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Future Museum is built around the key areas that make the south-west so distinctive from the rest of Scotland – its people, industries and arts.
The website provides free access to the museum collections of Ayrshire and Dumfries & Galloway and creates a valuable resource for people of all ages.
Collection Focus
The Boyds of Kilmarnock
During the medieval period, Kilmarnock grew from what must have been no more than a small farming hamlet into a significant and bustling town. The meteoric rise in the fortunes of the town mirrors that of the family responsible for it – The Boyd Family.
From their humble beginnings, the Boyds in the space of a few generations would be made Knights, Lords and then ultimately hold the Regency over the entire realm, only to lose it spectacularly under accusations of treason. This would have spelled the end of the aspirations of most families, but the Boyds would just as spectacularly rise again to become the Earls of Kilmarnock.
Their story is one of battles, kings, plots and politics which rivals any other in scope and intrigue and which covers every arena of Scotland’s past from Stirling Bridge, to Bannockburn, to Culloden and involves every personage of Scottish historical note from William Wallace, to Mary Queen of Scots, to Bonnie Prince Charlie. A new exhibition charting the History of the Boyds can now be seen as part of the tour of their ancestral home of Dean Castle.
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