First Minister Alex Salmond today enlisted Tam O'Shanter to help persuade Scots around the world to hasten home in 2009.

The First Minister officially re-opened the Alloway Auld Kirk and Graveyard, which features in the famous Burns poem, following completion of extensive conservation and repair work.

As an important part of Scotland's literary heritage the site is a key visitor attraction in South Ayrshire, and is also the resting place of William Burnes, Robert Burns' father.

The opening comes ahead of Scotland's Year of Homecoming 2009, which also marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of the Nation's Bard - Robert Burns.

In 2007 £244,000 funding was secured from the Heritage Lottery Fund, South Ayrshire Council, Historic Scotland and Scottish Enterprise Ayrshire to allow the conservation and repair work to be carried out. Work began last July.

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Various conservation and repair work was carried out including removing vegetation from the wall heads of the Kirk and making sure they are safe, stabilising movement cracks within the Auld Kirk and providing secure access to each of the chambers of the building, refurbishing the entrance area to the graveyard to provide safer access and stabilising a number of unsafe headstones.

First Minister Alex Salmond said: "I'm proud to officially re-open this historic site and hope that Scots around the world will join in my excitement as one more cultural connection brings imagination to life. Mind you, I hope that for those thousands who return to Scotland in 2009 the journey will be less traumatic than was Tam O'Shanter's!"

South Ayrshire Provost Winifred Sloan said:"I am particularly pleased that the restoration and repairs have been completed. The work has been carried out in a very sympathetic manner with 68 headstones being stabilised or repaired and vegetation that was damaging or covering headstones removed. During excavation a considerable number of bones were uncovered which had obviously been disturbed over the centuries. These were catalogued by archaeologists and reintered at the end of the project."

(GK/JM)