Three bridges connect Dumfries and Maxwelltown; but only the uppermost one is available for carriages; and this commands a good view of all the riverward features of the burgh and the suburb, stretching partly to the N but chiefly to the S. The space along the Dumfries bank, between the bridges, is a wide street-terrace; the space further down, to a much greater distance, is an expanded or very wide street-terrace, used partly as the cattle market, partly as a timber market, and called the Sands; and the space still further down, opposite the foot of the town and a long way past it, is a broad grassy promenade, fringed along the inner side by a noble umbrageous avenue, and called the Dock. The central streets present an array of fairly well-appointed shops. All the streets are paved, drained, clean, and well-lighted; and outlets on the roads to the N, to the S, and to the E are studded with villas. Yet parts of the town, particularly numerous lanes or closes off High Street, some intersecting lanes from street to street, and portions of the old narrow streets are disagreeable and unwholesome. The Nith contributes much to both salubrity and beauty; approaches, in long winding sweeps, under high banks richly clothed with wood; breaks immediately beyond the lower bridge, over a high caul, built for the water supply of grain mills on the Maxwelltown side; swells into a lake-like expanse above the caul; leaps into rapid current at low tide below it; is driven back by the flow of tide against it; and, both above and below the town, to the extent of several miles, has verdant banks tracked with public toads and footpaths.
The uppermost bridge was built in 1790-94; encountered great difficulties in the erection; cost, with the approaches to it, £4588; and occasioned, for the forming of Buccleuch Street, an additional cost of £1769; and is a structure more substantial than elegant, yet not destitute of beauty. The middle bridge was built in the 13th century by Devorgilla, mother of John Baliol; and for many long generations was held to be second only to London- Bridge. It had originally nine arches, and is commonly, but erroneously, said to have had thirteen; suffered, in course of burghal improvements, demolition of about one-third of its length at the Dumfries end; has- now only six arches; is ascended, at the Dumfries end, by a flight of steps, so as to be accessible only by foot passengers; and makes a prominent figure both in curious picturesqueness and as a great work of the early mediæval times. The lowermost bridge was opened on the last day of 1875; cost nearly £1800; is an iron suspension structure for pedestrians; measures 203 feet in length and 6½ feet in width; and has sides of trellis work rising 35 feet from the roadway to the finial. The County Buildings stand on the S side of the lower part of Buccleuch Street; were erected in 1863-66, after designs by David Rhind, of Edinburgh, with aid of £10,418 from Government; are in the Scottish Baronial style, with peaked towers and open Italianised parapets; present an imposing castellated appearance; rise to a height of four stories, including a sunk story; and contain a court-hall with accommodation for 300 persons, and offices or rooms for all departments of the county business. The prison of 1851, adjoining the E end of the County Buildings, is surrounded by a high wall, that greatly disfigures the aspect of the street. This building, not fulfilling the requirements deemed necessary in modern prisons, has been condemned; and a site for a new one was purchased by government in 1881 for £1400 on the western outskirts of Maxwelltown. The Town-Hall, on the N side of Buccleuch Street, opposite the-prison, was originally the spacious chapel or `tabernacle' erected by Robert Haldane in 1799. Having stood for some years unoccupied after the Haldane collapse, it was purchased in 1814, altered, renovated, and architecturally adorned, to be used as the county courthouse; and, after the opening of the new County Buildings in 1866, was sold for £1020 to the town council.- Within it hang portraits of William and Mary of Orange, and Charles, the third Duke of Queensberry; and here is preserved the famous Silver Gun of the Seven Trades, the mimic cannon, 10 inches long, which James VI. presented to the craftsmen in 1617, to be shot for on Kingholm Merse - a custom kept up till 1831. The stack of buildings in the centre of High Street, cleaving it for a brief space into two narrow thoroughfares, contains the old town council room, and is surmounted by a steeple called originally the Tron, but now the Mid, Steeple. This steeple was erected in 1707, at a cost of £1500, from designs (not of Inigo Jones, but) of a certain Tobias Bachup of Alloa. It figures prominently, both in the High Street's own range and in every landscape view of the town, but has now a weather-worn and neglected appearance. The Trades Hall, on the E side of High Street opposite the Mid Steeple, was rebuilt in 1804 at a cost of £11,670; and, the trades' corporation privileges having been abolished in 1846, was sold to a merchant in 1847 for £650. The Assembly Rooms stand in George Street, were erected at a comparatively recent period, and are neat and commodious. The Theatre, in Shakespeare Street, built in 1790, and rebuilt and decorated in 1876, was the scene of early efforts of Edmund Kean and Macready. A Doric column to the memory of the third Duke of Queensberry was erected in Queensberry Square in 1804; and an ornamental public fountain (1860) stands in the centre of the lower expansion of High Street.
