In 1666 John Chalmer of Gadgirth sold the house to John Muir of Park, an Ayr merchant from a Tarbolton family. His name is also written Mure or Moore.
The list of title deeds he received survives in a later history. It is headed "Ane Inventar of the Writs and Evidents of the Houses, Yeard, and Garden Chamber and Pertinents which belonged to the Earle of Loudone, afterwards to the Laird of Gadgirth, and was acquired by Provost John Moore."
A Provost in trouble, then in power
He was Provost of Ayr from 1673 to 1675. John Muir sided with the Covenanters. In 1678 the government accused him of "several conventicles and other great disorders", and he appears to have fled the town. The full story is on our Covenanters page.
After the Revolution of 1688 he returned as Provost, and sat for Ayr in the Scots Parliament from 1689 until 1707. He was, wrote the Ayrshire historian James Paterson, "a person of high credit and reputation". He was also among the first merchants in the town to build a shop.
Father and son
In 1684 John Muir handed the Hall to his eldest son, Robert, when Robert married the daughter of Alexander Simpson, an Ayr merchant. The deed is dated 2 April 1684.
Robert Muir followed in his father's footsteps. He too was Provost of Ayr several times, and in 1706, in the Parliament that agreed the Union, he was one of the commissioners for the county while his father represented the town. His brother Samuel was Provost too.
For a generation the family had, as the novelist John Galt's Provost Pawkie put it, "the whole sway and mastery of the town". Paterson wrote that from 1688 to 1722 "the welfare of the town of Ayr was wholly in their hands".
Wine and tobacco
Robert Muir traded with France for wine and with Virginia for tobacco, and became a rich man. In 1701 he bought the estate of Blairstoun, on the banks of the Doon near Maybole.
With a country house of their own, the Muirs probably no longer lived in Loudoun Hall all year round. Robert died in 1734, having had ten children by his first wife. Two of his daughters and one of his granddaughters married later Provosts of Ayr.
Four members of Parliament
At least four members of the old Scots Parliament lived in Loudoun Hall: the second Sir Hugh Campbell, James Chalmer of Gadgirth, John Muir and his son Robert.
The Hall passed from Robert to his son John, who died in 1744, and then to his grandson, another Robert, who became a doctor. "From Dr Muir's time," wrote Fergusson, "begins the decline of Loudoun Hall."
Sources: Fergusson 1950, Close 2025, Highland Host records, 1678, Parliaments of Scotland.