In the 9th century the Chapel of the Virgin Mary was founded in Irvine. Each year on 15th August Mary’s Mass was held to celebrate the feast of the “Assumption of the Blessed Virgin”. The Earl of Eglinton had control over Marymass until 1747 when the Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746 came into force, following the last Jacobite Rebellion. Then Irvine Town Council took over the running of Marymass.
In 1753 following the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, which added eleven days to the year, the Marymass Fair was to begin on “the third Monday of August”. Also in 1753 the ancient tradition of riding the marches to mark the town boundaries was devolved to the Carters Society with the Council making an annual payment towards the Marymass races. Another tradition was the custom of the town’s officers, dressed in their scarlet livery, lowering their halberds about 25 feet past the West Port (near Wellwood), at a shallow ditch known as the “Tailor’s Straun”.
In the early 19th century Marymass went into a slow decline until 1851 when, with the Carters Society on the verge of dissolution, Irvine Town Council agreed to renew its co-operation on the ‘annual and very ancient amusements at Marymass’. In 1859 Marymass Saturday was attended by over ten thousand people. In 1864 the Marymass procession included Seagate Castle for the first time, where they sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
By the mid-19th century Marymass had lost all its religious associations and had become a much more sociable affair.
The 20th century brought change. In 1913 it was noticed that they had been a decline in the attendance at Marymass. Marymass was stopped during the war years and in 1919 the shows and market stalls were banished from the High Street to the Moor, then later to the Golffields.
In order to try and restore its popularity, Irvine Town Council and Carters Society suggested including children in Marymass and proposed ‘a Marymass Queen’, with the first Queen, Martha McHarg of Bank Street School being crowned in 1928 in front of the Townhouse. In 1929, during the early days of the wireless, Provost Peter Stuart Clark made a Marymass broadcast from the BBC’s Glasgow Studio telling how “Queen Mary came to Irvine, landing at the old harbour at Seagate in August 1563” and “How the Carters had formerly circled the Granny Stane where Wallace had crossed the river in 1297 to attack the English Army”. From 1929 the Marymass Queen and her four Marys were supported by two young boys representing Wallace and Bruce. The celebration of Marymass was now closely associated with Mary, Queen of Scots. This “fiction” was combined with the traditional ceremonies to create a colourful pageant reminding spectators of the burgh’s history.
In 1953 local organisations came together to form a Marymass Committee and the Festival was extended into a ten day event. In 1966 the Folk Song Festival was included and in 1973 the Shows, which had been situated at the Golffields for 54 years were moved to the Fullarton side of Irvine until they could be accommodated at the Moor.
The 50th anniversary of the crowning of the Marymass Queen in 1978 was marked by the presence of thirty previous queens and the addition of a new character to the procession, ‘John Knox’, founder of the Church of Scotland. In 1992 a ‘historical carriages’ section was added to the parade.
Marymass continued throughout the years with an ever widening programme of events.
We can’t finish the history of Marymass without a mention of long serving Captains which include Danny Kerr with 13 years’ service, followed by Sam Anderson, James Kyle and Andy Tremble who all served for seven years. Another stalwart of Marymass was Charles Arthur who carried the carter’s mallet at the back of the Marymass parade for over fifty years. The 2024 Captain is Gordan Storrar.
Marymass has had to be cancelled out of necessity in the past, during the cholera outbreak of 1832 and for the duration of the First and Second World Wars. It then had two years of virtual Marymass celebrations, where it was celebrated in a very different way.