The railway station stands at the north-eastern extremity of the town; was constructed, in lieu of a previous adjacent one, in 1863; and contains accommodation for the junctions of the lines from Lockerbie and Portpatrick with the Glasgow and South-Western. It includes a fine suite of buildings for offices, waiting-rooms, and hotel; had, till 1876, all its building on the W side of the railway, confronted, along the opposite side, by a broad brilliant parterre; but in 1875-76, preparatory to its becoming the working nexus between the Scottish systems and the English Midland system, underwent great extension and improvement by the erection of a booking-office and other buildings on the E side, the provision of three times the previous amount of accommodation for goods, the construction of new premises for engines and smiths' shops, the formation of a great series of new sidings, the laying down of three new lines of rails, and the opening of a new approach street, so that it is now a station at once handsome, picturesque, and commodious. A viaduct of the Glasgow and North-Western railway crosses the Nith about a mile N of the station; and some other railway works of considerable magnitude are in the vicinity. Most of the banking-offices in the town are neat or handsome edifices, and several of them are of recent erection. The King's Arms Hotel and the Commercial Hotel, on the confronting sides of the lower expansion of High Street, are old and spacious establishments; and the latter was the headquarters of Prince Charles Edward during three days of Dec. 1745. The Queensberry Hotel, near the junction of English Street and High Street, is a recent elegant erection. The Southern Counties Club, in Irish Street, was erected in 1874; is a handsome two-story edifice; and contains an elegant billiard room, 45 feet by 25, and other fine large apartments. Nithsdale woollen factory, at the foot of St Michael Street, overlooking the Dock promenade, was erected in 1858-59; is a vast, massive, turreted edifice, almost palatial in aspect; and has a chimney stalk rising to the height of 174 feet. Troqueer woollen factories, on the Kirkcudbrightshire side of the Nith, almost directly opposite the Nithsdale factory, are two structures of respectively 1866-67 and 1869-70, and more than compete with the Nithsdale factory in both extent of area and grandeur of appearance.
St Michael's Established church stands off the E side of St Michael Street, near the site of its pre-Reformation predecessor. Built in 1744-45, and repewed and renovated in 1869 and 1881, it contains 1250 sittings, and is surmounted by a plain but imposing steeple, 130 feet high. The churchyard around it - a burial-place for upwards of seven centuries - is crowded with obelisks, columns, urns, and other monuments of the dead, computed to number fully 3000, and to have been raised at an aggregate cost of from £30,000 to £100,000. Among them are the mausoleum of the poet Burns, a granite pyramid (1834) to the memory of three martyrs of the Covenant, and over 300 `first-class monuments.' Greyfriars Established church stands on the site of Dumfries Castle, fronting the N end of High Street, and succeeded a previous church on the same site, built in 1727 partly of materials from the ancient castle. Itself erected in 1866-67, after designs by Mr Starforth, of Edinburgh, at a cost of nearly £7000, it is a richly ornamented Gothic edifice, the finest in the burgh, with a beautiful spire 164 feet high. St Mary's Established church, at the N end of English Street, on the site of a 14th century chantry, reared by the widow of Sir Christopher Seton, was built in 1837-39, after designs by John Henderson, of Edinburgh, at a cost of £2400. It also is Gothic, with an open spire formed by flying buttresses, and was renovated and reseated in 1878. The Free church in George Street, built in 1843-44 at a cost of £1400, is a plain mansion-like edifice, containing 984 sittings. The Territorial Free church, at the junction of Shakespeare Street with the foot of High Street, was built in 1864-65 at a cost of £1800, and contains 500 sittings. The U.P. church in Loreburn Street, rebuilt in 1829 at a cost of more than £900, contains 