Map points the way to Ayr’s future

Mar 27 2009 by Edwin Lawrence

THE WORLD was a vastly different place in 1854.

The pace of change has accelerated massively in the past 155 years.

And many of the innovations have greatly enhanced our quality of life.

But perhaps others have made us slaves to the very technology that brought progress.

So it’s sometimes reassuring to look back at the way we were.

And 155 years is a tiny amount of time in terms of the many ages of Planet Earth.

If you think about it, people alive today who have reached or are near 100, could have had a father born around that time.

This is part of a map of Ayr in 1854 which shows the old port at the mouth of the river.

The north quay is connected to the recently constructed railway which has opened up easy access to fast-industrialising Scotland.

Industry has arrived in the town with two foundries seen, one close to the shipbuilding yard on the north bank.

These foundries, along with the gasworks, were undoubtedly supplied with coal from Ayrshire’s burgeoning mining industry and connected by a tram road – an early horse-drawn railway.

The growing prosperity of industrialists and businessmen is seen with new villas in their own grounds along the south shore.

All seems peace and order, but inevitably the town town is riddled with Victorian social contradictions and tensions.

One of the buildings clearly seen is the Poors House – a predecessor of Holmston House, which wasn’t built until 1860.

And there is a huge seafront jail on the site of today’s County Buildings.

Also a large brewery at Blackfriars Walk, not far from the Auld Kirk of Ayr.

Burns’ Statue Square isn’t yet formed, and the cattle market is right in the heart of the town.

The location of today’s high flats at the riverside is marked Content Quarry.

Many of today’s important housing areas in Ayr were simply farms or estates in 1854 – Forehill, Braehead, Castlehill and Craigie.

The whole of the Heathfield area is wide open agricultural land.

The map is one of a new national series of Victorian Town Maps from Heritage Cartography.

It has been compiled from the first large scale surveys of the area by the Ordnance Survey.

The map can be bought or ordered from bookshops and tourist information centre at £9.50 uncoloured or £25 hand-tinted.

Check out the website www.victoriantownmaps.co.uk to find out more.