94 Year Old Meets Her Relative from 1901!

It’s not every day that a 94-year-old from Kilmarnock has the chance to have tea and cake with her grandfather’s cousin in a Victorian former Bank in Newmilns!

However, that is what happened recently when Margaret Campbell née Mitchell met Robert Carmichael Mitchell and his wife Lydia together with Domestic Servant Annie Currie who were played by Johnathan Muirhead (owner of Lamlash House, Newmilns) together with Gillian Phillips and Janet Martin from Tasting History Ayrshire Tours (THAT Co.).

Margaret’s visit to Lamlash House in Newmilns, along with her daughter Anne Ng, coincided with the regular Millers & Merchants Tour which is coordinated by THAT Co. where guests are transported back to January 1901 to hear about the Mitchell family, the first owners of Lamlash House, and the link between the lace manufacturing industry and banking in the Irvine Valley at that time.

While the building of Lamlash House was completed in 1890 and the house was 51 years old when Margaret was born in 1931, this was the first time she had actually seen inside the award-winning, Victorian listed building which now operates as a venue for small-scale private events and functions together with historical tours.

More information about the tour can be found here: https://lamlashhouse.co.uk/millers-merchants-tour