Virtual Tour: Burns Cottage, Alloway

The Kitchen

The kitchen of the cottage would be the heart of the home for the Burnes family. In this room, food would be cooked on the range, meals would be eaten around the fire, the bible would be read aloud, the women of the house would spin yarn for clothes and the box beds and pull-out cots would provide sleeping space.

Box bed

The Burnes family would sleep in box beds. Curtains were hung around the beds to exclude draughts and to give the people sleeping inside privacy. Mattresses were stuffed with husks of corn called chaff, and pillows or bolsters, were stuffed with straw.