500 sittings. The U.P. church in Buccleuch Street, rebuilt in 1862-63, after designs by Alexander Crombie, at a cost of £2000, is a handsome Gothic edifice, and contains 700 sittings. The U.P. church, in Townhead Street, was built in 1867-68; succeeded a previous church in Queensberry Street, built in 1788; is a handsome edifice; and contains 460 sittings. The Reformed Presbyterian church, on the E side of Irving Street, was built in 1831-32, and interiorly reconstructed in 1866; is a neat building; and contains 650 sittings. The Independent chapel, on the W side of Irving Street, was built in 1835, enlarged in 1862, repewed and renovated in 1880; is a neat structure in the Italian style; and contains 650 sittings. The Wesleyan chapel in Buccleuch Street, at the corner of Castle Street, is a modest edifice, and contains 400 sittings. The Episcopal church of St John's, in Dunbar Terrace, was built in 1867-68, after designs by Slater and Carpenter, of London; is a striking structure in pure First Pointed style, with a tower and spire 120 feet high; and contains 460 sittings. The Catholic Apostolic chapel, in Queen Street, was built in 1865 at a cost of £1000, and is a small building with a towerlet and pinnacle 58 feet high. The Baptist chapel in Newall Terrace, successor to one in Irish Street, is a solid, plain edifice, seated for 420, erected in 1880 at a cost of £l900. The Roman Catholic church of St Andrew, pro-cathedral of the diocese of Whithorn or Galloway, in Shakespeare Street, near English Street, was built in 1811-13 at a cost of £2600. Romanesque in style with Byzantine features, it received the addition of a fine tower and octagonal spire (1843-58), 147 feet high, of N and S transepts and a domed apse (1871-72); and in 1879 the interior was beautifully decorated with arabesque designs. For all these improvements St Andrew's is indebted to the Maxwells of Terregles, and mainly to the late Hon. Marmaduke Constable Maxwell, a monument to whom was placed in it in 1876. The Roman Catholic schools adjoining the church are excellent buildings with separate departments for boys, girls, and infants. Pupils on roll, 430; average attendance, 360; Government grant, May 1881, £296, 0s. 6d. The Marist Brothers, a R.C. teaching order, a lay association of men, under vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity, have, since 1874, had their head house for the three kingdoms at St Michael's Mount, formerly Laural Bank, a mansion within 5 or 6 acres of ground in a south-eastern suburb. St Michael's Mount is also used as a sanatorium for the invalided brothers of the Order; a Provincial resides; and there is a Novitiate attached. St Joseph's Commercial College, formerly the old infirmary building, altered and enlarged, is a R.C. middle-class boarding school for boys, conducted by these Marist Brothers. About 40 pupils from various parts of the kingdom, and a few foreigners, are instructed in modern languages, mathematics, English, etc.
The Academy or High School, erected in 1802 on the brow of the Nith's steep bank near Greyfriars' church, is surrounded by a playground, 1½ acre in extent, and presents a plain yet imposing appearance. With accommodation for 500 scholars, it gives instruction to boys and girls in classics, modern languages, mathematics, arithmetic, writing, drawing, and all departments of English. Under the school-board, the Academy is conducted by a rector, 3 other masters, 3 assistants, and 1 lady teacher, with endowments amounting to £262, and £48 per annum to keep up fabric from the town. In 1882 there were 281 pupils on the roll. There are several bursaries-1 of £18, 1 of £15, 3 or 4 each of £12, and a number of special prizes, besides 22 bursaries provided for by additional bequests, entitling successful competitors to a free education at the Academy, with use of books. There are 1 private school for boys and 2 ladies' schools, all well attended. There are 3 elementary board schools - Loreburn Street, St Michael Street, and Greensands, of which the two first were erected in 1876 at a cost of £3770 and £2800. With respective accommodation for 500, 400, and 236, the three had a total average attendance of 1064 during 1881.
