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| This section will introduce you to some of the famous (or notorious) characters who have been woven into the historic tapestry of the district. I have purposely chosen not to include any references to Robert Burns in this section as there are a multitude of websites who would do justice to the Bard, far better than I. However, you can see 'Ae Fond Kiss' by Robert Burns here.
Archibald William Montgomerie - 13th Earl of Eglinton.Ayrshire. The Eglinton Tournament finally began on the 28th August 1839. The Earl had spent the latter part of 1838 and all of the Spring and Summer to prepare for his event. It was to be a revival of medieval jousting during the Victorian era, a time in which many of the privileges afforded to the landed gentry were being swept away. The tournament at Eglinton Estate was to be a pivotal event in the history of the Montgomerie Family. It had been conceived in retaliation of the scrapping of the gauntlet ritual at Queen Victoria's coronation. The tournament which was intended to be a private event, attracted so much interest that is soon ascended to a national public festival. Thousands turned up to see the rehearsals held in Regents Park in London. Interest in the Tournament grew to such an extent that in April 1839 the Sheriff of Ayr posted warning that if any fatalities occurred at the Joust, then charges of manslaughter or murder may be brought against the offending knight. The guests began to assemble a few days before the official opening of the event. Accommodation was impossible to find in the Irvine/Ardrossan area as visitors poured in from all over Britain, Europe and North America. Every available form of transport was used to convey people to Eglinton Castle. The grounds were open free to the general public but only the select few where given seats to view the joust which was to be fought by thirteen knights. The cost of the event was now becoming so great that many of the original 150 Aristocrats who previously supported the idea were forced to withdraw. Of the remaining 13 'champions', Eglinton was made 'Lord of the Tournament' and the Marquis of Londonderry, 'King of the Tournament'. To complete the medieval theme, Lady Jane Seymour, wife of the future Duke of Somerset was appointed 'Queen of Light and Beauty'. It had been Eglinton's intention to start the parade at noon on the 28th August. However, amidst scenes of chaos the retinue, believed to stretch for over half a mile, did not leave until after 3pm. By which time the unpredictability of the Scottish weather, put paid to the Eglinton's plans. The day having started with brilliant sunshine, descended into a great storm. The Earl had no choice other than to continue with the event (a real medieval joust would have been postponed). As a result the knights and principal guests were drenched by the time the parade reached the arena. It was at this juncture that many of the finer details of the event were dropped which was to become the cause of much ridicule afterwards. The Heralds who were supposed to introduce each knight could not be heard. Lady Seymour was forced to make a rather ungracious entrance to the Royal Box through a back door and even the throwing down of the gauntlet was forgotten. This was particularly sad given the initial reason for the Tournament plan. This magnificent trophy was presented to the Earl of Eglinton by the guests who were entertained at the castle during the Tournament. The trophy was created by the Crown Jewellers from money raised by the Earl's friends. Including an elaborately carved base it stands almost eight feet high and depicts some of the principal characters that took part in the event. The trophy is now on permanent loan to North Ayrshire Council and is on display in their headquarters.
See the wesite. The History of the Montgomeries, Earls of Eglinton. back to top.
The Ayrshire Cannibals ( The tale of Sawney Bean) The Sawney Bean case in the early seventeenth century concerned a family that lived in a cave and chose murder, cannibalism, and incest as its way of life. For twenty-five years this family, rejecting all accepted standards of human behaviour and morality, carried on a viscious guerilla war against humanity.Because over the years a large family was ultimately involved, most of whom had been born and raised in fantastic conditions under which they accepted such an existence as normal, taking their standards from the criminal behaviour of their parents. Retribution when it finally came was quick and merciless, but for many of the forty-eight Beans who were duly put to death it may have been unjust. Home turned out to be Bennane Cave, by Ballantrae in Ayrshire. It was a gigantic cave, penetrating more than a mile into the solid rock of the rather wild hinterland, with many tortuous windings and side passages. A short way from the entrance of the cave all was complete darkness. Twice a day at high tide several hundred yards of the cave's entrance passage were flooded, which formed a deterrent to intruders. In this dark damp hole they decided to make their home. It seemed unlikely that they would ever be discovered. In practice, the cave proved to be a lair rather than a home, and from this lair Sawney Bean launched a reign of terror which was to last for a quarter of a century. It was Sawney's plan to live on the proceeds of robbery, and it proved to be a simple enough matter to ambush travellers on the lonely narrow roads connecting nearby villages. In order to ensure that he could never be indentified and tracked down, Sawney made a point of murdering and devouring his victims. This he and his wife proceeded to do. The bodies were 'butchered' and hung on hooks around the walls of the cave to start a larder of human meat on which they were to survive, indeed thrive, for more than two decades. The bones were stacked in another part of the cave