Almondell is situated in the former grounds of Almondell House, built in 1789 by the lawyer, politician and Lord Advocate Henry Erskine (1746-1817). Erskine was friends with the poet Robert Burns and is the subject of Burns' poem The Dean of the Faculty. Burns was a frequent visitor to Almondell. Erskine's descendants continued to live at Almondell, but the house had become derelict by the 1960s, and it was blown up by the Territorial Army in 1969 in a training exercise. Many of the trees and shrubs in the park today were planted by Erskine himself.