Among the most fascinating chapters in Loudoun Hall's story is its link to the Covenanters, the men and women who risked prison, exile and death rather than give up their religious beliefs.
In the 17th century Ayrshire became one of the great strongholds of the Covenanting movement. Two of the Hall's owners were caught up in it: one took part in the Covenanters' dealings with the King, and another, a former Provost of Ayr, was pursued by the government for his part in illegal religious meetings. Secret preaching is even said to have taken place in his home.
A nation divided
The movement began in the 1630s, when King Charles I tried to change the worship and government of the Scottish Church. In 1638 thousands signed the National Covenant, pledging to defend their Presbyterian faith and the independence of the Kirk.
After Charles II was restored in 1660, the government brought back bishops. Ministers who refused to conform were put out of their churches, and many kept preaching in houses, barns and remote hillsides. These gatherings were called conventicles. Attending one could mean heavy fines, prison or worse, yet across Ayrshire people kept coming.
James Chalmer of Gadgirth
James Chalmer (or Chalmers) of Gadgirth became Sheriff-Principal of Ayr in 1632, owned Loudoun Hall, and sat for Ayrshire in the Scots Parliament.
He was active in the Covenanting cause, and was among the commissioners in the peace negotiations with Charles I that began at Ripon in 1640, after the Covenanters' war with the King. He had died by 1646, and the Hall passed to his son, John.
1666: the martyrs of Ayr
In November 1666 a Covenanter rising was crushed at the Battle of Rullion Green, in the Pentland Hills. Captured men were sent to towns across the south-west for punishment, including Ayr.
Seven were condemned in Ayr: James Smith, Alexander MacMillan, James MacMillan, John Short, George MacCartney, John Graham and John Muirhead.
Ayr's hangman fled rather than carry out the sentence, and the hangman brought from Irvine refused too. In the end Cornelius Anderson, one of the condemned prisoners, agreed to hang the others in return for his own life.
The seven were hanged on 27 December 1666. Their grave is in the Auld Kirk yard, a short walk from Loudoun Hall, and for the people living around the Sandgate, the High Street and the Boat Vennel, the conflict was no longer distant. It was on their own streets.
John Muir, the Provost who defied the authorities
In 1666 Loudoun Hall was bought by John Muir of Park, a prosperous Ayr merchant whose name is also written Mure or Moore. He was Provost of Ayr from 1673 to 1675.
His time in office came as tension grew between the government and Ayrshire's Presbyterians, and the Covenanters seem to have enjoyed more freedom in Ayr than the authorities thought acceptable.
Secret worship in the Provost's house?
By the late 1670s the government was determined to stamp out illegal worship in Ayrshire. Ministers preached wherever sympathetic householders would risk opening their doors.
An account of the Presbyterian minister John Welwood refers to a deposition of 22 February 1678 naming him among the ministers who preached at meetings in John Muir's home, or in the home of another Ayr resident, Helen Leslie.
Could those meetings have taken place inside Loudoun Hall? It is certainly possible, and Muir had owned the Hall since 1666. But no record yet proves that the house in question was Loudoun Hall rather than another of his properties.
1678: the government turns on John Muir
In early 1678 the government sent the "Highland Host", an army of several thousand men, into Ayrshire to crush the conventicles. Its committee sat in Ayr.
On 9 February 1678 information was laid before it against "John Muir, late provost of Ayr, for several conventicles and other great disorders". Muir had apparently fled, and sentries were placed on a ship, the James of Ayr, in case his goods were aboard.
The next day the committee found that the ship was not his and carried none of his goods, and let her sail. For a man who had held the town's highest office, it was a remarkable fall.
The return of the Provost
Muir's troubles did not end his public life. After the Revolution of 1688 brought William and Mary to the throne, Presbyterian church government was restored in Scotland.
In 1688 Muir became Provost again, and he sat for Ayr in the Scots Parliament from 1689 until 1707. Between 1688 and 1721, he and his sons Robert and Samuel held the office of Provost for 25 of those 33 years. The Muirs kept Loudoun Hall until 1770.
A silent witness
Imagine the Great Hall on a winter's night in 1677. Outside, informers and soldiers threaten anyone who will not conform. Inside, a small gathering listens quietly to a minister preaching a faith the Crown has tried to silence.
Whether or not that scene happened here, Loudoun Hall and its owners were bound up with the people and events of one of the most turbulent chapters in Scotland's history.
Sources: WMA Group, Highland Host records, 1678, Ayr Martyrs records, Parliaments of Scotland, South Ayrshire Council, Loudoun Hall history page, Fergusson 1950.