system. Naturally, these abductions created intense fear in the area. The disappearance of people travelling alone along the country roads caused great alarm. Although determined efforts were made to find the bodies of the victims and their killer, Sawney was never discovered. The cave was too deep and complex for facile exploration. Nobody suspected that the unseen marauder of Galloway could possibly live in a cave which twice a day was flooded with water. And nobody imagined for a moment that the missing people were, in fact, being eaten. The Sawney way of life settled down into a pattern. His wife began to produce children, who were brought up in the cave. The killings and cannibalism became habit. Under these incredible conditions Sawney and his wife produced a family of fourteen children, and as they grew up the children in turn, by incest, produced a second generation of eight grandsons and fourteen granddaughters. It is astonishing that with so many children and, eventually, adolescents milling around in and close to the cave somebody did not observe this strange phenomenon and investigate. The chances are that they did, from time to time - that they investigated too closely and were murdered and eaten. The Sawney children were no doubt brought up to regard other humans as food. The young Sawneys received no education, except in the arts of primitive speech, murder and cannibal cuisine. They developed as a self-contained expanding colony of beasts of prey, with their communal appetite growing ever bigger and more insatiable. As the children became adults they were encouraged to join in the kidnappings and killings. The Sawney gang swelled its ranks to a formidable size. Murder and abduction became refined by years of skill and experience to a science, if not an art. Despite the alarming increase in the number of Sawney mouths which had to be fed, the family were seldom short of human flesh in the larder. Sometimes, having too much food in store, they were obliged to discard portions of it as putrefaction set in despite the salting and pickling. Thus it happened that from time to time at remote distances from the cave, in open country or washed up on the beach, curiously preserved but decaying human remains would be discovered. Since these grisly objects consisted of severed limbs and lumps of dried flesh, they were never identified, nor was it possible to estimate when death had taken place, but it soon became obvious to authority that they were connected with the long list of missing people. And authority, at first disbelieving, began to realize with gathering the nature of what was happening. Murder and dismemberment were one thing, but the salting and pickling of human flesh implied something far more sinister. The efforts made to trace the missing persons and hunt down their killers resulted in some unfortunate arrests and executions of innocent people whose only crime was that they had been the last to see the victim before his, or her, disappearance. The Sawney family, securing in their cave, remained unsuspected and undiscovered. Years went by. The family grew older and bigger and more hungry. The programme of abduction and murder was organized on a more ambitious scale. Sometimes as many as six men and women would be ambushed and killed at at time by a dozen or more Sawney's. Their bodies were always dragged back to the cave to be prepared by the women for the larder. It seems strange that nobody ever escaped to provide the slightest clue to identify the attackers, but the Sawney's conducted their ambushes like military operations, with "guards" concealed by the road at either side of the main centre of attack to cut down any quarry that had the temerity to run for it. This "three-pronged" operation proved effective; there were no survivors. And although mass-searches were carried out to locate the perpetrators of these massacres, nobody ever thought of searching the deep cave. It was passed by on many occasions. Such a situation could not continue indefinitely, however. Inevitably there had to be a mistake - just one clumsy mistake that would deliver the Sawney Bean family to the wrath of an outraged society. The mistake, when it happened, was simple enough - the surprising thing was that it had not happened earlier. For the first time in 25 years the Sawney's, through bad judgement and bad timing, allowed themselves to be outnumbered, though even that was not the end of the matter. Retribution when it finally came was in the grand manner, with the King himself talking part in the end game - the pursuit and annihilation of the Sawney Bean tribe. It happened this way. One night a pack of the Sawney Beans attacked a man and his wife who were returning on horse-back from a nearby fair. They seized the woman first, and while they were still struggling to dismount the man had her stripped and disemboweled, ready to be dragged off to the cave. The husband, driven berserk by the swift atrocity and realizing that he was hopelessly outnumbered by utterly ruthless fiends, fought desperately to escape. In the vicious engagement some of the Sawney's were trampled underfoot. But he, too, would have been taken and murdered had not a group of other riders, some twenty or more, also returning from the fair, arrived unexpected on the scene. For the first time the Sawney Beans found themselves at a disadvantage, and discovered that courage was not their most prominent virtue. After a brief violent skirmish they abandoned the fight and scurried like rats back to their cave, leaving the mutilated body of the woman behind, and a score of witnesses. The incident was to be the Sawney's first and last serious error of tactics and policy. The man, the only one on record known to have escaped from a Sawney ambush, was taken to the Chief Magistrate of Glasgow to describe his harrowing experience. This evidence was the break through for which the magistrate had been waiting