DGNHAS

The Council feels that, given the current level of Covid-19 infection, it would be prudent to hold our talks via Zoom for the next month and then review the situation. There will therefore be no meetings at Dumfries Baptist Church Centre in January. The next meeting will be zoomed on 14 January when Professor Alistair Alcock (Arbigland House, Kirkbean) will speak on John Campbell, the Kirkbean Boy who Changed the World of Navigation.

The Kirkcudbright Galleries are hosting a series of online talks about the Galloway Hoard. Dates, times, titles and presenters are given below.

Following the exhibition on James Brown and Knockbrex earlier this year at the Mill on the Fleet, Gatehouse-of-Fleet, a very informative and well-produced booklet has just been published, entitled James Brown:A Businessman of Many Passions.

Stones and Stories: some medieval monuments in Eastern Dumfries by Peter F Ryder FSA is a well-illustrated and extensively researched survey of cross and grave-slabs from eastern Dumfriesshire, published by Broomlee Publications in A5 format, 62 pages in length, with black and white drawings and some colour photographs. It is a companion volume to The Medieval Cross Slabs of the Borders by the same author (available from the Berwickshire Naturalists' Field Club.

The Resort of All Married Couples is a new book by Alverie Weighill, the Society's Treasurer.

The book describes how Thomas Telford’s 1820 toll-house at Gretna came to be built and how it became part of Gretna’s infamous marriage trade. Based on original sources and contemporary accounts and placed in the context of nineteenth-century Gretna, it traces the house’s history from the turnpike and stagecoach era, through two World Wars, to its present role in the Gretna story.

Despite the enormity of it all, one thing is certain — we are living through extraordinary times.