TDGNHAS Series III, Volume 88

Archaeology is making the ‘Picts of Galloway’ famous: in contrast are historians and philologists, who denounce them as mythical, fictitious, non-existent, and (in short) being for Galloway what Monsters are for Loch Ness. However, since the supposed Picts of Galloway refuse to vanish from journalism and popular culture, what follows gives accounts of them over the years. Readers can then put the evidence of archaeology besides that of history and linguistics, and decide for themselves.

A collection of metalwork — a sword, penannular brooch, and sickle — was found close together in 1989 at Carronbridge in north-central Dumfriesshire and they are thought to have been deposited in the ninth or tenth centuries. In the published report it was suggested that they belonged to a ‘lone traveller’, and a later review of the burial concluded that it should be raised ‘to the category of pagan Norse burials marked as “uncertain’’’. Having reconsidered the evidence and viewed the location of the Carronbridge burial I suggest that it should be moved to the ‘certain’ category. A short review of the evidence for Scandinavians in Dumfriesshire is also given, including the circumstances that may have led to the burial.

This paper reviews the evidence for the important Brittonic/Cumbric place-name element trev as it exists within south-west Scotland, and suggests how it might be interpreted in the light of current thinking on the development of landholdings during the first millennium AD and the central middle ages.

This essay sets out to trace the development of Sanquhar from the earliest times to the close of the nineteenth century, with a glance at its more recent expansion, a section on its outlying dependency of Crawick and a look at the roads which may have been the main reason for the town’s existence. Conclusions are drawn from maps, observation on the ground, the historical record — mainly the comprehensive 1891 work of local historian James Brown — and information from local residents.

In 1887–92 The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland was published in five volumes. This was the magnum opus of two Edinburgh architects, David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross, a monumental work of reference describing and illustrating 769 Scottish castles and lamenting their neglect. In the three counties of Dumfries and Galloway — Dumfriesshire, Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtownshire — MacGibbon and Ross described fifty-eight castles, out of a total of around 100 (see Appendix 1 for the list). This paper compares the condition and future outlook of those fifty-nine castles in 1892 and 2014. It was concluded that, with a few notable exceptions, the current situation and outlook for the castles of Dumfries and Galloway which were described by MacGibbon and Ross has improved overall. However, there is no room for complacency, with two of these castles on the Buildings at Risk register and several others which are cause for serious concern. Overall, more than a quarter of the castles surveyed by MacGibbon and Ross have deteriorated — although, happily, nearly half are in a significantly better condition than in 1892. Those castles of Dumfries and Galloway which were missed by MacGibbon and Ross show a similar pattern of improvement since the late nineteenth century, but several important buildings are also still at risk of further decay.

This article explores the involvement and conduct of Lord Herries in the dramatic events and changes which took place in Scotland in the 1560s. It also examines the significance of the Herries memoirs. John Maxwell of Terregles (d.1583) became the fourth Lord Herries in right of his wife — a custom not uncommon at that time. His wife was the daughter of the third Lord Herries who died in 1543. Terregles is on the left bank of the Nith near Dumfries. Before assuming or being granted his peerage he was known as the Master of Maxwell. As early as 1560 it was said that he ‘laboureth to be Lord Herries.’ It is not clear exactly when he became known as Lord Herries, but at least by April 1567 he was Lord Herries. For convenience he will be referred to as Herries throughout this article.

The history of smuggling in Annandale covers the complete story of that trade in Dumfries and Galloway during the period between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. It includes all aspects of the trade from the merchant based in Annan who engaged in tobacco, brandy and wine smuggling, to the tenant farmer living on the Solway shore who smuggled smaller cargoes of contraband from the Isle of Man and beyond. In addition, there was a brief period when Scottish salt and whisky were smuggled across the Border into England. During the 1720s, the collectors of customs at Dumfries became obsessed with stopping the smuggling trade in Annandale — they were unsuccessful. Smuggling only ended over a century later, when it became uneconomical. 
 

Duchess Bridge near Langholm is one of Scotland’s earliest surviving cast-iron bridges. It spans the River Esk within the policies of the one-time Buccleuch mansion of Langholm Lodge in Dumfries and Galloway, and it was cast and erected in 1813. This note reproduces some contemporary documentation concerning the bridge and something of the narrative that caused it to be.

Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society’s lending library was already established by 1864. In 1904, when the Ewart Public Library opened, books of local importance were transferred to the Ewart Library and formed the core of the ‘Local Collection’. Over the years many of the remaining books have been dispersed either by donation or sale. In 2011, the Council of the Society formed a committee2 to assess the residue of the Society’s library and to organise its disposal, also to collate and catalogue the archive collection relating to the Society.3 This article recounts the history of the Society’s library and records the actions taken by this committee.

John Rutherford (1842–1925) was a photographic pioneer and well worthy of study: so much so that three papers, in all, over three years will gradually build up a picture of his activities, achievements and, especially, his recording of scenes in South-West Scotland at the end of the Victorian period. The current paper features his photographs of Nithsdale. The first paper in the series presented biographical information and a study of the excavations at Birrens in the 1890s, both being aspects of Annandale.2 The third and final paper will concentrate on his scenes of Dumfries itself .

Probably no short period in modern history has been as intensively studied as the month of July 1914 — or more precisely, the five weeks between the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, in the Bosnian town of Sarajevo on 28 June and the British declaration of war on Germany on 4 August. Within the vast corpus of resulting literature the reporting of the so-called war crisis in the British press remains, nonetheless, a relatively neglected aspect. Coverage of events in the provincial press has been even less well examined. At one level this is not surprising. The focus of analysis has inevitably been an attempt to understand precisely what was going on within the corridors of power — what were the motives behind key developments such as the Austrian ultimatum, the German ‘blank cheque’ and the Russian mobilization; which countries were prepared or even keen to accept the transition from diplomacy to war and on what scale; and which countries were genuinely striving for a peaceful resolution. If contemporary political and military leaders, and their governments and cabinets, with all the resources of diplomatic representation and clandestine intelligence operations at their disposal, could not settle these questions with any certainty or accuracy, then it would be unrealistic to turn to the press, and particularly provincial newspapers, for answers. Only painstaking research on the secret diplomatic and political files of the various powers has enabled historians to base their conclusions on hard evidence. Many crucial documents remained concealed from such scrutiny for several decades after the end of the Great War. Even after a hundred years, with little more governmental documentation likely to come to light, historians still find it difficult to reach a consensus on the basis of the vast quantity of archival material now available to them. Explaining what actually happened is, then, unlikely to be the main historical value of the contemporary provincial press. But in their record and interpretation of the events of that fateful summer a century ago, and of reactions to the fast changing picture as it emerged, newspapers are themselves part of the wider history of the time and worthy of note. What follows is an analysis of the coverage of the 1914 crisis by two local newspapers with sharply differing political stances, the Dumfries and Galloway Standard and Advertiser and the Dumfries and Galloway Courier and Herald.