Robert Burns ’ former Dumfriesshire home yesterday launched a £30,000 fundraising campaign to help save Ellisland. An inherited “financial crisis” and “significant operating deficit” means that without firm action the 150 acres of land, house and farm buildings — gifted to the nation in 1928 — would have to be sold off.It would include the 150 Ellisland items which belonged to the poet and are hailed as “one of the world’s most important collections of Burns treasures.” A statement from The Robert Burns Ellisland Trust, new guardians of the Grade A national asset on the banks of the Nith at Auldgirth, said they have taken “immediate steps” to put it into the black.