In our occasional series, Stuart Fisher explores some of the less well known navigable rivers of the UK
From Dalmellington the River Nith flows southeast across East Ayrshire and Dumfries & Galloway to the Solway Firth. To the Romans it was the Novius Fluvius. It has haaf and stake netting for salmon and sea trout but also has rainbow trout, bream, eels, flounders and minnows. Some of its most important water is not seen, as Dumfries lies above one of the best and most important aquifers in Scotland.
Dumfries takes its name from the Gaelic dun-phries, fort at the copse. It is also the Queen of the South and, to Burns, was Maggie by the Banks of Nith. In 1186 it was created a royal burgh by William the Lion. Burns Square was the site of the Greyfriars’ monastery where Robert the Bruce stabbed Sir John the Red Comyn in 1306 and declared himself king. Sir John was his rival for the throne and a supporter of Edward I. This led to the Wars of Independence against Edward I and the capturing of Dumfries Castle, the remains of which are at Castledykes.
Each year a schoolgirl is crowned Queen of the South in the Guid Nychburris festival which celebrates the 1393 charter from Robert III, a festival including a shooting contest for the Siller Gun, a replica of a firearm presented by James I in 1617.
Dumfries
Dumfries is a market town of Old Red Sandstone buildings which developed on knitwear. In 1962 it became the first Scottish town to clear all its slums. It features in Redgauntlet and SR Crockett’s The Raiders and is where Richard Hannay changed trains in the chase in John Buchan’s The Thirty-nine Steps, an option he would no longer have available following the closure of the line to Dalbeattie. In Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, Jery Melford claimed ‘If I was confined to Scotland for life, I would chuse Dumfries as the place of my residence’, ‘a very elegant trading town’. William Hare came here after the Burke and Hare murder trial, in an attempt to reach Portpatrick, but an attack by a mob of 8,000 resulted in a change of plan and he escaped to Carlisle.
The river can be tidal from the A780 Buccleuch Street Bridge, a five span masonry structure of 1794 with a centre arch of 18m, widened and strengthened in the 19th and 20th centuries and now with hidden reinforced concrete.
The following sandstone Devorgilla Bridge was built about 1431, one of the oldest in Scotland. Six arches remain from the original
