The complex is a museum in the farm Robert Burns built, lived in and farmed from 1788 until 1791. The name is said to be derived from "Isle's Land", the name of a neighboring estate. Burns gave up the farm in 1791 after he decided to switch from arable farming to dairying then continuing on to a career in the Excise. (wiki)

The farm is referenced several times in Dorothy Wordsworth's Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A.D. 1803 when referencing other landmarks and locations

"Brownhill is about seven or eight miles from Ellisland."

"Cumberland mountains within half a mile of Ellisland, Burns’s house, the last view we had of them."