Rev Thomas Walker - Our Longest Serving Minister
The succession of short ministries occasioned by the troubled times of the late 17th century continued into the 18th in Dundonald. The first 32 years of the new century saw four separate ministers in the parish. Rev Lindsay died in 1715 after serving for 17 years but his successor James Cowan lasted only 6 before being removed on “account of inability or unfitness”. Rev Kearnochan lasted 4 years but no reason has been found for his removal; Hamilton Kennedy was translated to Ballantrae after only 2 years.
Things take a marked change with the arrival of Thomas Walker as a young man of 28 in 1732. He served for the next 48 years and is Dundonald’s longest serving minister. His ministry covers what seems to have been a settled period in the life of the church. Church records are well looked after and there is a well-managed Poors Fund for care of the less fortunate. Mr Walker’s son, Josias, who later held the Chair of Humanity at Glasgow University, recorded his memories of his early life in Dundonald (3). He paints a rather dismal picture of the 18th century manse as a building with clay floors, dark deal-boarded walls and rather low ceilings. But he also recalls life there as far from dismal, with much open- hearted hospitality and general happiness. He remembers his father as “a scholar and a student but no ascetic, being always ready to take a share in every innocent and cheerful recreation.”.
This same Josias Walker was rather delicate as a child and was a favourite of Susanna, Countess of Eglinton whose occupancy of the house of Old Auchans corresponded almost exactly with the ministry of Thomas Walker at Dundonald. Though not of the same religious persuasion Lady Susanna and Thomas Walker became close friends and, as she became frailer in her old age, he visited her almost daily. They died within days of each other in 1780.
Two accounts remain as to the circumstances of Rev Walker’s death. Local gossip, recorded by J Kelso Hunter (4), relates that, when visiting a house above what we now refer to as Home Brae, he celebrated rather too well and, on his way, back to the manse imagined he heard someone whistling over the dyke beside the road. He was so taken with the music that, at the manse door he yelled out “ Weel whistled Billy!”, attributing the performance to the Devil. In the next few days he declined rapidly, never again left the house and died in bed, punished for consorting with the Devil. The more mundane, and more likely, explanation is that he caught a chill while attending the funeral of Lady Susanna and failed to recover.
During Mr Walker’s ministry William Burns arrived in the parish to work at Fairlie Estate near Gatehead. He attended the Church regularly and, before leaving to set up a market garden in Alloway, he received a letter from Rev Walker and the session clerk attesting to that fact. Once in Alloway of course his wife Agnes Brown gave birth to their first child, Robert Burns, Scotland’s foremost poet.