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I have a marriage certificate from 1868. It is in the parish of Old Cunmock, in the County of Ayr in Scotland.

For the husband to be (Samuel Harris) it says his usual place of residence was Shankston. And thew wife to be (Jane Cunningham) was living in Lochwinnoch.

I am trying to locate Shankston. The closest on Google Maps is Shankston Crescent but I am wondering if there was another place back in the 1860s in Ayr?

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Looking on the National Library of Scotland's online collection of Ordnance Survey maps, I found the following sheet in the 25 inch to the mile, 1st edition of the Ordnance Survey of Scotland, 1855-1882:

Shankston appears to be a farm, a wood, and a 'pit' (Ironstone quarry), as shown in the excerpt below:

Shankston map

  • Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland, CC-BY (NLS)
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  • +1 That is very informative, thank you! In the 1881 census Ironstone was actually mentioned as part of his engineering occupation.
    – Andrew Truckle
    Commented Jul 5, 2022 at 18:40
  • I can see on Google Maps where Shankston Wood is and the approximate area of where the house would have been. Now a housing estate.
    – Andrew Truckle
    Commented Jul 5, 2022 at 18:45
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    @AndrewTruckle One useful technique you might try is called Map Regression Analysis. Basically, it just involves finding all the available maps of a place, and see how it changed over time. From a later OS map (also on the NLS site), it looks like the arrival of the railway may have been the death-knell for Shankston farm, but I think that might have been significantly later than 1868.
    – sempaiscuba
    Commented Jul 5, 2022 at 19:02

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