Beyond Burns: Ellisland's People

Farmhouse in Time temporary exhibition tells tales of soldiers and thieves who lived in poet’s house:

The untold stories of soldiers, doctors, dairymaids and thieves whose lives were touched by the 18th century farm created by the poet Robert Burns are revealed in a new temporary exhibition at Ellisland.

New discoveries include material about a teenage servant who was jailed for theft and a ploughman who survived the Crimean War, as well as generations of local tenant farming families who toiled on the land after Burns’s departure in 1791.

Archive film offers a glimpse of life at the farm in the 1950s and there are oral history recordings of people who lived at Ellisland or have helped preserve the legacy of the place where Burns wrote Auld Lang Syne and Tam o Shanter.

The exhibition is part of a project called Burns, Barns and Byres, which has also supported community and education events this summer.