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Gatehouse of Fleet

This neat little town was the original for the “Kippletringan” of Scott’s Guy Mannering. It sits beside the Water of Fleet, about a mile from Fleet Bay, and was at one time a port, thanks to the canalisation ofthe river in 1823 by a local landowner, Alexander urray of Cally House. The port area was known as Port MacAdam, though the site has now been grassed over. Cally House is now a hotel, though next to it are the Cally Gardens, laid out within a two-and-a-half acre walled garden.

Gatehouse of Fleet was established in the 1760s as a cotton-weaving centre by James Murray of Broughton, and today it remain more or less the way he planned it. He wished tocreate a great industrial town, though nowadays it is hard to imagine “dark satanic mills” in such an idyllic setting. Within oe of the former cotton mills is a museum called the Mill on the Fleet, which tells the story of the town’s ormer weaving industry.

It was supposedly in Gatehouse of Fleet, in the Murray Arms, that Burns set down the words to Scots Wha Hae.

About a mile west of the town stand the substantial ruins of 15th century Cardoness Castle (Historic Scotland), former home of the McCullochs of Galloway. It stands on a rocky platform above the road, and is open to the public.