Private Collections

William Lyle of Mauchline has kindly allowed us to share his large collection of high quality glass slides and negatives. The history to this material is worthy of a few lines in itself.

The well documented book, Mauchline Town and District, by John Taylor Gibb is already reproduced in full on this web site. This was one of the first full books reproduced, and has proved a popular read. The book, published in 1911, is long out of print, and only available in reference libraries. Thanks to one of our local collectors, Mr. Robert Wallace, a copy was made available to scan, and reproduce.

The quality of the images in the book are more than worthy of note, considering the date of publication.

Mr Lyle's grandmother on his mothers side was a relative of the author of the book. The glass slides and negatives shown here, are from the original collection of John Taylor Gibb, and thus have been in the family for over a hundred years.

The slides have become legendary in Mauchline district throughout the last 50 plus years, as being second to none for quality, and historical value. William and his father began regular showings in 1947, with the "Magic" Lantern projector.

With the aid of modern technology, the high quality images have been reproduced, and with the aid of photo enhancement technology, the results have been quite startling.

Click on the photo of Mr Lyle for a higher res version, where he is holding a walking stick which belonged to John Taylor Gibb, with a carving of Burns on the head. Click here to view a close up of this stick, made from wood from the Lousie Thorn.

Note: The collectiion of images in these files are from the first lantern slides scanned. There are many more taken from the original negatives from which the slides were produced, therefore of much better quality. Click to view the Mauchline Slideshow, which contains many more higher resolution images of Mauchline from more than 100 years ago.

File 1

File 2

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