for a long time. The long catalogue of missing people and pickled human remains seemed to be reaching its final page and denouement; a gang of men an youths were involved, and had been involved for years, and they had to be tracked down. They obviously lived locally, in the Ayrshire area, and past discoveries suggested that they were cannibals. The matter was so serious that the Chief Magistrate communicated directly with King James VI and the King apparently took an equally serious view, for when he went in person to Ayrshire with a small army of four hundred armed men and a host of tracker dogs. The King, with his officers and retinue, and the assistance of local volunteers, set out systematically on one of the biggest manhunts in history. They explored the entire Ayrshire countryside and coastline - and discovered nothing. When patrolling the shore they would have walked past the partly waterlogged cave itself had not the dogs, scenting the faint odour of death and decay, started baying and howling and trying to splash their way into the dark interior. This seemed to be it. The pursuers took no chances. They knew they were dealing with vicious, ruthless men who had been in the murder business for a long time. With flaming torches to provide a flickering light, and swords at the ready, they advanced cautiously but methodically along the narrow twisting passages of the cave. In due course they reached the charnel house at the end of the the mile-deep cave that was the home and operational base of the Sawney Bean cannibals. A dreadful sight greeted their eyes. Along the damp walls of the cave human limbs and cuts of bodies, male and female, were hung in rows like carcasses of meat in a butchers cold room. Elsewhere they found bundles of clothing and piles of valuables, including watches, rings and jewellery. In an adjoining cavern there was a heap of bones collected over some twenty five years. The entire Sawney Beane family, all forty-eight of them, were in residence; they were lying low, knowing that an army four hundred strong was on their tail. There was a fight, but for the Sawney's there was literally no escape. They were trapped and duly arrested. With the King himself still in attendance they were marched to Edinburgh - but not for trial. The prisoners numbered twenty seven men and twenty one women of which all but two, the original parents, had been convceived and brought up as cave-dwellers, raised from childhood on human flesh, and taught that robbery and murder were the normal way of life. For this wretched incestuous horde of Scottish cannibals there was to be no mercy, and no pretence of justice if every any one of them merited justice. The Sawney Beans of both sexes were condemned to death in an arbitrary fashion because their crimes over a generation of years were adjudged to be so infamous and offensive as to preclude the normal process of law, evidence and jurisdiction. They were outcasts of society and had no rights, even the youngest and most innocent of them. All were executed the following day, in accordance with the conventions and procedures of the age. The men were dismembered, just as they had dismembered their victims. Their arms and legs were cut off while they were still alive and conscious, and they were left to bleed to death, watched by their women. And then the women were burned like witches in great fires. Go ye not by Gallowa There's nae body kens that he bides there For Sawney he has taen a wife And Sawney has been well endowed An Sawney's sons are young an strong So if you ride frae there tae here They'll hing ye ap an cut yer throat But fear ye not, oor Captain rides They've hung them high in Edinburgh toon
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Darvel's most famous son was Sir Alexander Flemming - Nobel prize winner who in 1928 discovered penicillin and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945 following the widespread use of penicillin in World War II. back to top
The name 'Stevenston' is believed to have derived from Stephen or Steven, son of Richard Loccard or Lockhart, who acquired a grant of the lands from Richard Morville, Lord of Cunningham. 'Steven's Toun'. Stevenston is a small town in Ayrshire. back to top
A device that is used daily by hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people around the world was developed in the last century by Scotsman John Boyd Dunlop. Born on February 5, 1846 in Dreghorn (my home village), North Ayrshire, Dunlop was originally a successful veterinarian working near Belfast. Later on however, he would become instrumental in creating the first usable pneumatic tire, a device which is essential in the modern automobile. Dunlop was not the first person to invent the device (it was first conceived by another Scotsman, Robert William Thomson, in the 1840's), but Dunlop was the first to develop and patent a practical version of it In the long tradition of major discoveries and inventions coming about through coincidence, accident or necessity, the beginning of Dunlop's legacy occurred when, in 1888, he was watching his son ride his tricycle. Noticing that his son was encountering difficulty and discomfort while riding over cobbled ground, Dunlop realized that this was because of the vehicle's solid rubber tires and began looking for a way to improve them. The solution he came up with was a rubber tube filled with air to give it cushioning properties. Dunlop patented the design and it wasn't long before bicycle and automobile manufacturers recognized the design's potential usefulness in their fields. Within ten years of patenting the device, it had almost entirely replaced solid tires and had been implemented for use in automobiles by Andre and Edouard Michelin. Through the company he founded, Dunlop Tires, his name is still associated with the automobile industry today. back to top
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