Craigenputtock

(Craigenputtoch)

A historical perspective, drawn from the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, edited by Francis H. Groome and originally published in parts by Thomas C. Jack, Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh between 1882 and 1885.

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Craigenputtoch, a lonely farm at the head of Dunscore parish, in Nithsdale, Dumfriesshire, lying, 700 feet above sea-level, at the SW base of Craigenputtoch Moor (1038 feet), 10 miles WSW of Auldgirth station, and 15 WNW of Dumfries. From May 1828 to May 1834 it was the home of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) and his wife, Jane Welsh (1801-66), she having inherited it from her father, whose ancestors owned it for many long generations, going back, it may be, to great John Welsh of Ayr (1570-1623). Here he wrote Sartor Resartus, here received two visits from Lord Jeffrey, and hence sent Goethe a description of his residence as ' not in Dumfries itself, but 15 miles to the NW, among the granite hills and the black morasses which stretch westward through Galloway, almost to the Irish Sea. In this wilderness of heath and rock our estate stands forth a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, partly enclosed, and planted ground, where corn ripens, and trees afford a shade, although surrounded by sea-mews and rough-woolled sheep. Here, with no small effort, have we built and furnished a neat substantial dwelling; here, in the absence of professional or other office, we live to cultivate literature according to our strength, and in our own peculiar way. ' In 1867, the year succeeding the death of Mrs Carlyle, he bequeathed the estate-773 acres, valued at £250 per annum-to Edinburgh University, to found ten equal competitive ' John Welsh bursaries,' five of them classical, five mathematical.—Ord. Sur., sh. 9, 1863. See Carlyle's Reminiscences (1881), and his Life by J. A. Froude (1882).

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Note: This text has been made available using a process of scanning and optical character recognition. Despite manual checking, some typographical errors may remain. Please remember this description dates from the 1880s; names may have changed, administrative divisions will certainly be different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original text, which we have not corrected because we wish to maintain its integrity. This information is provided subject to our standard disclaimer