Gatehouse of Fleet
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Like Castle Douglas, GATEHOUSE OF FLEET, ten miles west of Kirkcudbright, has a distinctive long, dead straight main street. However, the quiet streets of Gatehouse have none of the life and bustle of Castle Douglas. By contrast, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the town was a thriving industrial centre with cotton mills, shipbuilding and a brewery. The man who made all this happen (and made himself immeasurably rich in the process) was the local laird James Murray (1727-99). Yorkshire mill owners provided the industrial expertise, imported engineers designed aqueducts to improve the water supply, and dispossessed crofters - and their children - contributed the labour. Between 1760 and 1790, Murray achieved much success, but his custom-built town failed to match its better-placed rivals. By 1850 the boom was over, the town was bypassed by the railway, the mills slipped into disrepair, and nowadays tiny Gatehouse is sustained by tourism and forestry.
It's the country setting that sets Gatehouse apart, rather than any particular sight. As at Castle Douglas, the sloping whitewashed High Street has a landmark clocktower, in this case an incongruous free-standing one, built in grey granite and topped by strange mitre-shaped crenellations. More picturesque is Ann Street, beside the tower, at the end of which you can gain access to the wooded grounds of Cally House (now the Cally Palace Hotel), and its gardens (Easter-Sept Tues-Fri 2-5pm, Sat & Sun 10am-5.30pm; £1.50). A palatial Neoclassical country mansion, Cally House was built in the 1760s, and is proof positive of the fortune already owned by the Murray family, even before James Murray began his cotton enterprise. Back in town, the Mill on the Fleet (March-Oct daily 10.30am-4.30pm; £1.50), opposite the car park by the river at the bottom of the High Street, traces the economic and social history of Gatehouse and Galloway from inside a restored grey granite bobbin mill. Perched on a hill a mile southwest of Gatehouse stands Cardoness Castle (April-Sept daily 9.30am-6.30pm; Oct-March Sat 9.30am-4.30pm, Sun 2-4.30pm; HS; £2), a classic late fifteenth-century fortified tower house, which boasts some fashionably decorated fireplaces and plenty of en-suite latrines, plus excellent views out to Fleet Bay in the distance.
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