| School fees | Elementary schools, . | £639 | 10 | 3 |
| ,, | Academy, . . . | 1510 | 12 | 9 |
| School rate, . . . . . | 1182 | 16 | 1 | |
| Teachers' salaries | Elementary schools, | 1467 | 6 | 6 |
| ,, | Academy, . . | 1660 | 4 | 10 |
The Episcopal schoola small plain building in St David Streethas 130 scholars on the roll, an average attendance of 100, and a government grant of £80. The Industrial school, Burns Street, founded in 1856, with accommodation for 80 boys in 1882, is supported partly by voluntary contribution and partly by government grant. There are also an Industrial Home for destitute and orphan girls, supported by voluntary contribution; and several charitable associations of a minor character. In 1880, a Young Men's Christian Association and a Young Women's do. were established, both having since been fairly well supported. The Mechanics' Institute (1825), near the foot of Irish Street, was built in 1859-61, and is a First Pointed edifice, including a lecture-hall (76 x 58 feet; 46 high), with accommodation for 1000 persons, in which cheap public lectures are delivered during the winter months. Connected with the main building, but facing St Michael Street, stands the antique town-house of the Stewarts of Shambelly, which serves for reading-room and library, and is also the librarian's residence. The Crichton Institution, on a rising-ground off the public road, 1¼ mile SSE of the town, originated in a bequest of over £100,000 by Dr James Crichton of Friars Carse. He had thought of a university; but, owing to the failure of attempts to obtain a charter, his trustees decided to construct a lunatic asylum for affluent patients. As partially built (1835-39), at a cost of fully £50,000, it was to have taken the form of a Greek cross, with central low octagonal tower, but, as completed (1870) at a further outlay of £40,000, it has somewhat departed from the original plan, the whole being now a dignified Italian edifice, one of whose finest features is the magnificent recreation hall. The neighbouring Southern Counties Asylum, for pauper lunatics, was erected in 1848 at a cost of £20,000; it and the Crichton Royal Institution had respectively 359 and 145 inmates in 1881.
The Dumfries parish schools (landward) are Catherinefield, Noblehill and Throhoughton, Kelton and Brownhall combined - three in all. For 1881 the aggregate fees were £187, 5s. 5d.; annual education grant £372, 10s. 6d.; balance from rates £215, 16s. 7d.; teachers' salaries £652, 14s. 11d.; retiring allowances £70.
In 1879, the estate of Hannahfield and Kingholm having fallen to the Queen as ultima hæres, that portion of the estate to the south of the town on the river bank, known as Kingholm Merse, has been made over to the corporation - subject to servitude in favour of the War Department - for golf, cricket, and purposes of general sport and recreation. The crown has also granted a gift of £9500 from the estate, in trust, for the improvement of education in the counties of Dumfries and Wigtown and in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright; the trustees to create bursaries and scholarships, open to competition for pupils educated in primary schools, under the condition that successful competitors shall continue their education at secondary schools or at universities. The trustees have now in operation a `tentative scheme for the Hannahfield bursaries' in the three counties, which is likely to be of great advantage to many deserving students. But the scheme in its present form is thought to be open to objection, and will certainly be referred to the Education Department unless a compromise is arrived at with objecting school-boards.
The Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary stands in a situation similar to that of the Crichton Institution, a little nearer the town; was erected in 1869-71, after designs by Mr Starforth, at a cost of £13,000; has arrangements and appliances on the most approved plans; and is maintained chiefly by legacies, subscriptions, parochial allowances, and annual grants from the counties of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Wigtown. The workhouse occupies an airy healthy site to the S of the town; was erected in 1853-54 at a cost of more than £5500; contains accommodation for 127 pauper inmates; serves entirely for the parish of Dumfries; and has commonly from 70 to 80 pauper inmates, maintained at an annual cost of about £600. Morehead's Hospital stands in St Michael Street, opposite St Michael's Church; was founded and endowed, in 1733, by two persons of the name of Morehead; gives lodging and support to poor orphans and aged paupers of both sexes, and pensions to upwards of 40 widows at their own homes; and is maintained, partly by its own funds, partly by subscriptions and donations.
