The rise and fall of the Buchanite sect in Ayrshire
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The Buchanites first formed in Irvine and their behaviour shocked the godfearing people of the ancient burgh. Especially when a key local minister joined the ‘cult’.
Even Scotland’s National Bard Robert Burns, then studying flax weaving in Irvine, condemned their activities.
Within a few years, the Buchanites were forced to flee the town – and Ayrshire as a whole. But the sect, by now diminished and based in Dumfries and Galloway, would continue for another 50-odd years.
The founder Elspeth Buchan was born near Banff in 1738 and is known to have moved around Scotland before arriving in Ayrshire.
What inspired her to move there were the words of an Irvine Minister, Rev Hugh White of the town’s Relief Church, who she heard deliver a sermon in Glasgow in 1782. They began a correspondence – and in March 1783, she moved to Irvine.
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Content retrieved from: https://www.ayradvertiser.com/news/26207211.rise-fall-buchanite-sect-ayrshire/.
