these premises
are employed some 150 carpet weavers, and 350 other
persons. Another factory, built about 1863, employs
some 35 persons in the weaving of winceys and flannels ;
and several other small factories carry on considerable
trade in the making of blankets, flannels, plaidings, and
various kinds of woollen wearing apparel. Muslin-
flowering, for the manufacturers of Glasgow, rose gradu-
ally into importance, all round the town, and through
much of the county, from about the end of last century ;
but it received a sudden and severe check in 1857, and
it does not now exist to one-half its former extent.
Shoemaking for the foreign market was carried on to
a large extent in the early part of the present century,
and is still very prosperous. Among recent works
may be noticed the sawmills of Messrs Paton & Sons,
transferred in 1S81 from the S to the N quay, and
now 8 acres in extent, also a lace factory opened in the
same year. There formerly were nine incorporated
trades ; and six of them — hammermen, weavers, tailors,
squaremen, shoemakers, and fleshers — still retain an
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