Reid, Donald L.

Robert Burns' Valley of Doon: An Ayrshire Journey Down Memory Lane

Beith 2005

ISBN 0 9522720 2 4; 112 pages, illustrated; price £11.00 post free in UK only (postage to Europe £3.50, USA, Canada, and Australia £5.00). Available from the author at 7 Manuel Avenue, Beith, Ayrshire, Scotland KA15 1BJ, United Kingdom.

Following up swiftly on his recently published Yesterday's Patna & The Lost Villages of the Doon Valley, Donald Reid takes us back to the Doon Valley for a historical meander downstream in prose and photograph. The focus is on the upper and mid Doon from Loch Enoch to Dalrymple, with the lower reaches only making a brief appearance, and the history is for the most part industrial and social of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even Loch Enoch has its industrial history, while Loch Doon was touched by both World Wars.

Mark Gibson, the present owner, has contributed a chapter on his restoration of Craigengillan and his plans for the estate. Its future appears to be in very good hands. The reviewer must however take issue with the claim that either John McAdam of Craigengillan or John Loudon McAdam was the inventor of tarmacadam. They were both in the ground long before tar was added as a binding material to macadamised surfaces.

From Dalmellington to Dalrymple the departed mines and ironworks take central stage, with many photographs of the communties they supported, and of old workings and railways. Here miners' rows dealt with more fully in Yesterday's Patna make brief appearances.

This book is of interest to one who has journeyed through the valley and explored it during the past thiry years. It will be doubly so to those who have lived in it. It is attractively produced on good quality paper, and only a little marred by poor proof-reading.

David McClure.

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