Overview of Dumfries

A market town and administrative centre of Dumfries and Galloway, Dumfries sits close to the Solway Firth at the mouth of the River Nith, 35 miles (56 km) northwest of Carlisle and 90 miles (145 km) southwest of Edinburgh. When it was chartered as a royal burgh in in 1186 Dumfries was already the site of a Benedictine nunnery called Lincluden Priory, founded by the Lord of Galloway in 1170. A royal castle, long since gone, was erected in the 13th century and in 1306 Robert the Bruce slew the Red Comyn in a Franciscan friary founded here in 1266. Dumfries developed as a centre of trade, local merchants taking particular advantage of the free trade in tobacco offered by the Union of the Parliaments of Scotland and England in 1707. The livestock trade and textile manufacture developed during the 17th and 18th centuries, hosiery and tweed mills being major employers in the 19th century. In 1928 Dumfries incorporated the burgh of Maxwelltown on the west side of the Nith and in the 1990s the former Crichton Hospital complex, established in 1839, was adapted for use as a university campus linked to Paisley and Glasgow Universities as well as Bell College of Hamilton and the Dumfries and Galloway College.

Buildings of interest include Dumfries Academy (1897), Devorguilla's Bridge (c.1430), Moorhead's Hospital (1753), Burns House, home of the poet Robert Burns from 1793 until his death in 1796, and St Michael's Church (1749) in whose churchyard Burns was buried. A windmill built in 1798 and now a museum was converted into an observatory and camera obscura in 1836 to coincide with an appearance of Halley's comet and in Dock Park, site of the original harbour of Dumfries, stands a monument to John Law Hume and Thomas Mullin who died on the Titanic. Notable individuals who were born in Dumfries include surgeon Dr. Benjamin Bell (1749 - 1806), artist Thomas Watling (1762 - 1814), Arctic explorer Sir John Richardson (1787 - 1865), the actor John Laurie (1897 - 1980), broadcaster Kirsty Wark (b.1955) and racing driver David Coulthard (b.1971).