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 Dumfries High Street and the Mid Steeple |
Known, like its football club, as "Queen of the South", Dumfries is an ancient town with a long and turbulent history. Today it is by far the biggest town in south west Scotland, the administrative centre for Dumfries and Galloway, and the focus of a large rural hinterland.
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Dumfries was founded as a Royal Burgh in 1186 on the east side of the lowest crossing point of the River Nith. The land beyond the Nith, Galloway, only securely became part of Scotland during Alexander II's reign in 1234: so Dumfries was very much on the frontier during its first 50 years and it grew rapidly as a market town and port.
 Greyfriars Church & Burns' Statue |
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 Dumfries Academy |
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 Municipal Chambers |
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 Dumfries & Galloway Council |
The first bridge over the Nith, Devorgilla Bridge, named after Devorgilla, the mother of King John Balliol, was built here in 1432. Rebuilt more than once and shortened from the east in the 1800s, this is still used by pedestrians and is one of Scotland's oldest standing bridges.
It was not from Galloway but from England that most of Dumfries' problems came during its first 500 years. English armies variously sacked, plundered or occupied the town in 1300, 1448, 1536, 1542, 1547, 1570: and it suffered again during the strife of the 1640s. Not all of Dumfries' bloody reputation was externally inflicted. Nine women were burned to death for witchcraft in the town in 1659, and two centuries later in 1868, Dumfries was the site of Scotland's last public hanging.
And to complete this account of the nastier side of Dumfries' history, it was in the Church of the Grey Friars that on 10 February 1306, Robert the Bruce murdered a rival for the Scottish crown, John III Comyn, "the Red Comyn". Robert the Bruce was excommunicated as a result, less for the murder than for its location, but nonetheless went on to become King of Scotland. Today's Greyfriars Church was built in 1868, overlooking the site of the murder on the opposite side of Castle Street, marked by a plaque on a shop wall.
Greyfriars Church also overlooks the attractive location of a symbol of a happier inheritance from the past: a statue of Robert Burns, sculpted in Italy in 1882. Burns spent the last years of his life in Dumfries, dying here in 1796. The statue is just one of a series of associations with Scotland's most famous poet to be found in the town. If you head south past the spectacular Mid Steeple, once the town tolbooth and prison, you come to a tiny vennel leading to the Globe Inn, his favourite drinking place.
You can also find Robert Burns' house at 24 Burns Street, south of the High Street, and his mausoleum in St Michael's Churchyard. On the west side of the River Nith is the Robert Burns Centre, housed in what was once the Dumfries Old Town Mill. Beyond it is Dumfries Museum built partly in a windmill later converted to a camera obscura.
 The River Nith and Devorgilla's Bridge |
