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Dunscore

Dunscore (pronounced “Dunsker”) is a small, attractive village with a neat, whitewashed Parish Church dating from 1823. When Robert Burns and his family stayed at Ellisland Farm, four miles to the east, they used to worship in its predecessor.

Not far from Dunscore is Lochenhead Farm, birthplace in 1897 of Jane Haining, the only British person to have died at Auschwitz during World War II. While still young she joined the Church of Scotland’s Jewish Mission Service, and was eventually appointed matron of the Jewish Mission in Budapest in 1932. In 1944 she was arrested, purportedly because she had been listening to BBC broadcasts, but actually because she had been working among the Jews. She was taken to Auschwitz, and on July 17th 1944 died there. Her death certificate gave the cause of death as cachexia, a wasting illness sometimes associated with cancer, but there is no doubt she was gassed.

Out of doors at Glenkiln, beside Glenkiln Reservoir four miles (as the crow flies) south west of Dunscore, is a collection of sculptures by Henry Moore and Rodin.

The isolated farm of Craigenputtock in Dunscore, lies off an unmarked road five miles to the west. It was here that an unusual event took place concerning a small religious sect known as the Buchanites, founded by Mother Elspeth Buchan in Irvine, in the 18th century. She attracted a wide following, claiming she could bestow immortality on a person by breathing on them, and that she was also immortal. She also claimed that her followers would ascend to heaven in bodily form, without the inconvenience of death. The cult was eventually hounded from Irvine by the town magistrates, and it headed south towards Dumfries. In a large field near Craigenputtock she decided that it was time her followers went to heaven. So she had a wooden platform set up. She and her followers assembled on it, their heads shaved apart from a small tuft that the angels would grasp to lift them up to heaven. However, in the middle of the service the platform collapsed, throwing her followers to the ground. The sect eventually broke up when Elspeth died a natural death.