Dumfries is broadly stamped with the name of the poet Burns (1759-96). His term of residence here flashed on the popular mind so vividly as to have been at once and till the present day esteemed an epoch `the time of Burns.' The places in it associated with his presence outnumber, at least outweigh, those in Ayr, Irvine, Kilmarnock, Tarbolton, Mauchline, or Edinburgh. He appeared first in the town on 4 June 1787, and came to it then on invitation to be made an honorary burgess. He became a resident in it, on removal from Ellisland, in December 1791. For eighteen months he lived in a house of three small apartments, on the second floor of a tenement on the N side of Bank Street, then called the Wee Vennel. He then removed to a small, self-contained, two-story house on the S side of a short mean street striking eastward from St Michael Street, in the northern vicinity of St Michael's Church. The street was then called Millbrae or Millbrae-Hole; but, after Burns's death, was designated Burns Street. The house, in the smaller of whose two bedrooms he died on 21 July 1796, was occupied afterwards by his widow down to her death in 1834, and purchased in 1850 by his son, Lieut. - Col. William Nicol Burns. It is now occupied by the master of the adjoining Industrial School, continues to be as much as possible in the same condition as when Burns inhabited it, and, through courtesy of its present occupant, is shown to any respectable stranger. Nearly a hundred of Burns's most popular songs, including `Auld Langsyne,' `Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,' `A man's a man for a' that,' `O whistle and I'll come to ye, my lad,' 'My love is like a red, red rose,' `Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,' `Cauld kail in Aberdeen,' `Willie Wastle,' `Auld Rob Morris,' and `Duncan Gray,' were written by him either in this house or in the house in Bank Street. Many objects, too, in and near the town, and many persons who resided in or near it, are enshrined in his verse. The High School which preceded the present academy was made accessible to his children by a special deed of the Town Council (1793), that put him on the footing of a real freeman. The Antiburgher Church in Loreburn Street, on the site of the present U.P. church there, was frequently attended by him in appreciation of the high excellence of the minister who then served it. The pew which he more regularly occupied in St Michael's Church bore the initials, ` R. B, ' cut with a knife by his own hand; and was sold, at the repairing of the church in 1869, for £5. A window pane of the King's Arms Hotel, on which he scratched an epigram, drew for a long time the attention of both townsmen and strangers. A volume of the Old Statistical Account of Scotland, belonging in his time to the public library of which he was a member, was transferred to the mechanics' institute, and bears an original verse of his in his own bold handwriting. Another volume there, a copy of De Lolme on the British Constitution, presented by him to the library, contains an autograph of his which was interpreted at the time to indicate seditious sentiments. The Globe Tavern which he used to frequent, and on a window of which he inscribed the quadrain in praise of `Lovely Polly Stewart' and a new version of `Coming through the Rye,' retains an old-fashioned chair on which he was wont to sit; and the mere building, situated in a narrow gloomy close off High Street, is hardly less replete with memories of him than is the house in which he lived and died. To the Trades' Hall, already noticed, his coffined corpse was removed on the eve of his public funeral. The matrix of the cast of his skull, taken at the interment of his widow in 1834, continued in the possession of the townsman who took it, and probably is still in safe keeping in the town. His remains were originally buried in the N corner of St Michael's churchyard, with no other monument than a simple slab of freestone * erected by his widow; but, in 1815, were transferred to a vault in a more appropriate part on the SE border, and honoured with a mausoleum, erected by subscription of fifty guineas from the Prince Regent and of various sums from a multitude of admirers. The mausoleum, in the form of a Grecian temple, after a design by Thomas F. Hunt, of London, cost originally £1450, and contains a mural sculpture by Turnerelli, representing the Poetic Genius of Scotland throwing her mantle over Burns, in his rustic dress, at the plough. It is now glazed in the intervals between its pillars, to protect the sculpture from erosion by the weather; and, besides Burns's own remains, covers those of his widow and their five sons. The late William Ewart, M.P., placed a bust of the poet in a niche of the front wall of the Industrial School; and on 6 April 1882 Lord Rosebery unveiled Mrs D. O. Hill's fine marble statue, on the open space in front of Greyfriars Church. Nearly 10 feet high, it is raised 5 feet from the ground on a pedestal of grey Dalbeattie granite; and represents Burns, resting on an old tree root, in the act of producing one of his deathless lyrics. A collie snuggles to his right foot, and near by lie bonnet, song-book, and shepherd's pipe. See William M`Dowall's Burns in Dumfriesshire (Edinb. 1870).
