Alex Anderson has kindly agreed to contribute a series on the development of roads in the Stewartry. The first part is below.
Kirkcudbright seems to have been originally a riverside settlement at a place where boats could be drawn up and seagoing trade carried on. The settlement would probably begin around the harbour and then developed along an L-shaped ridge of gravel along the line of what is now the High Street. The surrounding area was soft clay and may have been a marsh, There was an inlet forming the old harbour where the Harbour Square now is and this may have at one time extended along what is now St. Cuthbert’s Street as far as the area near the Tesco store as this is traditionally known as the “Creek Heid”
The town would develop along the High Street as far as “Townend” where the hospital now stands, and from this point a road branched off at a right angle to the town mill.
This was situated on the Mill Burn and a separate small settlement grew up here. (The Mill Burn is now mostly piped in the built-up area but can be seen alongside the houses at Atkinson Square. ) This road was the original route, via Carse to the east end of Old Tongland Bridge and from there to Dumfries. The 19th century part of Millburn Street north of the mill was used as a rope walk.
After passing the Millburn road at Townend the line of the High Street
continued up to the Bar Hill, where it divided into three routes. The lefthand route, Silvercraigs Road eventually led by what was to become the site of Gelston to cross the Urr at Buittle Bridge, destroyed by a flood in the 18th. century. The part of this road nearest Kirkcudbright appears to have been largely rebuilt, probably by Basil William. Lord Daar, the eldest son of the Earl of Selkirk, where it passed through his father’s estates. This is probably also the origin of the road (B727) from the end of St. Cuthbert’s Street at the “Creek Heid” up the side of the hill above the Mill Burn valley, joined by Silvercraigs Road near the cemetery gate.
In the late 18th. century Lord Daar became Provost and began to develop the town by building Castle Street and also St. Cuthbert Street and St Mary Street. The latter took its name from St. Mary’s Isle, actually a peninsula, where the Earl of Selkirk had his house. Unfortunately, Lord Daar died in 1794 aged 31 but his work was carried on by the Burgh Council and by the Stewartry Turnpike Trustees, the latter formed by act of Parliament in 1796. The Trustees improved the road to Carse and thence to Thomas Telford’ s bridge at Tongland, completed in 1808. However, although the extension of St. Mary’s Street southwards to join the old Dundrennan road at Sandside was approved by the Road Trustees, they did not contribute to the cost which must have been borne by the Burgh Council. The old Dundrennan road had branched off the line of the High Street at Barhill and ran from there to Sandside; this part has now been obliterated by later developments.
Since that time the town has gradually expanded. In 1864 the railway was built including the Station House, now a restaurant and cookery school. The railway was opened in 1865.
The arrival of the railway increased the necessity to replace the ferry- a hand propelled chain vessel- and in 1868 an iron bridge was opened, financed largely by public subscription, including the proceeds of a bazaar, but also with a substantial contribution from the railway company. This bridge was replaced by the present bridge in 1926.
With the construction of the bridge the town’s basic road system was more or less complete; nearly all subsequent road construction has taken the form of access roads for housing developments or, in the case of Dee Road, industrial sites.
Alex. Anderson
Former Assistant Civil Engineer
Kirkcudbright County Council