Church where Robert Burns attended Sunday service seeks £25,000 to protect 846-year-old building
It is the church where Robert Burns sat in the same pew on a Sunday with his wife - and where it is said he always carried a bit of paper on which to jot down his musings, just in case.
Now St Michael’s & South Parish Church in Dumfries, where the bard was later laid to rest in its graveyard in 1796, is raising money to protect and enhance the building - and its Burns’ connections - for the future.
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Hide AdFiona Lee, development officer for St Michael’s, said the church was hoping to raise £25,000 for a ‘facelift’ to the entrance way and to bring the graveyard into good order.
She said the church was “central” to the Burns story in Dumfries and the town was working on several fronts to bolster its association with the poet.


Ms Lee said: “There are few parts of this ancient town that were not touched by his presence. Scores of visitors from around the world make pilgrimage to visit the kirk where he [Burns] worshipped and his mausoleum that lies within the church grounds.
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Hide Ad“He lived in Dumfries for the last years of his life, in several different houses and the last one is within 200 yards of the church. St Michael’s was his church and had a box pew there that he would attend with his wife and his family
“We love to point out the location where he sat. There is a side door and I like to imagine that he scuttled through to his pew and hid behind the medieval column there as I imagine he was in a bit of trouble with the minister because of his behaviour.
“It is said that even during services he always had a bit of paper and was making notes.”
Ms Lee said the church retained many features, which would have been in place during the visits of Burns, who farmed at Ellisland outside Dumfries from 1788 before moving into town in 1791. By then, he was already a patron of The Globe Inn.
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Hide AdMs Lee added: “We also have this wonderful clock, the parliament clock which dates to 1758, which still works beautifully and I have the honour of winding that clock every week. So I like to tell the story that he might have glanced up at the clock and thinking ‘how much longer is this going on’.”
“I made that joke with our new minister as I think it is so funny. He wasn’t too offended.
“Burns was here. The pulpit that is here, he would have seen. The building is as he would have recognised it. The pillars he would have sat next to are still here.”
The church also has two stained glassed windows - one of Burns and one of Jean - which were installed at the church in 2009 to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth.
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Hide AdBurns was buried in the graveyard with a simple slab, but later visitors seeking to pay their respects to the bard complained they could not find the modest memorial.
Fundraising was launched locally to build a mausoleum for the poet and his family, with the bard moved to his most final resting place in 1815.
Ms Lee said: “The team that came to move him into the mausoleum first moved the grave of his two boys, and then when they reached Burns’ grave, they were astounded. They stood back. It looked like he was almost alive, everything was perfect. As soon as they moved the body, it dissolved into dust.”
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