Kirkmahoe Discovered - Walks Book

Significant times in Kirkmahoe History The Third Statistical Account for Dumfriesshire was written by the late Walter Duncan of Newlands, who described Kirkmahoe as being “shaped like an irregular pear or kite with the narrow end pointing south towards the town of Dumfries.

It is seven and a half miles long and its greatest breadth is five and a half miles. From the fertile land lying along the left bank (looking south downriver) of the river Nith, known in former days as the corn kist or granary of Nith, the land rises in billowy undulations with a west and south-west exposure to lonely moors, which form the southern outliers of the Queensberry hills.”

The CANMORE National Record of the Historic Environment has over 200 entries listed for the parish.

There are many sites which show evidence of habitation up to 6000 years ago. During the Bronze Age, the weather was probably warmer The old pulpit in the Cameronian Chapel and the main centres of population at Quarrelwood would have been on the moorland which today is rather inhospitable. The large number of field-clearance cairns found on the moors is evidence that crops were once grown there. A small beaker-like vessel and many human bones were discovered in one of a number of cremation cemeteries on Whitestanes Moor during excavations in 1962. A number of standing stones have disappeared since Victorian times, and there were stone circles at Newlands, Burntscarth Green Farm and Foregirth Farm.

Kirkmahoe has a number of Iron Age forts. The most impressive is Mullach which lies above Dalswinton. Others include Castlehill, near Duncow and The Belt, also near Dalswinton. It is likely that these were used mainly as gathering places and that the population lived on the lower lying ground most of the time. As the River Nith meandered southwards, it would have provided good fishing, and the rich alluvial soil would have been ideal for growing crops.

At this time, the landscape would probably have been one of small islands in a wide, frequently-flooded valley. A dugout log-boat was found close to Kirkmahoe Church, near the burn known as ‘The Lake’.

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