Ellisland Farm

Ellisland Farm lies about 6.5 mi/10.4 km northwest of Dumfries in village of Auldgirth, located in the Parish of Dunscore, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The complex is a museum in the farm Robert Burns built, lived in and farmed from 1788 until 1791.

William Roy's map, circa 1747–55, does not show any form of settlement at Ellisland. However William Crawford's 1804 map of Dumfries-shire marks an 'Elliesland' as expected, the farm having been built a few years before. The name is said to be derived from "Isle's Land", the name of a neighbouring estate. The river may have been less of a barrier to transport than today and a ford is known to have existed nearby.

Patrick Miller of Dalswinton wrote of the area in September 1810, saying;

"When I purchased this estate about twenty-five years ago, I had not seen it. It was in the most miserable state of exhaustion, and all the tenants in poverty. .... When I went to view my purchase, I was so much disgusted for eight or ten days, that I then meant to return to this county."

Patrick Miller of Dalswinton had offered Burns a choice of three farms, two on the rich holms of the River Nith's east side; and one, Ellisland, on the west bank, composed of a fertile strip along the river itself and stony fields between the river and the Dumfries road. Burns visited Ellisland on 27 February 1788 with James Tennant of Glenconner, a friend of himself and his father; taking James's advice he agreed to sign up to the seventy-six-year lease from his friend Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, taking up the lease of the farm at Whitsun (25 May) 1788. The lease was divided up into four periods of nineteen years, the rent for the first three years to be £50 per annum, and £70 thereafter.

Robert had written a letter to his friend Patrick Miller, on 20 October 1787:

I want to be a farmer in a small farm, about a plough-gang, in a pleasant country, under the auspices of a good landlord. I have no foolish notion of being a tenant on easier terms than another.

To find a farm where one can live at all is not easy – I only mean living soberly, like an old-style farmer, and joining personal industry.

The banks of the Nith are as sweet poetic ground as any I ever saw; and besides, Sir, 'tis but justice to the feelings of my own heart and the opinion of my best friends, to say that I would wish to call you landlord sooner than any landed gentleman I know…

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