Ayr, Ayr: Auld Brig [Credit: Stephen McKay]port town, South Ayrshire council area, historic county of Ayrshire, Scotland, at the mouth of the River Ayr where it enters the Firth of Clyde. The town is at the centre of the area associated with Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns.

Ayr was created a royal burgh in 1202 (the original charter is preserved in the Town Hall) and became the garrison and court town of the administrative entity known as the sheriffdom of Ayr. During medieval times it was the chief Scottish port on the western coast until it was superseded by the developing River Clyde ports to its north. Surviving medieval relics include Loudoun Hall (16th century, restored), the town house of the Loudouns, a family that long supplied the sheriffs of Ayr. The River Ayr is still crossed by the 13th-century Auld Brig, immortalized in Burns’s poem “The Brigs of Ayr.” In the 18th ... (150 of 362 words)

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