Blackfriars Walk, on the south bank of the river, can be approached from the Auld Brig or, if entering from the High Street, by Old Bridge Street.  There are steps to the rear of the Marks and Spencer store which give access to the walkway.  The Auld Kirk Graveyard is approached through an opening in the stone wall.

The Auld Kirk was built on land previously occupied by a priory of the Franciscan order - the Grey Friars - who came to Ayr about 1472, and remained until the order was dissolved at the Reformation in 1560. The present church was built in 1652-1655 with money from the people of Ayr, and 1,000 merks of 'conscience money' from Cromwell's Army, in recompense for the loss of the old Church of St John. The document promising to pay this money, signed by Colonel Alured, the Commanding Officer of the garrison at Ayr, is preserved in the Auld Kirk.

The graveyard contains several features of interest. Near the river is the Covenanters' stone erected in memory of seven local men who were hanged at Ayr in 1666 for their part in the Pentland Rising; there is the gravestone of John Masoun, builder of the Kirk; and on the east wall of the church is a sadly dilapidated memorial to William Adair, the last minister of the old Kirk and the first of this new one. A panel in the lych-gate identifies the graves of many contemporaries of Robert Burns.

Leave the kirkyard by the lych-gate, erected in 1656, and an unusual feature in a Scottish church. Hanging on each side of the archway is a mortsafe, used to protect newly buried corpses from the bodysnatchers who supplied them to medical schools. This practice ceased after the Anatomy Act of 1832.

Walk down Kirk Port to the High Street. Across the road, you will find a bronze sculpture by Doug Cocker, 'The Poet and the World'. This was commissioned in 1996, on the bicentenary of the death of Robert Burns.

Text based on Historic Ayr, published by Ayrshire Archeological and Natural History Society, July 2001.