Robert and Nicholas Mitchell were my 4x great grandparents who lived in Scotland. The 1841 census shows that they were living in the Scottish village of Mauchline, at an address called ‘Martinshill’.  They were living at Martinshill with 5 of their 10 children; Robert was a farmer. At the time of this census their daughter Elizabeth was already married to James Maxwell, also from Mauchline; James and Elizabeth emigrated to Australia in 1853.

As the census shows that Martinshill could be either a ‘village, street, square, close, court’ or even something else, this sent me on a search to find the nature of Martinshill. The wonderful people at the East Ayrshire Leisure Trust ( Burns Monument Centre) found a reference to Martinshill in the book ‘Place names of Ayrshire – an index’, which says Martinshill is included on an 1856 ordnance survey map.

These ordnance maps are on the National Library of Scotland’s website  and ‘Martinshill’ is clearly seen.  From the map, it can be seen that ‘Martinshill’ is actually the name of the farm.

I was fascinated to discover that the roads in this area are remarkably unchanged from back in 1856; using a screenshot from google maps and some transparency settings in photoshop, I was able to pinpoint the exact location of Martinshill today; 55°29’25.9″N 4°22’14.1″W.

Using Google street view, we can see what the original site of ‘Martinshill’ looks like today. The road to the house (as seen on the map) would have gone along the line of trees on the right of the photo, and up to the crest of the hill, where you can just see the ruins of the house.