Forty-one Lower Silurian brachiopods from a single locality in the Newlands Formation of Girvan, Strathclyde, Scotland, are described and illustrated, many for the first time. The age of the fauna is well constrained by overlying magnus Biozone graptolites and underlying cyphus Biozone graptolites, indicating the early Middle Llandovery (Lower Aeronian) and it is the only shelly fauna known of Lower Aeronian age from anywhere in Scotland. A new endemic genus Chronostrophonella (Family Strophonellidae) is described: another new genus, Eopentamerus (Family Pentameridae) is known additionally from Wales. New species are Craniops laurentia, Biparetis caledonia, Eostropheodonta augusta, Chronostrophonella terranova, Strophochonetes newlandensis, Triplesia girvanensis, Resserella praeclara, Camerella? elainae, Eopentamerus inexpectatus and Protatrypa copperi. The Strophochonetes is the earliest-known chonetoid from the Silurian anywhere, although the family originated in the Late Ordovician. Whilst Newlands was on the margin of Laurentia just prior to its Caledonian Orogeny collision in mid-Silurian times with Avalonia–Baltica, the brachiopod fauna there was already similar in the Lower Aeronian, at least at the generic level, to those from the opposite side of the Iapetus Ocean in Wales and the Welsh Borderland (Avalonia) and Norway and other parts of Baltica. The proximity of these and other terranes to each other was the key reason for the relative cosmopolitanism of all lower-latitude Lower Silurian brachiopod faunas.