* So says Mr M'Dowall, but, according to Dorothy Wordsworth, there was ` no stone to mark the spot ' when. on 18 aug. 1803, with Coleridge and her brother William, she stood beside the 'untimely grave of Burns.' Can it be that here too they were misinformed, as in the case of Rob Roy's grave, noticed under Balquhidder?
Dumfries has a head post office, with money order, savings' bank, insurance, and telegraph departments, offices of the Bank of Scotland, the British Linen Co., and the Clydesdale, Commercial, National, Royal, and Union Banks, and offices or agencies of 30 insurance companies. Three newspapers are published - the Liberal and Independent Dumfries Courier (1809) on Tuesday, the Conservative Dumfriesshire and Galloway Herald (1835) on Wednesday and Saturday, and the Liberal Dumfries and Galloway Standard (1843) also on Wednesday and Saturday. A weekly market of much importance is held every Wednesday for the sale of sheep, cattle, pigs, etc.; and on the same day, in a covered building in Loreburn Street, a sale of butter and eggs is held. Another market of secondary importance is also held on Saturday. Horse fairs are held on a Wednesday of February, either the second day of that month o. s. or the Wednesday after it, on the Wednesday before 26 May, on the Wednesday after 17 June o. s., on either 25 Sept. or the Wednesday after, and on the Wednesday before 22 Nov.; pork fairs are held on every Wednesday of January, February, March, November, and December; and eight hiring fairs are held in the course of the year. A sale of cattle on the Sands, at the Wednesday weekly market, dates from 1659; was preceded, from a time long before the Union, by a weekly sale on Monday; drew always large supplies from Dumfriesshire and Galloway for transmission into England; rose progressively to such importance that, during a considerable course of years, so many as about 20, 000 head of cattle were annually sold on the Sands to English purchasers; suffered a severe check, partly by the opening of the railways, partly by weekly auction of live stock, partly by other causes; and became so reduced toward 1865, that the number of cattle shown in that year was only 9605. The number sent from the station, in 1859, was 13, 975, but in 1866 was only 3470. The sale of sheep, at the weekly markets, seems not to have commenced till about the end of last century; but it increased rapidly in result of the turnip husbandry; and it amounted, during the five years ending in 1866, to the annual average of about 28, 000 sheep; yet, like the Sands or market sale of cattle, it was much curtailed by auction sales and private transfer. The number of sheep sent from the station, chiefly to England, in 1859, was 43,932; in 1865, 47,105; in 1881, 60, 000. The total sale of cattle and sheep on the Sands, and in the auction marts, in 1866, was 9828 cattle and 47,239 sheep. The sale of pork, in the weekly market on the Sands, for many years prior to 1832, amounted usually to upwards of 700 carcases in one day, in the busiest part of the year, often to many more, but it also received a severe check by the opening of the railways and by other causes. The number of carcases shown on the Sands in all 1859, was only 13,550; in 1867, 10,235. The stock sold in the market or at auction in 1881 were, cattle 26,415, sheep 82,327, calves 1352, pigs 1086. The number of horses sold is also very large.
The port of Dumfries is strictly the river Nith, in its run of 14¼ miles to the channel of the Solway, but comprises besides all the Scottish side of the Firth, from Sarkfoot to Kirkandrews Bay; and includes, as creeks or sub-ports, Annan, Barlochan, and Kirkcudbright. Its harbourage nearly everywhere is tidal, with great disadvantage from the peculiar ` bore ' of the Solway - a sudden rapid breast of water of short duration, followed by hours of total recess, leaving nothing but shallow fresh-water streams across great breadths of foreshore. At Dumfries itself there is no better accommodation t
Associated Cases
| Location | Case | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Finnan v. Syme | 1802 | |
| Bellinger v. Monboddo's Interlocutor | 1793 | |
| Maxwell v. Blair and Others | 1774 | |
| Earl of Galloway v. McHutchon, Selkrig & Others | 1803 | |
| Maxwell v. Maxwell | 1767 |
