Round Old Ayr Crime Walk

The history of Old Ayr includes many tales of law-breaking, imprisonment, execution and escape. Come with local history librarian Tom Barclay on a walking tour of town centre sites associated with the rebels, smugglers, body snatchers, common criminals and thief-takers who have all played dramatic parts in the town’s colourful past.

The walk lasts for 1 hour

• Thursday 7^th June, meet at Carnegie Library at 6.30pm
• Wednesday 13^th June, meet at Carnegie Library at 2.00pm
• Tuesday 19^th June, meet at Carnegie Library at 2.00pm
• Thursday 21^st June, Thursday 7^th June, meet at Carnegie Library at 6.30pm

Tickets cost £3, include refreshments
and are available from Carnegie Library, Ayr.

This event is part of our National Crime Writing Month celebrations, view our library blog for more events.

If you can’t join us for any of the above dates you can always download the audio tour of this walk ‘Crooks in the Nooks’.

For more information please contact us on
Tel: 01292 286385 or email Carnegie.Library@south-ayrshire.gov.uk

Looking for something to read?

Thomas Cochrane, 10^th Earl of Dundonald was a successful naval officer during the Napoleonic Wars, and a radical politician. His exploits provided the inspiration for both C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower novels, and also Patrick O’Brian’s fictional hero Captain Jack Aubrey, on which Peter Weir based his 2003 film Master and Commander. Rachel Billington’s latest novel Maria and the Admiral, focuses instead on Cochrane’s romantic life…

Valparaiso, June 1822. Thomas Cochrane has led the Chilean fleet to victory, and as the news spreads of the country’s independence from Spain, a British woman, Maria Graham, watches from her house near Valparaiso Bay. A vivacious and clever young widow, her first thought as she contemplates her compatriot’s arrival is that her loneliness has come to an end. Lauded in the press, and admired by Napoleon, Cochrane had long been at odds with the Admiralty, who failed to subdue his outspoken independence. In Maria Graham he meets a woman whose intelligence and spirit of adventure match his own. Based on a true story, Maria and the Admiral vividly imagines the intensity of Maria and Thomas’s first meeting and their parting in Rio de Janeiro 10 months later, in March 1823. Against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful and remote cities on earth, caught between the Pacific and the snow-capped Andes, this is the story of two exceptional people whose lives are joined before being torn apart by family ties, natural disaster and war.

The Story of a Scots Emigrant on RMS Titanic

A rare and poignant letter written by a Scot one hundred years ago as he prepared to board the doomed RMS Titanic, has been discovered by staff at the National Records of Scotland.

Robert Douglas Norman, a 28-year-old electrical engineer from Glasgow, wrote the letter from his half-sister’s home in London on 9 April 1912 – the eve of the famous liner’s departure from Southampton. He died when the Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean six days later.

The National Records of Scotland discovered the rare letter, along with the inventory of Mr Norman’s estate, as part of their work to digitise thousands of paper records for the ScotlandsPeople genealogy website. You can learn more about Robert Douglas Norman and read the full letter on a dedicated page on the NAS website.

To mark the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, the original letter will be shown as well as other documents relating to a few of the 1,500 people who lost their lives by the foundering of the ‘Titanic’ at the ScotlandsPeople Centre at General Register House in Edinburgh. The free display can be seen from 16 April until 25 May, Monday to Friday, 09.00 to 16.30.

From Crofts to Castles: Valuation Rolls in Scotland Go Online

A fascinating snapshot of Scotland during the First World War and a major new family history resource

A detailed picture of wartime Scotland is revealed with the release of details from the Valuation Rolls for the year 1915-16, via the ScotlandsPeople website.

The rolls have been made searchable online for the first time, allowing genealogists, local historians and other researchers to view images of entries in the rolls, fully searchable by name or address.

Available from the Local History Library at Carnegie

ScotlandsPeople Vouchers 

• Starter vouchers £7.00 for 60 credits
• Top ups £5.60 for 30 credits

These vouchers can be used in the library and at home and enables users to access records for the whole of Scotland online.

FindMyPast.co.uk – Free access to Scottish Census at Carnegie

New! Scottish Census 1841 – 1891 available free in the Local History Library at Carnegie, Ayr.  Please ask staff for free access to Find My Past.

Welcome to South Ayrshire History Fair’s blog

Keep up-to-date with all the latest news about our annual History Fair.  This year’s event will be on the held on Saturday 2nd June, 2012 at the Walker Halls in Troon and promises to be a wonderful day out for anyone interested in family history and their Ayrshire roots.

Our speaker’s for the day are

Tom Barclay, Local Studies Librarian, South Ayrshire Council.
The Iron Road to Troon: a bi-centenary celebration of Scotland’s first proper railway

Mark Nixon, Honorary Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Edinburgh
Political Agitation in Late 19th Century Ayrshire

Dr Iain Banks, Senior Lecturer, Battlefield Archaeology, University of Glasgow
The Archaeology of Battlefields

James Beaton, Project Manager, National Piping Centre
Piping and the Piper – tradition, change and the Highland Bagpipe

Prices for talks 

Talks will be held throughout the day.  For more information please view our Programme of Events.

• £10 for the day
• £3 per talk or £5 for two talks

Stalls

There will be a large range of stalls available from 9.00am – 4.30pm.  These will include: Family History Societies, Local and National History organisations and professional and commercial businesses.  There will also be a specialist Scottish bookshop.  Admission to the stalls is free.