Troon Town Hall and Walker Hall, and Marr College

Sir Alexander Walker was the grandson of the Kilmarnock whisky magnate 'Johnnie' Walker. He was chairman of John Walker and Sons and lived at Piersland Lodge, Troon. He was a major benefactor to the town, and gifted land and money for the construction of Troon's municipal buildings and concert hall, built in 1932. The extension constructed in 1973-75 was named the Walker Hall. Sir Alexander was one of the Trustees of the educational bequest of C.K. Marr, and in 1933 he became the sole Trustee. He was instrumental in the building of Marr College, opened in 1935, and made many generous donations to it. In 1946 he was given the freedom of the Burgh of Troon. He died in 1950. 

In 1919 Sir Alexander struck up a business relationship with a German wine and spirit dealer, Joachim von Ribbentrop, which developed into a friendship. This friendship continued during the 1930s when Ribbentrop was Nazi Germany's ambassador in London - he became the German foreign minister in 1938. In 1937 Ribbentrop notified Hitler of several influential people in Britain who he knew to be well disposed towards the Nazi regime, including Sir Alexander Walker.

In May 1939, as the prospect of war between Britain and Nazi Germany began to loom, the Scottish Unionist MP Archibald Maule Ramsay formed the Right Club, a secret anti-Jewish organisation sympathetic to Nazism which aimed to unify all the right-wing groups in Britain. Ramsay and his associates believed in a Jewish-Communist plot for world domination. The organisation was infiltrated by MI5, and when in May 1940 it was found that Ramsay had obtained sensitive British-US correspondence and intended to leak it, Churchill had him arrested and other leading club members detained. The club's membership register was seized, and it was found to include the names of a number of prominent people. Among them was Sir Alexander Walker, who had made a substantial donation. No action was taken against Sir Alexander, who was a friend of Churchill. The Right Club membership list was kept secret at the time by the government. (It would not become known until 1989.) To justify this it was argued that it was impossible to know if all those on the list were actually members, or if some were just sympathisers and donors. It is possible that Sir Alexander was in the latter category, although it has been generally assumed that he was a member. There appears to be no direct evidence that he took an active part in the activities of the Right Club, or shared Ramsay's anti-Semitic views, although he seems to have had no difficulty with Nazi anti-Semitism. Many British establishment figures saw Communism and the Soviet Union as greater threats than Nazism, and viewed a strong right-wing regime in Germany as a counter to them. It may have been this aspect of Right Club ideology which appealed to Sir Alexander.