Historic map of Troon (from 1774) Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk/

Heritage & History

By Scottish standards, Troon is a relatively new town. Until the early 1800s, it was little more than a fishermen’s hamlet, nestled around the the natural harbour behind the headland – or “nose” – that gives the town its name.

That all changed when the Duke of Portland decided to develop the harbour into a modern commercial port in 1808. Four years later, the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway opened, principally to carry coal from the Duke’s mines in Kilmarnock to be shipped via the new port.

From its earliest days, the railway also carried people: the first in Scotland, with passengers transported as freight! Together with the large number of construction workers housed in wooden huts, this new accessibility fuelled a swift growth in population, laying the foundations for the Troon we know today.

Church History

Timeline of Troon Churches
Timeline of Troon Churches, 1800-2000 1 (click to expand)

Pre-1800

There has been a church presence within the immediate area of Troon since at least 1229, when Walter Stewart is recorded as granting Crosbie Chapel to the Gilbertine house of Dalmilling. The present Crosbie Kirk was built on the same site in 1681; by local tradition it was ruined by the storm on 25th January 1759 that blew down the gable of Burns’ cottage in nearby Alloway, the night Robert Burns was born.

Our monarch’s hindmost year but ane
Was five-and-twenty days begun,
‘Twas then a blast of Janwar win’
Blew hansel in on Robin

Robert Burns – Rantin, Rovin, Robin

Crosbie Kirk is set in a churchyard that was the burial ground for Troon until 1862, with funerals from Troon going along the beach and over the ‘Wrack Road’ (the first part of the present day Smugglers’ Trail).

Apart from brief annexations of parts of it to neighbouring parishes, the whole area from Crosbie in the south all the way to the River Irvine in the north – including Troon – lay within the Parish of Dundonald.

Early 1800s

In the early 1800s, the growing population of construction workers attracted a preacher who held services in the open air and in the workers’ huts. Numbers grew to such an extent that in 1814 the Burgher Presbytery of Kilmarnock authorised the rental of the sail loft above the ropeworks for worship. This led in 1822 to the construction of the town’s first purpose built church, in Barassie Street – ‘The Troon Church’.

Meanwhile, the Established Church of Scotland (‘the Auld Kirk’) Minister and Kirk Session of Dundonald appointed a licentiate minister to do outreach work in the area. His name was James Fleming, and he started building a congregation in the now-vacated sail loft.

Two competing congregations could not last for long and there was a town meeting held to decide whether the minister should belong to the Established, Relief or Burgher persuasions (the result of multiple schisms in the Church of Scotland during the 1700s). An account 2 of the meeting records that a large majority favoured the Established Church, and Rev Fleming became the de facto parish minister.

References

  1. Timeline created by Bob Gemmell. ↩︎
  2. Mackintosh, ‘Memories of Old Troon’, p132. ↩︎

Sources